What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

Budding weekend woodworking warrior over here. Took the past month to build some cabinets to go with our entertainment center and fill the space a bit better. I used soft close hinges (google it) with an adjustable shelf inside. It’s currently sitting in my garage all primed and waiting for paint. It’s made from 2 sheets of plywood: 3/4 inch and 1/4 inch for the backing and door. Knobs will be installed later
 

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BuddytheReow said:
I'm considering a pedalboard build myself. What kind of wood did you use? I've got a crap load of pine and a bit of plywood as leftovers.
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stick to more pine with the plywood as maybe the end bracings, it'll remain fairly light. I need to get some more pine or poplar before daylight gets to much colder... realized I have no stand for all these 🤬 guitars I keep building:ROFLMAO:

on my bench more like an ER... figure out wtf happened to my small clone and BF-2... 1st quit having an effect, the 2nd worked twice now I gotta crank the volume AND gain to get anything through:unsure:
 
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Tone Bender Mk1.5 in progress. Mojo parts because they look cool, unfortunately I was too eager to solder to check if the circuit sounds different/quieter with metal film resistors.

470r > 2k2 (measures 2k35) and 8k2 > 5k6 (measures 5k88) = still biases Q2 at -4.5V but with more output on the Volume knob.

First time soldering with the Pinecil V2. It slays with regular PCB pads but soldering to turrets seems difficult. No problem melting solder all around but it looks like it's not sticking well to the turrets.

I'm a first timer with turrets so there are gobs of solder globs everywhere. I suppose "a dab'll do ya" is the right approach instead.

I probably also need to flux the turrets before soldering like in those 1980 Pace tutorials. What I really need is this red shop coat with my logo embroidered on the breast pocket.

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Today I'm soldering in the Ge transistors. Really nervous. I want to add insulation to the legs but where do I put the alligator clips for heat sink if the legs are insulated?!

Also I tried making a voltage regulator on stripboard and...I hate stripboard. I hate cutting it to size, disposing of the dust, cutting traces and turning into Sherlock Holmes to find stray slivers of copper then adding a touch of solder only to have an Olympic pool pour all over the traces.
This is where it belongs:

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Big Monk said:
Did you test with higher voltages in Q2? The MK 1.5 uses OC75 transistors so the voltage probably creeped up toward 8 vDC.
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Unfortunately not. I had no idea what the voltages should be and I can't afford OC75s so I chose transistors for a Fuzz Face (around 80/120 w/low leakage) but used values from the TB1.5 out of spite :)
I'll keep this on a breadboard and experiment to see what a real Mk1.5 sounds like. What hFE do OC75s usually have?

Big Monk said:
With the 2.2k output resistor, where did unity gain end up on the volume knob?
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With 470r/8k2 unity was at 10. I tested it against my Dunlop JDF2 and JHF1 and those were louder (and quieter but they sound worse) so I went with 2k2 and now unity is at roughly halfway up. Perfect.

I noticed the volume is consistent across the entire volume knob (on my Strat it's 7-10), no sudden bump in level from 9 to 10, so much so that rolling it back to 7, where it gets sparkly clean, sounds louder than at 10.

Big Monk said:
Looks great!
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Thanks. The only other mod is the Fuzz knob is reverse log for finer tuning at the end of the taper, well-known fix that IMO should be standard.

I also tried your other tweaks - RF input cap, bypass cap on the 100k, 10r in series with the emitter cap - but ultimately decided to build a raw version and take my chances.

I'm just trying to learn by doing without any knowledge, it's a lot of fun!
 
Big Monk said:
You know, this is a weird one. I hear people talk about 470 not giving unity gain or barely so on the dial and I’ve never experienced this.

Often, I have to back it down to 220-330 or else anything past 3:00 o’clock starts to oscillate.

I’m wondering if it’s a clean/dirty amp thing? I’m running my amp pretty dirty with Fuzz.
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First of all I play a Strat with low-output pickups set almost flush with the pickguard. My amp is basically a Princeton Reverb copy but it has a Clean/Drive toggle to go from Blackface to Tweed overdrive.

With the two FFs I mentioned I run it a bit dirty in Tweed mode and it's fine, they are plenty loud. I don't know the hFE and leakage of those transistors. They sound ok but a bit too smooth for my tastes.

This one is built with textbook transistors and it sags like crazy on the low notes and neck and middle pickups, no attack at all (and flatwounds don't help), so I have to turn down my amp's gain a bit. The tone however is very similar to what I hear in demos of the Analogman Sunface. Very rich and "grainy", the best FF tone I've ever had.

The same sagging happens with the Mk II I have on a breadboard but I assumed it was because 3 transistors give a ton of gain. That one biases at almost -7V on Q3 so it's almost there but I need to try more transistors.
 
Big Monk said:
That “smoothness” you hear is the fuzz complementing the amp overdrive. In reality, this is the classic fuzz overdrive sound we hear on many of our favorite live records of the late 60s/early 70s.
What I hear on a lot of builder demos and YouTube demos nowadays is Fuzz into clean amps. And per the conversation @Coda and I recently had on the forum, I don’t mean loud Marshall or Hiwatt “clean” or Twin Reverb clean (big, bold, loud, and with pronounced bass response).

In this case I mean truly clean, with some grunt but no true power tube overdrive happening v

In this case the graininess and fuzziness is the fuzz character itself.

I prefer the smoother tone of the classic loud, distorted amp plus fuzz but that’s what’s so awesome about simple fuzzes: Everyone likes to m for a different reason or is pursuing a specific sound and the circuits, although simple, accommodate all of that.
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I see. Do you have any idea why this fuzz face sags so much in my case? It sounds like it's overloading my amp. Something similar happens if I play say a fuzz face and a Foxx tone machine together. It goes SPLAT!
 
Big Monk said:
Which schematic did you use? The sagging is likely due to high gain and/or increased bass response overloading and heavily compressing and already compressed amp.
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Standard MK1.5 I think.

4u7 input cap, 25u emitter cap, 47k on Q1, A100k volume pot.
 
Big Monk said:
OC75s are the brightest overall OG Germaniums I’ve ever played. Frankly, I don’t buy into transistor hype but the OC series, the 75s in general, have a “thing” with respect to treble response.

Also, the higher collector voltage of Q2 in a true MK 1.5 would contribute to an overall brighter tone than a standard Fuzz Face.

The input cap and higher emitter cap might have compensated for this in the original but are likely giving you an overwhelming amount of bass response in your circuit.

Try dropping the input cap down to 2.2u and/or the emitter cap down to 15u. If you need to reduce gain more, try 82k and 91k in the feedback resistor slot.
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This one is staying as it is, worst case scenario I got myself a bass fuzz. But I'll definitely experiment with the values soon.

Thank you for helping me and sharing your knowledge, Derek!
 
small bit done on the amp project, may need a longer wire on the power divider. The aluminum angle pieces will be the main frame work(thank you Orange for the micro series for the idea). Next confabulation is how do I wire up 1 of the 1/8 jacks from the bag in to the other side of the 3pdt toggle switch. I put the outs from a Space Heater(may switch it to a Black EYE when I get a decent price on a 25VA ct for this board)on 1 side, the middle to a 10watt TH customs board(woooohooo in stock again!) and wanting to do an aux/line in on the opposite flip. going to use the 3rd pole for the on/off to Space Heater's power.

Here is the 2 jacks, I want to use 1 for aux/line in and maybe some resistor magic turn the 2nd in to a headphone out. any good suggestions my dear fellows? Even if it's to the right book on this crap 😉 😁
 

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All the boards from winning the fig lottery plus the Glitchee from the Madbean sale. Scoff if you will at my relatively small in process queue, but have never had so many builds going at once. Populated with what I had on hand, now time for a beast of a Tayda order (mostly hardware).
 
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