COMPLETE Catalinbread Anticthon

Bricksnbeatles

Bricksnbeatles

Member known well
Is it a fuzz? Is it a tremolo? Is it a seagull? Is it a hyena?

Whatever it is, I want one, and you want one too. And who wants to buy one for MONEY, when they can build one for LESS MONEY‽‽‽

I think I had this in the old wishlist, but I forgot to bring it back, so here it is. If my words haven’t swayed you to upvote, maybe Andy’s dulcet ad-copy and raucous string-singing sans-plectra will persuade you. You love it. You need it. You bleed it. Yeah, it turns you on. But hold tight— You’re not a Highway Star, and you’ll never be one until you build your very own Anticthon. Be a Highway Star* by voting YES for this unit.


*this pedal has absolutely no relation to Deep Purple. It’s way cooler than anything that associates with that Uriah Heep ripoff could ever hope to be ;)
 
Upvote 20
spi said:
Did you ever get around to trying it?
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I sure did! No, wait, I did not. I tried 3 different transistors, but not the 2N5401 recommended for the Antithesis silicon. Someone should try that one. I'll order one and try it out.

TL;DR: I preferred silicons; it sounded more like the Andy demo with the silicons I tried. Your milage will certainly vary.

1.) First I tried a 2n2904 silicon, 108hFE. Loads of fun at various settings, but the gravity knob could never go above ¼ turn without it sputtering and ticking. That seemed “wrong;” I expected germanium would be better. But I eventually learned, there is no wrong transistor. Or possibly: they're all wrong, depending on your aural proclivities. This reality of low-gravity-knob-setting-required would persist with every transistor variation I tried. It was only with attempt #3 that I coil-tapped my humbuckers for more range. It's easy to overwhelm this thing with signal.

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Then Jwin615 said (I quote,) “I'll ship you a couple of transistors,” but instead he said me the absolute motherlode of vintage transistors and diodes, for which I'll forever be grateful. At this point, I had some real germanium options.

2.) So next, I tried a 1T308A, around 35 hFE, near-zero leakage.
Surprisingly, that was not necessarily an improvement unless you wanted a spitty, harsh, glitch machine that's closer to an unstable fuzz foundry with batshit oscillations. Many of the settings were only self-noise and no guitar tone. There was one magical, gnarly fuzz tone with some high end hash that sounded like nothing I've ever heard before. It was delightful and persisted over a wide range of settings. The noise seemed to emanate from behind my head. It caused me to look around the room for the source. It was separate from the guitar frequency but sang in tandem with my notes. With this setting, I could have shown up in the midst of Half Machine Lip Moves and looked like I belonged there. I would keep the germanium for this setting alone if I weren't able to recreate it in a narrow band of the Space knob with transistor #3. Crucial note: no setting produced a tremolo effect with this transistor. That's more wrong, or possibly more right, depending on your kink tolerance.

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3.) I settled on a 2n3905, 145 hFE. All the tricks are available: tremolo, otherworldly fuzz, porpoise, opossum, etc. I blissed out for 90 minutes trying every setting and decided to box it up and declare it great.

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Now I want to build another to try some more transistors.

Here's what I discovered: there are no reproducible settings; only discoveries. Switching pickups can change everything. Coil tap can change everything. Phase switch also equals different sounds. That trick where Andy rolls down the volume and the dolphins start chirping? I could do with my tone knob as well, ISYN.

I owe you guys an audio demo, if I can pull it off.
 
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☝️Here's a solid case for a hockey-puck socket.

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benny_profane said:
@Robert what’re your thoughts behind the development of this circuit? Is this a breadboard error that was put into production?
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My guess is that they just tried to fuzz-factory-ize the harmonic percolator since they were already having success with it as the Karma Sutra. The Space and Gravity pots are pretty much exactly the same as the Fuzz Factory’s Stability and Gate controls. A coincidence that they have the same initials? I don’t think so
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
My guess is that they just tried to fuzz-factory-ize the harmonic percolator since they were already having success with it as the Karma Sutra. The Space and Gravity pots are pretty much exactly the same as the Fuzz Factory’s Stability and Gate controls. A coincidence that they have the same initials? I don’t think so
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All very good points. I’ve never built or bread boarded a FF. Does that circuit have the same tremolo effect and tunable oscillation?
 
benny_profane said:
All very good points. I’ve never built or bread boarded a FF. Does that circuit have the same tremolo effect and tunable oscillation?
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Somewhat tunable oscillation, yes I think so (and oscillation in general is one of the more famous things it does, of course). I don't remember ever having a tremolo effect but that's possible. I'd suggest building one, it's a pretty simple circuit (well, it's a fuzz face with extra pots) and quite fun to play around with. The controls do work in somewhat complicated ways though, since they affect each other quite a bit.
 
The FF is one of the best, if you've never used one you should definitely give it a shot. I've never gotten "tremolo" but there is a wide range of oscillation noises, and it nails the ripping velcro thing.

One of my favorite settings is when it's dialed in just on the verge of being gated so even the slightest touch of the strings gives geiger counter/cb radio squelch style noise as it releases and gates.

....

This one though? ... eh... not really my thing.

Just kinda sounds broken to me. :ROFLMAO:
 
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