A pair of Sandspurs

DAJE

Well-known member
The Sandspur I made for myself got a fair bit of admiration, so I ended up making two more for some mates.

One of them is a psychedelic rocker, the other more of a glam rocker (70s pre-punk, not metal).

Sticker from AliExpress on one, leopard spot duct tape from ALDI on the other. I'm all about class.

I set the bias for 4.5V with the bias pot at mid point. That works for me on mine.

Interestingly, I tested most of the components beforehand to ensure that they're within spec, and they're all pretty close to each other... but the pedals sound slightly different. Leopard spot is louder and has a bit more top end, greeny-violet has more low end. That's probably a good match for the recipients anyway so it's no big deal, just... interesting.

Yellowy orange LED in the leopard, ultra violet LED in the other. UV from Tayda, I grabbed a few to try. I'm a bit wary of UV LEDs, as there's no way to be sure they're not putting out lots of invisible-to-humans light that could potentially be bad for you. Or me. But, realistically, they're probably pretty low on the list of things that might give you cancer someday. Probably. To my human eyes, the light is fairly dull (4.6K resistor, lower than I usually use) and sort of a mild bluey-violet. I'd ask some insects or birds what it looks like to creatures that can see in that wavelength, but I never get much sense out of them.
 

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I just ordered a sandspur pcb. The Si side of my Twin Face build always left me underwhelmed. I’m hoping tom perfect the Si fuzz face now.
 
I just ordered a sandspur pcb. The Si side of my Twin Face build always left me underwhelmed. I’m hoping tom perfect the Si fuzz face now.
BC108s work well in the Sandspur, I've found. As noted, the three I've made all sound slightly different but they're all good. Very much a raspy late 60s/early 70s sound. They clean up pretty well with the guitar volume too, I've found. Not as well as Ge, but still very usable.
 
BC108s work well in the Sandspur, I've found. As noted, the three I've made all sound slightly different but they're all good. Very much a raspy late 60s/early 70s sound. They clean up pretty well with the guitar volume too, I've found. Not as well as Ge, but still very usable.
Art looks great!! Nice work!! I don’t suppose you remember the BC108’s hfe of Q1 & Q2 that you went with?
 
Art looks great!! Nice work!! I don’t suppose you remember the BC108’s hfe of Q1 & Q2 that you went with?
Thanks. I bought a bag of BC108Bs from Tayda, the hFEs were all in the range of 315-330 but I didn't try to match them or anything.

The differences I noted above seem to have changed a bit after I readjusted the Bias trimmers, last time I checked the greeny-violet one was now the loudest.
 
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