Recent content by PedalBuilder

Personally, I prefer having the leads over a built-in slot. You will run into trouble if you keep hooking/unhooking them to transistors, but that's also not the optimal way to use the DCA55/75. I hook mine up to some of the longer breadboard jumper cables from Tayda, plug whatever I'm testing...

I’m curious about this. What would make one MP38A sound good but not the others if it isn’t the bias/hFE/leakage? Is it hfe? Collector-base capacitance? Something else?

Well, there goes my excuse for not building one.* *Yes, I know that you can just jumper it without any impact on the tone. But it looks cool, so I'm not building one without it.

The TY-141P used in the Duocast/Simulcast would be a good one.

I saw yours when I was doing my research before building mine—it's a very cool build. I think that the Chuck mod version might just be different enough to justify a second build, especially if you tweak the tone stack.

No, I think it was the thread from the Wish List forum that Chuck referenced. But the mods that he mentions are the same. Edit: Is the whole wish list subforum gone now?

Forgot to add the takeaway, so here it is. Despite its strong Muff ancestry, this sounds more like a Tone Bender than a Big Muff. There's some Muff-like (phase cancellation?) character from the tone stack, but the distortion tone and interaction with the volume knob are much more similar to the...

Another Tone Bender that is more of a Big Muff. Take the first two stages of a Colorsound Supa Tone Bender, add a third stage that is part Big Muff and part Tone Bender Mk. III (with a Zener diode rather than the customary 10k/10k voltage divider), stick a weird variant of a Big Muff Tone Stack...

You should be fine with any NPN germanium transistor with low-ish leakage and gain between 50 and 100. There's a bias trimmer for the emitter resistor, so it can accommodate a pretty wide range of transistors.

You might find this helpful.

What kind of tube screamer is that?

Despite the Tone Bender name, it's definitely a Big Muff. It's similar to some of the Ram's Head-era Big Muffs, but with a few differences. First and foremost, Q2 has no clipping diodes, which increases the output volume significantly and results in what sounds like heavily asymmetrical...

Is that the LT1054? I don't mind SMD, but those appear to be even more expensive—the SOIC-8 package is over $8 at Mouser and Digikey.

Have you tried adding a small capacitor (between 5pF and 20pF) between pins 2 and 7? According to the data sheet, that will increase the oscillator frequency. On a side note, the price for these things has really jumped. I bought a bunch of them in March 2023 for $1.85 each. It's not even three...

Thanks! They're my own designs and I don't have a website. The gerber file for the Hybrid Fuzz Driver Deluxe PCB is available here. If you're interested in any of my other PCBs, feel free to message me directly.