MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
So I'm pretty "guitarded" out after a lot of sanding, wet sanding, buffing and wiring.
Back to pedals!!! Woohooo!
I've been waiting for a while for this board to drop. When it finally did I had to grab one. I also grabbed the ROG Thor but that's another story for another day
What interested me in this pedal is that it's a "Dumble" style pedal but not a Zen/YATS derivative but rather using 4 JFET cascading gain stages to emulate the tube stages.
You can read about it here. It sounds like an amalgamation of a bunch of different Dumble schematics floating around. It's got an interesting tone stack that's rooted in a Fender Bassman stack (the original "Dumble" was Robben Ford's Bassman that Dumble modded).
But it also doesn't behave like a Fender tone stack. The controls are kind of wierd. I don't have enough experience (as in zero) with a real Dumble so I don't know if this is how the amps behave but I'll take the word of the ROG dudes when they say that it does.
There's quite a bit of range in the mid control but not so much in the treble and bass controls. The mid control has a strong affect on the gain structure, more so than typical. What's really interesting is how interactive the 3 eq controls are. I've only scratched the surface of how this pedal works but long and short of it, is that is does sound more "ampy" than your typical "Dumble in a Box".
It's also got all the quirks you'll find in most Dumble type amps as well, which might turn some folks off. E.g., the bass can be farty and the trebs can be fatiguing.
Probably not the best fit for my new Tele but I was trying to kill two birds with one stone with the demo......
In some ways it reminds me of the Ei Shin "Dumbloid" in its open. ampy response. But it's a lot easier to dial up a decent sound on this pedal than the Dumbloid.
And schematically, the Umble has a lot more in common with the amp than the Dumbloid does.
I need to try it with my Eastman semi-hollow next to see if I can dial up some Robben Ford/Larry Carlton tones.
I have yet another Dumble-esque pedal in queue that I might build next to compare, that being the Scenario Preamp (Cornerstone Gladio SC).
The Gladio SC is supposed to be the "String Singer" or "clean-ish" side of the bigger Gladio. So it will be interesting to see how that sounds. I wasn't able to get that transparent "Cannonball Shuffle" tone out of the Umble, it's got too much gain and compression.
The build itself is super simple, fairly low component count and a breeze if you have real J201's or MMBFJ201's.
I used 4 random SMD J201's I just cut off the strip without testing. My experience with the MMBFJ201's is that they've been super consistent in specs that I don't even both checking them anymore.
There was no info I could find on any special biasing voltage targets so I biased all 4 Jfets to 1/2 of VCC (~4.3) I haven't messed with it anymore beyond that and unless there's a good reason to I probably won't. There's plenty of volume and plenty of gain on tap. A ton of volume and gain in fact.
Another interesting thing I found was that if you turn the gain all the way down it cuts the signal. You can see me doing that in the demo in fact, it was surprising to me.
Oh and what about those monstrosities of electrolytic caps? You may ask "Gee, Mike does it require 880uf caps???". Well no, those are plain old 47uf caps.
Another one of my "crap, why did I buy these again?" moments heh. Actually, I got them from Electronic Goldmine and they had the wrong size listed in the description, which is not too uncommon. They were on sale and I bought a crap ton of them. They were so cheap it wasn't worth the hassle of returning them.
Very few boards can accommodate those oil cans, but this was one of them. And I partially used them to goof @Guardians of the analog...... (only partially....)
Tayda Flat Violet enclosure with purple knobs.
The demo is another "twofer" demo. It's both a tone demo of my new Tele with the Wolfetone pickups and also of the pedal.
First half of the video is a walkthrough of the Tele tones and some crappy noodling. Second half is the pedal with some crappy noodling.
So the pickups are interesting. They are not what I expected. I've been pretty much exclusively using Lollars for my Strats and Teles for many years and I guess my ears are calibrated to them.
Something different is not a bad thing and these are different for sure. I was playing all afternoon trying to get a feel for them and whether or not I like them.
They weren't a "knock your socks off" experience like the first time I installed a set of Lollar single coils in a guitar. There's something really special about Jason Lollar's Strat and Tele pickups that don't carry over to his hum buckers. I have a set of his Imperial hum buckers and while they're good, they don't have me skipping on clouds they way Wolfe Macleod's humbuckers do. Conversely, Wolfe's take on Tele pickups is different. The neck pickup kind of reminds me of a Fender "Twisted Tele" neck pickup in that it almost sounds like a Strat neck pickup. Not completely but it's got that vibe. This is not a bad thing, Tele neck pickups can be a bit boring sometimes. The bridge pickup is a higher output single coil (hence the name "Rabid Bitch"). According to Wolfe the tone template for this pickup was the old Broadcaster and Nocaster pickups but wound to about 10k. So it can get pretty raunchy but there's no ice-picky trebles.
Compared to the Lollar "Special T" bridge that I typically use, it's got more twang and less mid-range. The Lollar Special T has an almost P90-ish feel to them, part of the reason I love them for Strats and Teles.
The Wolfie's by contrast sound more "stringy" for lack of a better term. Like a new set of strings (which I DID put on today hahaha).
With only a few hours of playing them under the belt, I'm finding that I like them with certain dirt pedals but not others.
In the demo before I turn on the Umble, as I'm going through the Tele tones, I'm turning on first the SnozzBerry drive (Strawberry Red OD, man I love that thing)
and then the Acer Drive. I think those two pedals sound particularly good with the Wolfetone neck pickup.
I dunno, you guys tell me what you think of them. I'm still a bit on the fence but leaning pretty heavily towards the side of keeping them in. It's a different sound than I'm used to but with all the guitars I have, variety is a good thing
Oh and one thing I failed to mention in my Tele Build thread (I'll fix that in a minute) , I installed my recently discovered favorite treble bleed. It's a 680pf Silver Mica cap with a 150k Carbon Comp resistor in parallel. I found this from John Suhr's wiring schematic and it's probably the best sounding treble bleed values I've tried yet. It doesn't mess with the pot taper and the way it lets the highs bleed through when turning down is really very natural sounding. Same tone, just lower volume.
It's pretty cool. Works well for both humbucker and single coils. I've tried this with both Ceramic (MLCC) and Silver Mica and the Silver mica in this case does indeed make an audible difference in how the circuit works.
The tone cap is a Russian PIO .015uf cap.
Back to pedals!!! Woohooo!
I've been waiting for a while for this board to drop. When it finally did I had to grab one. I also grabbed the ROG Thor but that's another story for another day
What interested me in this pedal is that it's a "Dumble" style pedal but not a Zen/YATS derivative but rather using 4 JFET cascading gain stages to emulate the tube stages.
You can read about it here. It sounds like an amalgamation of a bunch of different Dumble schematics floating around. It's got an interesting tone stack that's rooted in a Fender Bassman stack (the original "Dumble" was Robben Ford's Bassman that Dumble modded).
But it also doesn't behave like a Fender tone stack. The controls are kind of wierd. I don't have enough experience (as in zero) with a real Dumble so I don't know if this is how the amps behave but I'll take the word of the ROG dudes when they say that it does.
There's quite a bit of range in the mid control but not so much in the treble and bass controls. The mid control has a strong affect on the gain structure, more so than typical. What's really interesting is how interactive the 3 eq controls are. I've only scratched the surface of how this pedal works but long and short of it, is that is does sound more "ampy" than your typical "Dumble in a Box".
It's also got all the quirks you'll find in most Dumble type amps as well, which might turn some folks off. E.g., the bass can be farty and the trebs can be fatiguing.
Probably not the best fit for my new Tele but I was trying to kill two birds with one stone with the demo.....
.In some ways it reminds me of the Ei Shin "Dumbloid" in its open. ampy response. But it's a lot easier to dial up a decent sound on this pedal than the Dumbloid.
And schematically, the Umble has a lot more in common with the amp than the Dumbloid does.
I need to try it with my Eastman semi-hollow next to see if I can dial up some Robben Ford/Larry Carlton tones.
I have yet another Dumble-esque pedal in queue that I might build next to compare, that being the Scenario Preamp (Cornerstone Gladio SC).
The Gladio SC is supposed to be the "String Singer" or "clean-ish" side of the bigger Gladio. So it will be interesting to see how that sounds. I wasn't able to get that transparent "Cannonball Shuffle" tone out of the Umble, it's got too much gain and compression.
The build itself is super simple, fairly low component count and a breeze if you have real J201's or MMBFJ201's.
I used 4 random SMD J201's I just cut off the strip without testing. My experience with the MMBFJ201's is that they've been super consistent in specs that I don't even both checking them anymore.
There was no info I could find on any special biasing voltage targets so I biased all 4 Jfets to 1/2 of VCC (~4.3) I haven't messed with it anymore beyond that and unless there's a good reason to I probably won't. There's plenty of volume and plenty of gain on tap. A ton of volume and gain in fact.
Another interesting thing I found was that if you turn the gain all the way down it cuts the signal. You can see me doing that in the demo in fact, it was surprising to me.
Oh and what about those monstrosities of electrolytic caps? You may ask "Gee, Mike does it require 880uf caps???". Well no, those are plain old 47uf caps.
Another one of my "crap, why did I buy these again?" moments heh. Actually, I got them from Electronic Goldmine and they had the wrong size listed in the description, which is not too uncommon. They were on sale and I bought a crap ton of them. They were so cheap it wasn't worth the hassle of returning them.
Very few boards can accommodate those oil cans, but this was one of them. And I partially used them to goof @Guardians of the analog......
(only partially....)Tayda Flat Violet enclosure with purple knobs.
The demo is another "twofer" demo. It's both a tone demo of my new Tele with the Wolfetone pickups and also of the pedal.
First half of the video is a walkthrough of the Tele tones and some crappy noodling. Second half is the pedal with some crappy noodling.
So the pickups are interesting. They are not what I expected. I've been pretty much exclusively using Lollars for my Strats and Teles for many years and I guess my ears are calibrated to them.
Something different is not a bad thing and these are different for sure. I was playing all afternoon trying to get a feel for them and whether or not I like them.
They weren't a "knock your socks off" experience like the first time I installed a set of Lollar single coils in a guitar. There's something really special about Jason Lollar's Strat and Tele pickups that don't carry over to his hum buckers. I have a set of his Imperial hum buckers and while they're good, they don't have me skipping on clouds they way Wolfe Macleod's humbuckers do. Conversely, Wolfe's take on Tele pickups is different. The neck pickup kind of reminds me of a Fender "Twisted Tele" neck pickup in that it almost sounds like a Strat neck pickup. Not completely but it's got that vibe. This is not a bad thing, Tele neck pickups can be a bit boring sometimes. The bridge pickup is a higher output single coil (hence the name "Rabid Bitch"). According to Wolfe the tone template for this pickup was the old Broadcaster and Nocaster pickups but wound to about 10k. So it can get pretty raunchy but there's no ice-picky trebles.
Compared to the Lollar "Special T" bridge that I typically use, it's got more twang and less mid-range. The Lollar Special T has an almost P90-ish feel to them, part of the reason I love them for Strats and Teles.
The Wolfie's by contrast sound more "stringy" for lack of a better term. Like a new set of strings (which I DID put on today hahaha).
With only a few hours of playing them under the belt, I'm finding that I like them with certain dirt pedals but not others.
In the demo before I turn on the Umble, as I'm going through the Tele tones, I'm turning on first the SnozzBerry drive (Strawberry Red OD, man I love that thing)
and then the Acer Drive. I think those two pedals sound particularly good with the Wolfetone neck pickup.
I dunno, you guys tell me what you think of them. I'm still a bit on the fence but leaning pretty heavily towards the side of keeping them in. It's a different sound than I'm used to but with all the guitars I have, variety is a good thing
Oh and one thing I failed to mention in my Tele Build thread (I'll fix that in a minute) , I installed my recently discovered favorite treble bleed. It's a 680pf Silver Mica cap with a 150k Carbon Comp resistor in parallel. I found this from John Suhr's wiring schematic and it's probably the best sounding treble bleed values I've tried yet. It doesn't mess with the pot taper and the way it lets the highs bleed through when turning down is really very natural sounding. Same tone, just lower volume.
It's pretty cool. Works well for both humbucker and single coils. I've tried this with both Ceramic (MLCC) and Silver Mica and the Silver mica in this case does indeed make an audible difference in how the circuit works.
The tone cap is a Russian PIO .015uf cap.
I'm watching the demo now
