What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

Not really on the workbench but more of a tube swap for a buddies hotrod deluxe…He’s letting me keep it a couple weeks to noodle around after I did a tube swap and cleaned up the chassis for him. Never played through one and I just got done messing with this thing with my pedalboard hooked up for an hour… Really does have a nice warm clean sound.. IMG_8872.jpeg
 

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Hammered all night to get this project back on track, here's the rough mock-up.

Fuzz for a friend of a friend; first commissioned pedal, but I got to choose the circuit based on some feedback about the druthers of the recipient.

My friend will add artwork before giving it to his buddy.


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I did a preliminary layout a while back, but it got changed a lot. It was 11x16, but I was too lazy to make two cuts on the perfboard I had, so it wound up being 11x18 and a good thing too, 'cause I did some re-kajiggering and am much happier with the layout.

It's a modified Bosstone with lots of Chuck D B influence, some WTF and Baron Samedi in there, maybe some Fuzzy Bear, too...

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Lower-left trimmer is the sag, top trimmer is Chuck's tone-control from his FurBurger.
Diodes taken from a batch of questionable Ge "1N34A" sourced from Taobao years ago, surprisingly I managed to find 2 that weren't complete duds:

Left D1 520–531mV​
Right D2 610–620mV​

Even though I was hammering all night, in a way I was taking my time, trying to ensure the soldering and signal route was free of stupid mistakes. I do NOT want to have to trouble-shoot this thing.

The really fun bit is the 2N3906 is installed backwards for some outright sonic mayhem — but I won't know for sure until I get it wired up.
 
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Hammered all night to get this project back on track, here's the rough mock-up.

Fuzz for a friend of a friend; first commissioned pedal, but I got to choose the circuit based on some feedback about the druthers of the recipient.

My friend will add artwork before giving it to his buddy.


View attachment 107994


I did a preliminary layout a while back, but it got changed a lot. It was 11x16, but I was too lazy to make two cuts on the perfboard I had, so it wound up being 11x18 and a good thing too, 'cause I did some re-kajiggering and am much happier with the layout.

It's a modified Bosstone with lots of Chuck D B influence, some WTF and Baron Samedi in there, maybe some Fuzzy Bear, too...

View attachment 107995

Lower-left trimmer is the sag, top trimmer is Chuck's tone-control from his FurBurger.
Diodes taken from a batch of questionable Ge "1N34A" sourced from Taobao years ago, surprisingly I managed to find 2 that weren't complete duds:

Left D1 520–531mV​
Right D2 610–62mV​

Even though I was hammering all night, in a way I was taking my time, trying to ensure the soldering and signal route was free of stupid mistakes. I do NOT want to have to trouble-shoot this thing.

The really fun bit is the 2N3906 is installed backwards for some outright sonic mayhem — but I won't know for sure until I get it wired up.
Is that one of those trapezoid boxes or just the angle of the photo?
 
Is that one of those trapezoid boxes or just the angle of the photo?
Trap, Hammond 1590TRPB. I quite like them and have a few on hand; when my friend was looking through what I had for enclosures and saw it he said "That's the box!" (the artwork is going to be heavily Mayan influenced, I think. With some Lucha influence.

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As a former journalist, I guess I'm just pre-disposed to the inverted pyramid, but also I wanted to have lots of room for the jacks. Friend Okayed the orientation the day he selected the enclosure.

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Built and swapped the Median compressor I just built into the glow-in-the dark enclosure I made for my Boneyard Delegate earlier this year. The Median just fits my current needs better. So I knew it'd get immediate board use, and I love the glowy enclosure but knew I didn't have the reason/skrilla to throw down for a big Tayda order. This also meant carefully removing the graphic with some lighter fluid and my hobby knife, but I've already laid out a 2.0 version of the original with updated knob text. Will get on that come accommodating weather. Meanwhile, I can't get enough of how rich this sounds, especially with the extra headroom my change to 18v allows. Hell yeah.
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Wrapped up the wiring yesterday/last night. A few hiccups but ...

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Not the first time I've wrote something on a lid, but first time I've done more than a scribble.
The recipient is heavily into the Mexican wrestling scene, so I look forward to what art my friend will put on the pedal's face.
(see bottom of post for an art-sample)
That Lucha love and lore also goes towards explaining my attempt at the Mayanesque glyph/logogram of BALAM, ie how you spell Jaguar in Mayan.


Sounds very good dimed. I could build this thing without a VOL pot, like Union Tube & Transistor's Bumble Buzz.
Very smooth fuzz, not at all what I was expecting with the PNP flipped, but I didn't mess with the trimmers. The sag trimmer is set at the Bosstone Stock 18k, so maybe I'll get to play around with it again before my friend's done painting the enclosure.

I do wish the breadboarding of this circuit had been successful, as I would've liked a bit more volume on tap (easily gets unity) and maybe a smidge more gain. Maybe I'll try to breadboard it again, address the volume and gain...



Layout and schematic are here.







Here's a sneak preview of my friend's art for a project near and dear to me. It was a mind-blowing experience.
I've been sitting on this for months, waiting for some parts and and the universe to align...

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PS: Thanks Chris!😉
 
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Working on a forum members VHS…. No easy feat pulling DPDT switches out of this thing… had to go destucto mode on them to get them out… managed to not tear any padsView attachment 107962View attachment 107963View attachment 107964
Something went wrong after the box up.... Had it working fine on the auditorium... Drilled an enclosure for him,boxed it up, nice and pretty offboard wiring... fired it up and smelled the magic sauce brewing and all the leds went out in a glorious stench.... Double checked and all my wiring was correct...lol
 
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