Silver Blues
Well-known member
- Build Rating
The newest kid on my block is another lovely Darkglass clone from Aion, this time the Binary fuzz, based on the Duality Fuzz Engine. I really like my Maelstrom, so I was excited to give this one a try:
It took me a while to settle on an aesthetic for this build, and I went with a bit of a strange choice that ended up looking really great. The enclosure is the September special run colour from LMS, "Golden Glitter". Given the nature of this effect and the imagery it invokes, the artwork naturally features our old friend Janus. This piece was something I found on a random PNG site, perfect for this project, that I vectorized and edited a bit to give the result you see here. I went with oxblood graphics and actual Davies 1400s to go with the gold base, which works surprisingly well, and I'm really happy with how it turned out (another masterpiece by Spencer from Amplifyfun). The text is rendered in the font Dumbledor 1. The footswitch is an LMS Pro 3PDT as usual for me in builds that call for one, and the LED is red.
This build went very smoothly IMO, but I am giving it four stars a) because of the shitty 3PDT breakout board and b) because pin 3 of the Blend pot is unacceptably close to so many other things. I use a smaller-than-stock tip on my Hakko 888D and this, I'm convinced, is the only reason all the surrounding components escaped damage.
So how does it sound? I haven't had a ton of time with this yet but am already enjoying it. First thing to note is that there is no gain control, so I hope you like Fuzz because that's what you are getting
The left side of the Duality control is a CMOS-based fuzzstortion that sounds like a nastier version of the Maelstrom/B3K, and the right side is a glitchy, angular fuzz with an unusual comparator-based topology that has a very unique sound. Either side alone sounds great, but as usual, the magic is in the middle. There are so many usable and textured fuzz tones to be had all over the Duality knob, which are broadened exponentially by blending in different amounts of your clean signal. Although the tone at all noon was nice, it didn't impress me quite as much as the Maelstrom did using the same settings, but it didn't take long to find several tones I liked. I built the Filter control stock (as a 5 kHz shelving filter, not the 1 kHz mid boost/cut that's detailed in the build doc as a potential mod) but at the moment I'm finding myself always keeping to the right side of the control (less high cut), so I'm kind of curious as to what the mid-control-version sounds like. I don't think I'll bother doing it to this build, but I feel like this would be a really useful thing to make switchable.
It took me a while to settle on an aesthetic for this build, and I went with a bit of a strange choice that ended up looking really great. The enclosure is the September special run colour from LMS, "Golden Glitter". Given the nature of this effect and the imagery it invokes, the artwork naturally features our old friend Janus. This piece was something I found on a random PNG site, perfect for this project, that I vectorized and edited a bit to give the result you see here. I went with oxblood graphics and actual Davies 1400s to go with the gold base, which works surprisingly well, and I'm really happy with how it turned out (another masterpiece by Spencer from Amplifyfun). The text is rendered in the font Dumbledor 1. The footswitch is an LMS Pro 3PDT as usual for me in builds that call for one, and the LED is red.
This build went very smoothly IMO, but I am giving it four stars a) because of the shitty 3PDT breakout board and b) because pin 3 of the Blend pot is unacceptably close to so many other things. I use a smaller-than-stock tip on my Hakko 888D and this, I'm convinced, is the only reason all the surrounding components escaped damage.
So how does it sound? I haven't had a ton of time with this yet but am already enjoying it. First thing to note is that there is no gain control, so I hope you like Fuzz because that's what you are getting
The left side of the Duality control is a CMOS-based fuzzstortion that sounds like a nastier version of the Maelstrom/B3K, and the right side is a glitchy, angular fuzz with an unusual comparator-based topology that has a very unique sound. Either side alone sounds great, but as usual, the magic is in the middle. There are so many usable and textured fuzz tones to be had all over the Duality knob, which are broadened exponentially by blending in different amounts of your clean signal. Although the tone at all noon was nice, it didn't impress me quite as much as the Maelstrom did using the same settings, but it didn't take long to find several tones I liked. I built the Filter control stock (as a 5 kHz shelving filter, not the 1 kHz mid boost/cut that's detailed in the build doc as a potential mod) but at the moment I'm finding myself always keeping to the right side of the control (less high cut), so I'm kind of curious as to what the mid-control-version sounds like. I don't think I'll bother doing it to this build, but I feel like this would be a really useful thing to make switchable.
