Buddy's Bass Fuzz Project - A Blended Dirt Box

[Diynot]

A steak and a hamburger are both technically beef, but their preparation and consumption are typically different, so it is with bass and guitar. Thus sayeth the word of diynot.

 

[Feral Feline]

As mentioned before, the phuzz dawg bass blender would be good.

Also check out Charlie “Moosapotamus” Barth’s blender, based on the Brassmaster

Craig Anderton’s looper-blender is good, GPCB calls it the Paralooper; there are vero layouts for it if you snoop the usual places.


GGG has the Parallelizer


JMK’s panner etc is/are good


THCustoms has something o this ilk as does Schalltechnik.

VFE’s 3- channel might be overkill as would EHX’s simillar tri- channel splitter-looper.

 

[Diynot]

I have built a few iterations of the Bazz Fuss and I can honestly say it never really cut it for my bass fuzz needs. I typically used 1uf in/out caps and really you need like a 10uf to maintain bass. I typically went the Darlington pair (2x2n3904) route for the transistor. I also built the noise box using the aforementioned darlington into a single 3904 (probably not the best choice in standard gain stacking wisdom, but meh). It was really good at picking up radio stations. I tried a feedback loop with a pot to adjust to taste and it just sounded like crap. All that to say, the Bazz fuss is fun to tweak and play around with, but there are better options out there. My personal preference is the SUP Rhinosuar which is a Colorsound Bass Fuzz clone (yeah it’s a muff variant, but it kills) and the Obsidius. I built a PPCB Lamb Chop and didn’t hate it. If you want a looper, I always recommend Jubal81s Schooner circuit, I have had good luck with it. NucleonFX makes a variation that you can tweak the amount of clean signal boost.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Took another stab at the breadboard today. I'll consider this the mkII, but I'm going in a different direction than above. The blend portion will be separate from this.

This is a Hog's Foot booster (100n filter cap to ground removed) into a Bazz Fuss with variable gain into an active baxandall. I have a dpdt used to toggle whether just the booster or the fuzz goes to the tone control.

The Hog's Foot does its job, but it cuts out a lot of treble. If I want to try slap bass, I don't get that twang at all. I KINDA get it when I dial back the bass on my bass and max out the treble on the baxandall and bass itself, but I think that's a bit too much to do.

I either need to add more treble or cut more bottom end. Since the booster boosts everything thrown at it I'll start but cutting some bottom end.

 

[BuddytheReow]

As mentioned before, the phuzz dawg bass blender would be good.

Also check out Charlie “Moosapotamus” Barth’s blender, based on the Brassmaster

Craig Anderton’s looper-blender is good, GPCB calls it the Paralooper; there are vero layouts for it if you snoop the usual places.


GGG has the Parallelizer


JMK’s panner etc is/are good


THCustoms has something o this ilk as does Schalltechnik.

VFE’s 3- channel might be overkill as would EHX’s simillar tri- channel splitter-looper.

So, I tried the Brass Blender stripboard layout and was rather pleased with the result. I had some troubleshooting to do but was user error. I didn’t cut one of the tracks fully and hooked up one of the pot lugs to the incorrect hole. The wiring is kind of a mess and WAAAY too long, but I will trim it down when I decide to box this up. For those of you interested I hooked this up to my breadboard with the bazz fuss circuit to test the looper and works great.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Drilled out an enclosure this morning and dry fit the offboard components. One of the switches is misaligned which kind of bothers me, but considering this was all freehand (measured and hand drilled) I think I’ll just live with it. I’m just building this for me.

Next will be to shorten all the wiring.

 

[fig]

That looks great! What are you using to insulate the board from the enclosure?

 

[BuddytheReow]

That looks great! What are you using to insulate the board from the enclosure?

That depends. A lot of times with stripboard all the offwiring allows the board to float above the enclosure and I wouldn’t need anything. The alternative is a few layers of electrical tape

 

[mdc]

I like to use a couple of blobs of blue tack to hold the board down - it's secure but also easy to remove.

 

[Feral Feline]

Sugru, a mouldable glue-putty.

Comes in more colours than what's shown above, and black, white, grey, too.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Still working on offboard wiring, but progress has definitely been made. Weekend projects took up all my free time this weekend. I still need to figure out where to put the LED

 

[BuddytheReow]

The Moosapotamus Brass Blender. The wiring was a pain, but it works. What made it messy was the grounding and power to the led and circuit. Accidentally wired the tone control backwards but was a simple fix. I still need to put knobs on and paint it, but the hardware side is basically complete. First time putting in a yellow led and I kind of like it. Oh, and I didn’t even need to trim the BJTs!!!

 

[BuddytheReow]

Knobs and labeling added. Still undecided about the enclosure art

 

[BuddytheReow]

Been a while since I’ve worked on this, but had a collaboration with my wife about the enclosure art. I may paint over it and start over, but this is a pretty cool vibe for starters

 

[Harry Klippton]

Been a while since I’ve worked on this, but had a collaboration with my wife about the enclosure art. I may paint over it and start over, but this is a pretty cool vibe for starters

I like it for whatever that's worth

 

[BuddytheReow]

I like it for whatever that's worth

I like it too, but there are a couple of drips that happened that I may just paint over and re-splatter. It's just acrylic paint

 

[Harry Klippton]

Bruh that's a lot of loose pots in that bin

 

[BuddytheReow]

Yea, those are all my B-taper pots (both solder and PCB lugs). You never know when the moment will strike to whip out a breadboard or stripboard build. I know I have too many (who really needs 8-10 1M pots? lol)

 

[BuddytheReow]

Finally finished the enclosure. 3 coats of clear coat. Since this is more a utility box than a straight up effect this is either gonna be used all the time or not at all time will tell on this one. Either way this was a fun build.

BuddyTheReow