pingpongcomputer
Well-known member
The Muffinator build went great, violet ram's head specs with Fairchild SE4010's and a tone bypass outlined by @Feral Feline here. Straightforward build, the guide for the tone bypass was great, all I did was lower the value of the bypass resistor to give a volume boost with the tone bypass, which I now wish I had done as a footswitch instead of toggle, I plan to go back and change that to act as a tone bypass/boost. The tone stack components aren't difficult to mount directly to the pot and fit under the board. Tons of gain from the 4010's, sounds amazing blasting my Matamp. It stacks ok with some other gain pedals and not so much with others, I'm pretty new to pedal stuff so probably user error where it doesn't work well. With both clipping diodes flipped to GE there's a nice octave up overtone to the fuzz. I used NOS ITT 1n34a's from this ebay seller, $2 a pop but all the GE diodes are getting expensive, so I grabbed a handful for special projects. My new favorite fuzz, but also my newest fuzz and those usually go hand in hand, ymmv. My only gripe is the UV print has horizontal lines running through, I did CMYK but maybe I picked colors the printer didn't like? Stable diffusion as always for graphics generation, then laid out in Illustrator. I didn't pay for paint masking but Tayda did it anyway, which was a nice accident.
Here's the messy guts:
The EAE Beholder build was fun, pretty straight forward again. I followed the build doc's outline for a clean blend pot and socketed the fuzz transistors but ended up liking the stock 2n2222a best. I had to flip the belton brick and smash it in next to the footswitches in order to fit the clean blend pot where I wanted it, but it worked out. The only tweak I might do is to go back and try GE clipping diodes to see if I can get that octave overtone. I wish I'd socketed the diodes to experiment, but I can pull out the cheapo Tayda 1n4148's without crying over the cost. The Beholder in stock form really is a noise machine, but with the clean blend it makes a really nice reverb for heavy stoner/doomy stuff. I'm still figuring out the interaction of all the controls, but I've gotten useable sound out of it already and had some fun in full wet mode reliving my 20's as a horrible noise maker. Back then I did everything with a bass, a laptop, a Rat, and a Space Echo, really wish I'd kept the RE-201 but I was always broke and bills had to be paid, many records and music gears were sacrificed. It's much more fun playing with a guitar and a bunch of DIY pedals in my "office" than it was playing for a crowd of 12 like-minded nerds in a basement/bar anyway. If you like Belton brick reverb and noisy heavy stuff I tihnk it's a worthwhile build. I decided to do a chaotic/abstract DnD Beholder for the graphics in SD and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.
Here's the messy guts:
The EAE Beholder build was fun, pretty straight forward again. I followed the build doc's outline for a clean blend pot and socketed the fuzz transistors but ended up liking the stock 2n2222a best. I had to flip the belton brick and smash it in next to the footswitches in order to fit the clean blend pot where I wanted it, but it worked out. The only tweak I might do is to go back and try GE clipping diodes to see if I can get that octave overtone. I wish I'd socketed the diodes to experiment, but I can pull out the cheapo Tayda 1n4148's without crying over the cost. The Beholder in stock form really is a noise machine, but with the clean blend it makes a really nice reverb for heavy stoner/doomy stuff. I'm still figuring out the interaction of all the controls, but I've gotten useable sound out of it already and had some fun in full wet mode reliving my 20's as a horrible noise maker. Back then I did everything with a bass, a laptop, a Rat, and a Space Echo, really wish I'd kept the RE-201 but I was always broke and bills had to be paid, many records and music gears were sacrificed. It's much more fun playing with a guitar and a bunch of DIY pedals in my "office" than it was playing for a crowd of 12 like-minded nerds in a basement/bar anyway. If you like Belton brick reverb and noisy heavy stuff I tihnk it's a worthwhile build. I decided to do a chaotic/abstract DnD Beholder for the graphics in SD and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.
