Ginsly
Well-known member
I have no no horse in the Big Muff 2 race, but if nothing else it reminded me that I've always wanted to try an IC-based Big Muff. I intend on picking up Robert's Dream Fuzz board just to build a straight-up clone of the recent-ish EHX reissues, but in the meantime I figured I'd work with stripboard and make a mess. It was also an opportunity to try the Pinecil USB iron someone gave me for the holidays. It's actually decent, but the standard Hakko has the edge for sure.
I breadboarded Aion's Corvus, which looks to be pretty faithful to the original other than an Analogguru modification to the Gain control structure and some different values here and there. Really not sure how much I would notice the difference either way, but I think a lot of Aion's tweaks are pretty well thought-out. I say this as someone who knows jack squat, so take that with a grain of salt. I also wanted to integrate the JHS diode mod, which replaces the second trio of Si diodes with a switch offering the original three diodes, no second set of diodes at all, or two LEDs. The two new settings give you moderate gating or strong gating. Pretty cool. I also added what is essentially the AMZ Presence control - another part of the JHS Pumpkin Patch mods.
I changed the Dirtbox Layouts arrangement quite a bit in that I added/replaced several components to match Aion's schematic, took out the Tone Bypass (didn't find it particularly interesting), added the Mids/Presence control, and set things up to swap half of the diodes. I opted for two Green LEDs for the "moderate gating" mode and a Yellow LED in place of the second trio of 1N4148s since the Vf was about the same. Couldn't tell the difference when breadboarding, and it fit well on the layout! At the last minute I tried two infrared LEDs in place of the single Yellow, so that's what you see in the pic. I'd just stick with Yellow next time.
Yes, the enclosure is severely unfinished and yes, it's a bit of a rat's nest. Cleaning flux? Pffffft. This was just an experiment, and I'm sure I'll build a prettier one in the future. Sounds great to me, though! I really, really like the Green LEDs - it just accentuates what I always liked about the sound of this thing. Very quick, crappy phone clip of a little desktop amp below. Better than nothin? Not sure.
Diode Switched to the LEDs for a little more crunch and gating.
I'm also including the modified version of the DBL layout if anyone wants to give it a go - by all means, fix what I got wrong! Ha... I noticed there's a section of the forum for Stripboard Layouts which is sadly empty... should I post this there..?
View attachment OpAmpMuffGinsly.mp3
I breadboarded Aion's Corvus, which looks to be pretty faithful to the original other than an Analogguru modification to the Gain control structure and some different values here and there. Really not sure how much I would notice the difference either way, but I think a lot of Aion's tweaks are pretty well thought-out. I say this as someone who knows jack squat, so take that with a grain of salt. I also wanted to integrate the JHS diode mod, which replaces the second trio of Si diodes with a switch offering the original three diodes, no second set of diodes at all, or two LEDs. The two new settings give you moderate gating or strong gating. Pretty cool. I also added what is essentially the AMZ Presence control - another part of the JHS Pumpkin Patch mods.
I changed the Dirtbox Layouts arrangement quite a bit in that I added/replaced several components to match Aion's schematic, took out the Tone Bypass (didn't find it particularly interesting), added the Mids/Presence control, and set things up to swap half of the diodes. I opted for two Green LEDs for the "moderate gating" mode and a Yellow LED in place of the second trio of 1N4148s since the Vf was about the same. Couldn't tell the difference when breadboarding, and it fit well on the layout! At the last minute I tried two infrared LEDs in place of the single Yellow, so that's what you see in the pic. I'd just stick with Yellow next time.
Yes, the enclosure is severely unfinished and yes, it's a bit of a rat's nest. Cleaning flux? Pffffft. This was just an experiment, and I'm sure I'll build a prettier one in the future. Sounds great to me, though! I really, really like the Green LEDs - it just accentuates what I always liked about the sound of this thing. Very quick, crappy phone clip of a little desktop amp below. Better than nothin? Not sure.
Diode Switched to the LEDs for a little more crunch and gating.I'm also including the modified version of the DBL layout if anyone wants to give it a go - by all means, fix what I got wrong! Ha... I noticed there's a section of the forum for Stripboard Layouts which is sadly empty... should I post this there..?
View attachment OpAmpMuffGinsly.mp3
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