Recent content by PedalBuilder

Not going to lie, this thread was what pushed me into designing my own PCBs. It's a treasure trove of inspiring builds and solid insights into designing audio PCBs.

Correct, D102 helps set the cutoff voltage, which is ~1.5v above the diode's zener voltage (precisely how far above the zener voltage is dependent on the VGS(threshold) of the mosfets that you are using). So using an 8.2v zener for D102 would set the cutoff voltage at 9.8v, and a 9.1v zener...

I agree with you that the end user is ultimately responsible for taking care of their pedal, and that if they fry the pedal by using the wrong power supply, it’s 100% on them. At the same time, I think builders should consider mitigating risks like users connecting the wrong power supplies, and...

With modern power supplies, it's gotten very easy to accidentally feed well over 9 volts into your pedals. Take the popular Cioks power supplies, for example. They use a slightly recessed pair dip switches on the top of the device to set the voltage for each tap. It's not too difficult to...

That's a nice and elegant approach. On any of my builds that use voltage-sensitive components like a LT1054 or certain germanium transistors, I use include this circuit, which handles reverse polarity protection and over-voltage protection. And as a bonus, it has almost no current draw or...

100%. I never build a fuzz without breadboarding and tweaking it first. That’s at least half the fun!

If you go with the Chuck values, you should also go with the Soviet germaniums. They sound just as good as their western counterparts and they cost a fraction of the price.

Try a few of the the Chuck Bones modifications! Among other things, the mods include using lower gain Soviet MP38 transistors, which are cheap and easy to source from sellers in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The similarly cheap and available MP35 would just as well, too.

Correct. Matching the transistors in the differential pair (I like to match on both hFE and Vbe) is essential to getting a strong octave effect. Using low Vf diodes will increase compression and distortion, which makes the octave seem more pronounced. I breadboarded the circuit a while back and...

D9B (or any other D9x diode) should work fine. If you want a more pronounced octave, use lower vf diodes for D2 and D3 (the hard clipping diodes). This is also the case for the Super Fuzz and other octave fuzzes that use hard clipping diodes.

I know I say this every time I see one of your builds, but this one looks so good inside and out. Lots of nice touches, like the metal lettering on the PCBs and using heat shrink to keep the footswitch leads tidy. You also did a really nice job matching the print corner radii curves to the...

Have you looked at using a P-channel mosfet for reverse polarity protection instead? It has virtually no voltage drop. The downside is that it uses three components instead of one, but it avoids the issues that you get when a parallel diode starts conducting.

The fuzz certainly sounds different, but some people (including me) like the sound of a Rangemaster into a fuzz. Give it a try and see what you think.

Are you using both at once? If so, put the Rangefinder first. Otherwise it doesn't matter if they're both true bypass.

Not to go too far off topic, but I'm not convinced that the G2 actually uses germanium diodes: If Cornish really is using germanium diodes, then he's either found a particular manufacturer/model of germanium diodes that consistently has leakage that's an order of magnitude lower than anything...