current DIY projects you are working on .. or planning on.

[subprime]

That blazer looks really nice. The woodgrain and finish is geat, its a shame that all the ibanezs these days seem to be some variety of shredder guitar.

[Rodabod]

So I'm having 2 problems with this Bassman preamp.

1. It is way too loud. I can only basically turn it up just enough for it to be making sound and then it is way too loud after that. It also is basically a fuzz if I don't turn the guitar volume down to about 2. It's a cool as hell fuzz, so if that is the way it is, so be it. It does sound great when it is clean though.

Ideas?

2. Should this design with these transistors have an excessive amount of hiss? Because it does.

Ideas?

1. You can try taking the 25uf caps out of the circuit. That should reduce the gain of the gain stages. Make sure you still have 4.5 volts at the drain. If that's still too loud/distorted, then you can try replacing the 1.5k resistors on the source pins of the JFETS with 10K, and then rebiasing to 4.5 again.

2. Yes. these pedal circuits are known to be pretty hissy.

Further to 1, you can try taking those drain bypass caps out, but it increases negative-feedback which you may not want; it'll reduce the amount of asymmetrical distortion you're getting. You also lose the fact that the LF is kept in check (less gain and less distortion at LF). What I think you want to try is balancing out the gain at each stage to achieve "good" sounding distortion. In very simple terms, you want several gain stages all clipping slightly, rather than one stage getting overdriven hard and shitting the bed (ie. fuzz), that is, unless you want that.

2. You can use a quiet transistor for the front end of this, and balance the gain as described before to achieve useable s/n ratio. It's mainly down to gain staging, and how you go about choosing what gain where. Experiment.

[bassdriver]

Fuzz pedal design:

excellent design, Nate. put me on the list for one of these!

[Adam Smith]

My console is a live board that I'm using as a studio board. I got sick of doing my monitor input switching through a combination of the patch bay and this 3P4T rotary switch I shoehorned into a data switching box. The cables kept coming unhooked from the back of the thing, plus it looked kind of jank. So, I finally broke down and put together a relay based internal switching system. There are three buttons, the top one switches the monitor input from LR to Aux 1,2 (which is my cue 1), the middle switches to the second tier mix in either group, so if you are in Aux 1,2 on the top button, the second button switches you to Aux 3,4 (which is my cue 2) or if you are in LR on the top button, the second button switches you to the alternate LR. The third button switches the monitors to the "external input" on the bay.

I managed to salvage all of the parts to build it from stuff in the studio junk boxes. Ultimately, I'm going to have to get metal work done on the blank panel so I can mount the control switches into the board. That will be the only money spent on this project. The control buttons are just setting on the board until then.

This was my first time screwing around w/ relays. They are fantastic.

[matt_stevens]

I have a Phat Cat in the bridge of my Epi Dot, how do you like it in the neck? I'm considering switching the 57' classic out with one.

I also have an Epiphone Dot except mine has the stock pickups. The neck position in the Dot sounds really muddy whereas the Phat Cat has enough top end to cut through a lot more. Not sure how it would compare to the 57, but I'm definitely tempted to put another set of P90s in my Epiphone.

I'm running it through an Orange AD30r, which is a really dark sounding amp anyway. With the blazer on neck position and all the tone controls at the top it has a really great doomy sound. Most of the time I roll the bass off on the amp a lot to get a bit more clarity.

[japmn]

So I'm having 2 problems with this Bassman preamp.

1. It is way too loud. I can only basically turn it up just enough for it to be making sound and then it is way too loud after that. It also is basically a fuzz if I don't turn the guitar volume down to about 2. It's a cool as hell fuzz, so if that is the way it is, so be it. It does sound great when it is clean though.

Ideas?

2. Should this design with these transistors have an excessive amount of hiss? Because it does.

Ideas?

1. You can try taking the 25uf caps out of the circuit. That should reduce the gain of the gain stages. Make sure you still have 4.5 volts at the drain. If that's still too loud/distorted, then you can try replacing the 1.5k resistors on the source pins of the JFETS with 10K, and then rebiasing to 4.5 again.

2. Yes. these pedal circuits are known to be pretty hissy.

Further to 1, you can try taking those drain bypass caps out, but it increases negative-feedback which you may not want; it'll reduce the amount of asymmetrical distortion you're getting. You also lose the fact that the LF is kept in check (less gain and less distortion at LF). What I think you want to try is balancing out the gain at each stage to achieve "good" sounding distortion. In very simple terms, you want several gain stages all clipping slightly, rather than one stage getting overdriven hard and shitting the bed (ie. fuzz), that is, unless you want that.

2. You can use a quiet transistor for the front end of this, and balance the gain as described before to achieve useable s/n ratio. It's mainly down to gain staging, and how you go about choosing what gain where. Experiment.

I showed it to some friends last night and they were all a lot more excited about it as a fuzz than a preamp. It does sound pretty growly when you crank it up. My SG sounded great through it with a compressor to give it a little more zing. The Jazzmaster doesn't have enough output to really make it full on fuzz, but it had a pretty great super dry 70's rock sound. The bass sounds great through it as well, but is a little flubby on a Low E and F. Anything above that is great. I'm probably going to keep it fuzzy. I have parts to build another if I decided to change it. I'll try some other FETs to see how it responds to that. Jesus knows all I need is another fuzz pedal. The boost switch doesn't do a whole lot. I'll probably just hard wire it wide open.

A comp makes this thing sound amazing. Maybe in the super future I'll box one with a Dynacomp clone or something.

[deadfate]

I'm thinking to build a cabinet, one 8'' or 10'' speaker and one tweater. i haven't find any good diy project. any suggestions?

[japmn]

Here is a quasi-finished version of the Bassman Fuzz Drive thing.



I scrapped the Drive knob and just made a switch that goes wide open. I took a high voltage incandescent lamp from a broken light board and replaced the lamp with an LED to create a little HAL-9000 light. I need to replace the Master with a smooth shaft pot cause I don't have one lying around. Looks cool. Pretty huge, but my Bass pedal board isn't too crowded. I'm still not 100% happy with it, but I'll keep trying crap. As a Fuzz with a compressor in front of it, it is pretty cool. Sounds like you are playing into a Bassman with the volumes cranked and the speaker on the verge of combustion. I might try it at 18VDC or even 30 to see how it affects the headroom. It's been a fun and education build.

[japmn]

Here is a quasi-finished version of the Bassman Fuzz Drive thing.

Art Work.




If I paint it by hand, I'll leave it aluminium, If I get lazy and use a transfer (most likely) I'll probably paint the face white (to let the graphic through better) and the sides copper. It's kind of how my painted pedals look, I like it.

[subprime]

Get this shit into production!

[japmn]

Building a Tube Sound into a box with a little booster circuit I cooked up. The Booster is based on an LPB-1, but with some parts excluded/switchable. It makes it a pretty dirty booster, but I like it that way. I whipped it up on a Vero strip and it's about the size of a computer key. I'm installing a 3PDT toggle to switch the order of the booster and the Drive. It will be a cool little box, I think. Here is the booster Vero layout. It's almost free to build.



Niftyness!

[benadrian]

Building a Tube Sound into a box with a little booster circuit I cooked up. The Booster is based on an LPB-1, but with some parts excluded/switchable. It makes it a pretty dirty booster, but I like it that way. I whipped it up on a Vero strip and it's about the size of a computer key. I'm installing a 3PDT toggle to switch the order of the booster and the Drive. It will be a cool little box, I think. Here is the booster Vero layout. It's almost free to build.



Niftyness!

That vero looks really wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. it looks like the input is going through a .1uf cap to ground. Also, it looks like the output signal before the put (the blue wire) connects to the .1uf cap directly to the power supply, which is essentially an AC short. Also, in an LPB1/2, there should be a 390 ohm resistor on the source/emitter, not a 390k. Do you have a schematic dawn up for this circuit?

[japmn]

Building a Tube Sound into a box with a little booster circuit I cooked up. The Booster is based on an LPB-1, but with some parts excluded/switchable. It makes it a pretty dirty booster, but I like it that way. I whipped it up on a Vero strip and it's about the size of a computer key. I'm installing a 3PDT toggle to switch the order of the booster and the Drive. It will be a cool little box, I think. Here is the booster Vero layout. It's almost free to build.



Niftyness!

That vero looks really wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. it looks like the input is going through a .1uf cap to ground. Also, it looks like the output signal before the put (the blue wire) connects to the .1uf cap directly to the power supply, which is essentially an AC short. Also, in an LPB1/2, there should be a 390 ohm resistor on the source/emitter, not a 390k. Do you have a schematic dawn up for this circuit?

The little vero maker program I used doesn't let you size things down or flip anything around. If you look closely at the caps, you can see the leads actually are closer together than the size of the cap appears. I see how it is confusing. I'll try to make it look better. The "k" on that resistor was a typo, thanks.

[benadrian]

Okay, then that Vero program sucks Seriously, that would throw of almost any builder unless there was a big ass disclaimer on the layout!

Looks like the switch is in the wrong place though, I'f I'm reading it right. it appears to be on the output side of the gain stage.

[japmn]

Okay, then that Vero program sucks Seriously, that would throw of almost any builder unless there was a big ass disclaimer on the layout!

Looks like the switch is in the wrong place though, I'f I'm reading it right. it appears to be on the output side of the gain stage.

A little MsPaint clears it up I think.

[benadrian]

Looks like the switch is in the wrong place though, I'f I'm reading it right. it appears to be on the output side of the gain stage.

A little MsPaint clears it up I think.

Much Better!
I think the switch is still in the wrong place. The blue line that goes to A-F should go to A-E if you want to match the schematic.

[japmn]

Looks like the switch is in the wrong place though, I'f I'm reading it right. it appears to be on the output side of the gain stage.

A little MsPaint clears it up I think.

Much Better!
I think the switch is still in the wrong place. The blue line that goes to A-F should go to A-E if you want to match the schematic.

Yep! I probably goofed for the same reason you were confused about that original layout. The oversized cap img tricked me in my haste. I just built this on breadboard and then transferred it to vero. I made the vero layout img after the fact and wasn't very careful. Do you know of a good program for drawing up Vero layouts, cause this one sucks ass. Maybe I'll just make a template in Flash or something.

The little booster sounds kinda cool, the switchable resistor acts like a little dirty boost.

[japmn]

Much Better!
I think the switch is still in the wrong place. The blue line that goes to A-F should go to A-E if you want to match the schematic.

Yep! I probably goofed for the same reason you were confused about that original layout. The oversized cap img tricked me in my haste. I just built this on breadboard and then transferred it to vero. I made the vero layout img after the fact and wasn't very careful. Do you know of a good program for drawing up Vero layouts, cause this one sucks ass. Maybe I'll just make a template in Flash or something.

The little booster sounds kinda cool, the switchable resistor acts like a little dirty boost.[/quote]



Thanks Ben!

[benadrian]

Do you know of a good program for drawing up Vero layouts, cause this one sucks ass. Maybe I'll just make a template in Flash or something.

The little booster sounds kinda cool, the switchable resistor acts like a little dirty boost.

I've never made a vero drawing in software. I've just used graph paper.

Your buffer reminds me of this one.
http://www.muzique.com/tech/bipolar-j.htm

Awesome!

[japmn]

Do you know of a good program for drawing up Vero layouts, cause this one sucks ass. Maybe I'll just make a template in Flash or something.

The little booster sounds kinda cool, the switchable resistor acts like a little dirty boost.

I've never made a vero drawing in software. I've just used graph paper.

Your buffer reminds me of this one.
http://www.muzique.com/tech/bipolar-j.htm

Awesome!

I actually looked at that one before starting this one. I ended up just building a LPB-1 on breadboard and pulling stuff off until I had about as small and simple a thing as possible that still sounded cool. It's pretty neat and I think it will pair nicely with a Tube Sound to give it a little more "11"