rwl
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is a report on my build on the Escobedo "Jawari Fuzz" circuit. I laid this out myself. I guess I'm a sucker for novelty pedals that make a guitar sound like other instruments (Chalumeau, Trumpeter, etc) and I was interested in giving this one a shot. I've made the gerber files for the PCB available here if you'd like to build your own.
Inspiration
The name for this pedal, the Gray Hornbill Fuzz, was selected because the Indian Gray Hornbill is a distinctive bird from India. I was lucky enough to see one while visiting. It's an absolutely wild bird that looks a cross between a small dinosaur and a toucan. There's a bunch of hornbills out there and I felt like it would be cool to make a pedal based on one.
I came to this pedal with a very specific concept in mind, which is that I wanted the pedal to look like the Indian flag (orange, white and green top to bottom), with a bird in the middle. Hence the background with the sunset and fog. I'm very happy with the result, which is about as good as I could have hoped to match my vision. In the end it's not my favorite design but I thought the idea was clever and the bird is fun. It's also nice working on a pedal with fewer than three knobs, since it gives a lot more space to work with.
The Build
It's a very simple circuit with just a few parts. I guess Escobedo calls it a circuit fragment. There's onlt a few components to populate.
The circuit (fragment) itself is relatively quiet and barely has unity gain with the volume maxed out. I didn't like how quiet it got, so I jammed a Szukalski@ Uggsy Boost into it (a Dylan159 design). I stuck a trimpot onto the Uggsy rather than a regular pot, and fiddled with the settings until I found the right volume, then wrapped the trimpot with electrical tape to prevent shorts. This was before I got heatshrink and I could definitely make it neater, but it works...
I'd like to update the board to add an onboard boost to the circuit, rather than relying on a separate board. It's on my to-do list
.
The Pedal
The Jawari is supposed to sound vaguely like a sitar, and it does - particularly on the D and G strings, between frets 0 and 12. Above 12 it has more of an octave fuzz feel. Elsewhere on the neck, it's a serviceable fuzz. You'll want to play around with the tone, volume, and pickups on your guitar and the pedal. I think also it does better with humbuckers than single coils. It's fun to play some of the sitar bits of Beatles songs (e.g. Within You, Without You).
The circuit has a pinched, nasally, somewhat brassy sound that does sound plausibly like a sitar to my ears, though without the sympathetic strings. It's similar to the Shin-Ei/Shiny Cowbird and maybe a bit like the Trumpeter on some settings. Part of the pinching seems to really hamper sustain, so the notes have a clipped/compressed sound.
Unlike the Trumpeter, I think this circuit is mostly a novelty, while the Trumpeter is a legitimately good fuzz on its own that can also do brassy tones. So this one gets three stars.
Build rating: 5/5
Pedal rating: 3/5
Inspiration
The name for this pedal, the Gray Hornbill Fuzz, was selected because the Indian Gray Hornbill is a distinctive bird from India. I was lucky enough to see one while visiting. It's an absolutely wild bird that looks a cross between a small dinosaur and a toucan. There's a bunch of hornbills out there and I felt like it would be cool to make a pedal based on one.
I came to this pedal with a very specific concept in mind, which is that I wanted the pedal to look like the Indian flag (orange, white and green top to bottom), with a bird in the middle. Hence the background with the sunset and fog. I'm very happy with the result, which is about as good as I could have hoped to match my vision. In the end it's not my favorite design but I thought the idea was clever and the bird is fun. It's also nice working on a pedal with fewer than three knobs, since it gives a lot more space to work with.
The Build
It's a very simple circuit with just a few parts. I guess Escobedo calls it a circuit fragment. There's onlt a few components to populate.
The circuit (fragment) itself is relatively quiet and barely has unity gain with the volume maxed out. I didn't like how quiet it got, so I jammed a Szukalski@ Uggsy Boost into it (a Dylan159 design). I stuck a trimpot onto the Uggsy rather than a regular pot, and fiddled with the settings until I found the right volume, then wrapped the trimpot with electrical tape to prevent shorts. This was before I got heatshrink and I could definitely make it neater, but it works...
I'd like to update the board to add an onboard boost to the circuit, rather than relying on a separate board. It's on my to-do list
.The Pedal
The Jawari is supposed to sound vaguely like a sitar, and it does - particularly on the D and G strings, between frets 0 and 12. Above 12 it has more of an octave fuzz feel. Elsewhere on the neck, it's a serviceable fuzz. You'll want to play around with the tone, volume, and pickups on your guitar and the pedal. I think also it does better with humbuckers than single coils. It's fun to play some of the sitar bits of Beatles songs (e.g. Within You, Without You).
The circuit has a pinched, nasally, somewhat brassy sound that does sound plausibly like a sitar to my ears, though without the sympathetic strings. It's similar to the Shin-Ei/Shiny Cowbird and maybe a bit like the Trumpeter on some settings. Part of the pinching seems to really hamper sustain, so the notes have a clipped/compressed sound.
Unlike the Trumpeter, I think this circuit is mostly a novelty, while the Trumpeter is a legitimately good fuzz on its own that can also do brassy tones. So this one gets three stars.
Build rating: 5/5
Pedal rating: 3/5
