| PEDAL
NAME + PICTURE |
TYPE |
SHORT
DESCRIPTION |
"Fazz
Fuzz" |
Fuzz | 2017
- This is the first pedal I designed and built. It's
basically 5 BazzFuss circuits wired together with some
alterations, variable biasing for the input stage, and a
ganged-bias for all subsequencent stages. I used it in that
incarnation in the Sweatty Vedders for quite some time for my main
fuzz. It's very loud and powerful, it's unbuffered, and it
has some quite useful glitch settings. My idea was to build something like my ultimate version of a Fuzz Factory - basically, even the glitchy settings are useful because of the fact there are both permanant and momentary switch modes on it. I'd say I succeeded at it. It makes a great, tight, controlled fuzz, a good treble boost, amazing Atari-like glitch noises, and even a full blown square wave synth if you slam the front end of the pedal with something else. In 2020 it was discovered it could do Synthesizer Effects by slamming the input with a Behringer EQ, so I built a simple, over-powered LM386 Op-Amp into it, removing the treble bypass switch entirely, and instead wiring in the LM386 into that switch, allowing for it to get some pretty darn good monophonic square wave synth tones out of a guitar without much work. |
"Skull
Fuzz" |
Fuzz | 2019
- Simple Tagboard pieced-together Fuzz based on the BC547 Silicon
Transistor. Runs best at around 5vdc, but has variable
voltage ranging from a highly gated fuzz at 9vdc, to a super
fuzzy, almost Rat or Big Muff sort of thing at 3vdc. It started life as some kind of extremely mild treble boost or some kind of weak Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face design. I wanted a wall of mud for doing Misfits covers - so I created an NPN BazzFuzz type circuit, but changed the way I wired a few things so that it would handle a little differently. I experimented with voltages and found 3-5vdc worked best, so I put in a switch with 2 1M resistors to cut the voltage flow so you could have a choppy, muddy, thick fuzz all the way down to a muddy sludgefest, and that could be tamed by the bass-cut switch where the nose is. Two indiscator LED's were put in for eyes - cannibalized from a children's LED Lamp Builder set I bought at a garage sale. This has got to be my favorite fuzz pedal of all time. It can be tight and controlled, or very muddy and thick - think Gish era Smashing Pumpkins or Bleach Era Nirvana - that's what this thing does and does well. It also does the Ric Ocasek/Cars thing (ala Good Times Roll, or Got A Lot on My Head's rhythm track) extremely well. |
"Dungeonverb" |
Reverb | 2019
- I bought a Belton BTDR-3 Brick and experimented and came up with
my own Reverb pedal entirely just by looking at the basic
schematic and then using notes from it to tailor it to MY
sound. Eventually I have a goal to make a pedal capable of
those Lithium/Crystal-like ethereal washes and this is 1/2 of what
that circuit will be when I get around to that design. What this pedal does is uses the dual reverbs as a far/near effect, and then allows some minor cross-talk between the two to get a very insane-long reverb trails and a big-thick, almost canyon like reverb. I plan to install it into my amp at some point too to replace the original Behringer Reverb Circuit possibly. |
"Samsquanch" |
Distortion | 2018
- CD4069 CMOS based Distortion Pedal with multiple levels ranging
from a Joe-Walsh like overdrive, to a Paul Dean type heavy
distortion, to metal madness - all the way to full blown
Synthesizer noises. It can even be run without power to add a
tube-amp element to a transistor amp that sounds a little flat. I came up with this one right after the FazzFuzz and was shocked when I suddenly had "Paul Dean in a Pedal" on my desk. I found if I backed it down, I got something more like old Eagles/James Gang Joe Walsh, nice! Ramping it up put me more in Cookie Monster Death Metal territory, until it just flattens out into a Square Wave like something DEVO would do. NICE. That's like, five bands in one pedal. I'm still experimenting with this circuit. It's going to be awesome. |
"Guitari
2600" |
MonoSynth | 2018
- This is a CMOS based monophonic guitar synth pedal with octave
up and down, but blended in a way you get some pretty sick
power-bass sounds and cool high level synth tones. It really
does sound a lot like an Atari game console from 1977. It
also plays well with pitch shifters, choruses, and reverbs. This
likely is the next one to get a proper PCB and a case. I'm not going to reveal much on how it works because it uses some unique methods and breaks a few electronics rules to achieve it's sound. I also need to work out a voltage regulator for it. It seems to run best at a perfect 9-12VDC, and I have a feeling if I boost voltages to certain parts of the circuit, I might end up being able to get certain effects to do even more. |
