Some of my previous DIY pedal builds.

Hi everyone,

I thought I would start yet another thread about some DIY pedals I've built, these are guitar FX pedals I have built myself in the past few years, and after talking to Wokka on another thread I thought you guys might like to check them out, I will be posting pics and links to sound demos of the pedals, note that I only have two of the pedals I have built at home, the rest are either at Uni or at a friends place.


To start things off, here's a pic of my build of a Dallas Rangemaster Vintage Treble Booster pedal, this pedal is based on a very well-known pedal used by some famous guitarists to get their sound, featuring a single Germanium Transistor, it was originally intended to brighten dark sounding guitar amps that were common in the early 60's in England, but, Guitarists soon found that they could use the Rangemaster to overdrive an already distorting amp to get a sweeter more overdriven sound, to my ears it seems to make the tone a bit more midrangey with some extra upper presence that can cut through the mix, a good example is the tone Tony Iommi got on the first Black Sabbath album.

It's a very simple circuit and most of the components are mounted on an 8-way tagstrip with a couple of the parts strung between a solder tag and one of the solder lugs on the footswitch, an old school way of building FX pedals.


It's interesting to note that an original Vintage Rangemaster can go for silly amounts of money nowadays, considering that there's at most about $50.00 worth of parts in them.

Original Rangemasters used the OC44 Germanium Transistor but my build uses an AC128, anyway, here's a couple of pics of the pedal:Attachment 6777Attachment 6778



Sound demo coming soon so stay tuned.


Okay I've just managed to get together a quick and dirty sound demo of my Rangemaster pedal, the signal chain was from my LP Studio to the Rangemaster pedal, then straight into my Saffire Pro 40 into Audacity, this was done so you can hear the raw tone of the pedal by itself, I had to reduce the recording level on the fly as i turned up the Boost knob on the Rangemaster so I wouldn't overdrive the Saffire Pro 40's input, the slight clipping you hear towards the end is the AC128 Transistor starting to distort as I strum harder, the first few chord strums are with the pedal bypassed:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...angemaster.mp3

Here's another one of my DIY pedal builds, this time it's a pedal based on one made famous by Jimi Hendrix and Robin Trower...it's the UniVibe, my build has a bit of a twist to it because in between the two footswitches there's a three-position switch that allows you to select between three different voicings, UniVibe, Reslytone, and Voodoo Vibe, each setting has a slightly different character, I also made a remote speed control pedal for it so you can control the speed of the effect on-the-fly, the left-hand footswitch is used to select either the Chorus or Vibrato modes in each of the three voicings, the right-hand footswitch engages or bypasses the effect, here's a pic of the UniVibe, I'll add a pic of the insides after my phone has finished recharging:Attachment 6779Attachment 6780


Here's some soundclips of each of the voicings of my UniVibe in both the Chorus and Vibrato modes:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...e%20Chorus.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...%20Vibrato.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...one_Chorus.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...ne_Vibrato.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...doo_Chorus.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...do_Vibrato.mp3



When you listen to the sound that the UniVibe generates you'll notice that the effect is very subtle at low speeds, but it becomes more prominent as the speed gets faster, this is normal and original vintage UniVibes behaved like this too, the UniVibe is actually a Phaser and was originally meant to sound like the Leslie Rotating Speakers used with Hammond B3 Tonewheel Organs, it was originally designed by a Japanese Electronics Engineer named Fumio Mieda who worked for a company in Japan called Shin Ei.

good stuff Doc, would be cool to hear some sound demo's of these effects compared to the dry signal

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

good stuff Doc, would be cool to hear some sound demo's of these effects compared to the dry signal

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No worries, I'll see if I can get that all sorted out tonight then mate, I've already got soundclips of the UniVibe in my dropbox so I can just post some links of them in the UniVibe post, stay tuned.

Snazzy lookin pedals there Doc!

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Originally Posted by keloooe

Snazzy lookin pedals there Doc!

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Cheers mate, I'm thinking of doing a repaint job on my UniVibe pedal and maybe re-do the labeling on it soon, maybe next year, feel free to check out the demo clips I posted.


I'll see if I can post some more examples of my pedal builds.

Okay, here's another example of my DIY pedal builds, this time it's one of the Grandaddys of Fuzz, a real old-school one made famous by Jimi Hendrix, it's the Fuzz Face, a very simple two-transistor device that was designed and marketed by Ivor Arbiter in England in about 1966 or so, here are pics of the pedal and insides:Attachment 6781Attachment 6782


And here are some soundclips so you can hear what it sounds like:


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...Min%20Fuzz.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...alf%20Fuzz.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...ull%20Fuzz.mp3

Next is my Baja Real Tube Overdrive pedal, the Baja Real Tube Overdrive pedal is based on the well known BK Butler Tube Driver and uses a real Tube/Valve to generate Valve Distortion, here are a couple of pics and some sound clips with three different Valves installed in the pedal:Attachment 6783Attachment 6784


Baja RTO Soundclips:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...RTO_12AU7A.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...0RTO_12AT7.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...TO_12AX7EH.mp3

Digging the sounds Nomis! So much sustain in the last demo! Clips real nice, what guitar / setup you running this all through?

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Originally Posted by keloooe

Digging the sounds Nomis! So much sustain in the last demo! Clips real nice, what guitar / setup you running this all through?

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If my memory serves me right, I was playing my Mexican Strat straight into the pedal and then straight into my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, and then into Audacity which I used to record the audio, I did it that way in order to capture the raw sound of the pedals I recorded.

Aw damn that's a sick tone straight from the pedal then! Definitely reminds me of the actual FF!

Here's another one of my pedal builds, it's based on the Soldano GTO Supercharger pedal, this pedal is different to the Baja RTO pedal for two reasons, one is that it uses two Valves to produce much more gain, secondly it runs the Valves at a much higher voltage (about 350V DC) than the Baja RTO does, the end result is that the tone is a bit more like what you'd get out of a high gain Valve Amplifier, here are some pics of the pedal, and a link to the sound demo on soundcloud: Attachment 6785Attachment 6786Attachment 6787



Here's a link to the demo clip on soundcloud:


https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/gtfo-democlip

And here's another one of my DIY pedal builds, this time it's based on the Klon Centaur Overdriver, the Klon Centaur is basically a clean-ish overdriver that adds some subtle distortion of it's own at high gain settings, a bit like the Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer except that the Klon is capable of a much higher output level, roughly about twice what the TS-9 is capable of, it also happens to have a prominent midrange tone, good for overdriving an already distorting Marshall Amp, here's a couple of pics and a demo clip:Attachment 6788Attachment 6789


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...%20Centaur.mp3

Good stuff Doc, these look very interesting and like the sound clips

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Here's something else I thought I'd post here just in case you're interested in checking it out, this is a Mini DIY Analogue Synthesizer I built called a Weird Sound Generator, I got the design, circuit, and veroboard layout from a website called Music From Outer Space, it's a website for anyone who's interested in building Analogue Synthesizers, the sounds that the Weird Sound Generator can produce range from deep droning sounds to otherworldly bleeps depending on how you set the knobs and switches, it's a crazy noise maker that's fun to play with, but wait....it gets better when fed through some kind of delay effect...where it becomes even weirder, here's three pics and a couple of audio demos I uploaded to soundcloud:


Attachment 6790Attachment 6791Attachment 6792





WSG Demo Soundclips:


https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/wsg-recording-3


https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/wsg-with-vst-fx



And if you're interested in building one:


http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/

To be honest I'm always all in for analogue pedals, especially for drive / distortion / fuzz. Plus if its true bypass it can act as a mute when unpowered, like I do for my unused trem pedal :D

Seriously Doc those pedals are sweet, definitely keep them rolling in!

some great pedals there, you have made great versions of some of the worlds most expensive pedals...

oh and i want your soldano, that is an awesome pedal

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Originally Posted by keloooe

To be honest I'm always all in for analogue pedals, especially for drive / distortion / fuzz. Plus if its true bypass it can act as a mute when unpowered, like I do for my unused trem pedal :D

Seriously Doc those pedals are sweet, definitely keep them rolling in!

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All the pedals I have built, except for the Klon Centaur, feature true bypass footswitching in that when they are bypassed they are completely out of the signal chain, when the Klon Centaur is in bypass mode the signal actually goes through a buffer circuit so it is never truly out of the signal chain, I can't see why it couldn't be converted to true bypass though.

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Originally Posted by stan

some great pedals there, you have made great versions of some of the worlds most expensive pedals...

oh and i want your soldano, that is an awesome pedal

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I'll have to see if I can get another circuit board etched so I can build another one, the PCB artwork is in a thread in the Freestompboxes.org website, I had alot of fun getting all the parts together and building the Soldano GTO Supercharger pedal.

Okay, here are a couple more old school Fuzzes I built, one is based on the Sola Sound Tonebender MkI, and the other is based on the Tonebender MkII Professional, the Tonebender MkI is the older of the two designs and is almost identical to the most Grandaddy of all the Fuzzes, the Maestro FZ1, the one that started the Fuzz craze off in the first place, the story of how the MkI Tonebender was designed goes like this, a 60's guitarist named Vick Flick (responsible for the famous guitar riff in the 007 James Bond theme from Dr No) brought a Maestro FZ1 to an electronics tech named Gary Hurst in England and asked him to mod the pedal for more sustain, the result was the Sola Sound Tonebender MkI, here are a couple of pics of my Tonebender MkI and MkII builds, the MkI is the one with three silver Germanium AC125 transistors, the MKII is the one with three black OC81D Germanium transistors, there's also two sound demo clips, feel free to check them out:

Attachment 6814Attachment 6815



https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/mk-i-tonebender-demo




https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/mk...ebender-record



Apparently Jimmy Page, the guitarist in Led Zeppelin used a Tonebender MkII Professional.

Send them all to me!!! Haha

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Cool stuff nomis. I'm planning on building a green ringer to get those weird overtones/natural octave with my fuzz builds

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Originally Posted by Nickosaurus

Cool stuff nomis. I'm planning on building a green ringer to get those weird overtones/natural octave with my fuzz builds

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There might be a thread for the Green Ringer on the Freestompboxes.org website:


http://www.freestompboxes.org/index.php