This is my first official entry in the Player Hater’s Ball contest.
As I was rummaging through my stash, I realized I had everything I needed to populate this board.
Shout out to @drgonzo1969 for hooking me up with the pcb and faceplate, @szukalski for the layout, and @Chuck D. Bones for the design. Here’s the thread in the boneyard about this one:
For those who don’t know, part of the Player Hater’s Ball challenge is to only use what you have on hand. No buying extra parts to complete the build.
This came together quickly this morning. I had an enclosure pre-drilled for an Aion OD-3, which I did not have all the parts for. But I realized it was a perfect fit for the Texel PCB. It also happened to be a sort-of similar color to the faceplate and pcb. So I went extra with yellow wire and a yellow LED.
This thing rips. It can do flat and clean, and it can get quite distorted. For as simple as the controls are, there’s a lot versatility here.
I made a demo, but it may not do it justice- it’s just the phone mic.
As I was rummaging through my stash, I realized I had everything I needed to populate this board.
Shout out to @drgonzo1969 for hooking me up with the pcb and faceplate, @szukalski for the layout, and @Chuck D. Bones for the design. Here’s the thread in the boneyard about this one:
This one has been festering for a couple of weeks now. I finally landed on the right combination of gain, headroom and freq response. Many JFETs will work, but I had a pile of 2N5246's so I ended up using one of those. Voltages are marked in purple. These voltage yield the maximum clean headroom. The JFET I selected for Q1 has Vp = -1.4V. Q2's HFE is just over 100 and the leakage is 130μA. Use whatever NPN Ge you like. Q2's bias is very stable in this circuit. R6 can be tweaked to dial-in Q2's collector voltage. All caps are film except C2 is tantalum, C5 is silver-mica, C6 & C8...
- Chuck D. Bones
- Replies: 39
- Forum: Chucks Boneyard
For those who don’t know, part of the Player Hater’s Ball challenge is to only use what you have on hand. No buying extra parts to complete the build.
This came together quickly this morning. I had an enclosure pre-drilled for an Aion OD-3, which I did not have all the parts for. But I realized it was a perfect fit for the Texel PCB. It also happened to be a sort-of similar color to the faceplate and pcb. So I went extra with yellow wire and a yellow LED.
This thing rips. It can do flat and clean, and it can get quite distorted. For as simple as the controls are, there’s a lot versatility here.


I made a demo, but it may not do it justice- it’s just the phone mic.