Corduroy Fuzz

[Erik S]

Corduroy / Wampler Velvet Fuzz.

I was excited to play with my new hot air station, so I went with SMD J201s. Worked out okay, but definitely a challenge applying a small enough amount of solder paste for those tiny pads, and placing them with tweezers. Biased all three to 4.5v, and it sounds pretty good, so I didn't bother to go back and tweak them by ear.

A rare complaint for a PPCB board, but I didn't love this layout. The upside down three knob layout is weird, the lower pots were tricky to solder without melting the caps, and I ended up bending the upper pot out of the way to solder the upper ground and power wires. It always freaks me out a little when I see pics in troubleshooting threads with all the pots bent up off the board. I hated doing that, but it was better than desoldering it.

On the plus side, I like the sounds. This is my second JFET drive in a row, and I still have the GPCB Sabotage on my board, so I spent some time A/B testing the two. They have similar harmonic character, but the Sabotage is brighter, and the Corduroy is more open sounding, and has a lot more range. I much prefer the tight setting.

 

[Robert]

Can't win em all I guess.

I agree about the control layout being a bit strange, it was a nod to the original and somewhat helped with trace routing.

As far as soldering goes, I usually solder pots from the bottom side of the board so tight spaced components aren't an issue. (and wires from the top)

Nice work with the new hot air station! I have one but really don't use it much for soldering. I've used it to remove SMD components, but rarely to install them. It's mostly been relegated to goop removal and heat shrink jobs.

 

[eh là bas ma]

Surely you're aware that there is an easy mod to bypass the fuzz section and access the plexi circuit on its own ?

Bypassing fuzz part in corduroy fuzz

Hello folks, Does somebody know how to add a bypass to the fuzz part of the corduroy ? Since the Velvet fuzz is a plexidrive with an added fuzz circuitry it would give a killer 2 in 1 effect (cranked plexi/plexi with a stacked in fuzz). Would it be possible without major gain/volume drop ?

forum.pedalpcb.com

I'd say it's a good mod, can be useful, and give a larger range of sounds to this circuit.

Increasing the Bright knob value will also allow more brightness. It felt a bit dark to me with the standard pot value.

 

[Erik S]

Can't win em all I guess.

Technically there was enough room to solder those pots from the top, I just had to be a little extra careful, and I could have avoided the issue with the upper wiring if I had planned my order of operations better. That knob layout is tough though. I auditioned a ridiculous number of knobs because it just never looked right.

Don't worry, you're still my favorite.

 

[Erik S]

Surely you're aware that there is an easy mod

I did a pretty thorough forum search before I put this one together, so I did see that post, but I'm usually inclined to try things out stock first unless there's a clear consensus that there's some kind of error with a design.

I do agree it's a bit on the dark side, but not enough to motivate me to pull it back apart. If I build another one at some point I'd be interested to try that pot-sub.