mkstewartesq
Well-known member
- Build Rating
OK, so I kept hearing people say in threads about various pedals that “it’s just a Timmy with some mods“ but I never had any idea what a Timmy was. Since it seemed like a ubiquitous circuit, I decided to investigate further. Once I found out it was a transparent drive and heard some demos, I was sold because, while I do still love me some high gain sounds, my main style of playing is more clean or low gain.
Then it was down the rabbit hole of Timmy versions and variants. I decided that for my first Timmy circuit, I would rather do something more faithful to the Paul Cochrane versions and so will build something like the Cast Iron Overdrive later. Of the various Cochrane Timmy pedals, I quickly decided that I actually preferred the sound of the Tim the best, as it seemed just a bit more open than the Timmy when I heard them compared side-by-side.
If you don’t know, the Tim is a larger format version of the Timmy that added a boost function and an effects loop. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anyone offering a board for the Tim. Luckily, our very own @HamishR previously traced the Tim and generously shared his layout in this forum in a couple of threads, although I had never seen anyone report back that they had actually built one. His layout replicates all of the functions of the Tim except for the effects loop, which is fine because I don’t see myself ever using that functionality. So we were off to the races.
The build: HamishR’s layout was very well thought-out, straightforward and compact. Because the Tim has six knobs and I’ve become incredibly weary of wiring up pots for strip board builds only to find that I don’t like the sound or the build was unsuccessful (and because almost all of my pots or PCB mounted, it’s an extra pain in the ass to wire them up to the PCB-style lugs) I took this opportunity to build out and test a small breakout board for temporarily hooking pots up to a build for testing. It worked like a charm. I wrote about it and showed some pictures over in The Toolbox and won’t bore anyone further with it here.
The original pedal HamishR traced used a 4559 as the main opamp – since I didn’t have any of those, HamishR recommended trying a 4558, TL072 and some others. I eventually settled on the TL072 as it seemed to be just a little bit sweeter than the others. But the difference is slight and I’m sure several opamps will get you to the same place with this.
(Yeah, I know there’s a lot of excess wire but there was a ton of wiring involved with all the pots and switches and I always like to leave myself a ton of wiggle room. When wiring, I try to leave enough wire so that I could continue soldering if someone took the other end of the wires on a plane and I had to keep soldering the box while chasing the plane down in the runway. (Yes, I do enjoy picking up Somali radio stations on my pedal, why do you ask?))
The sound: I love this pedal. I have tons of overdrives, but I really think that this one is sort of the sound that I have been hunting for through my whole journey, based on the types of music I like in my personal playing style. It can certainly get heavier with the drive dimed and the boost engaged, but where it excels is with the drive just a little shy of halfway or maybe a little lower with the boost engaged. As others have described it, it’s a very touch–sensitive pedal so you can really control the amount of grit just by varying your picking. A good solid low gain overdrive sound that still manages to retain a sense of air and definition across chords, with a bit of chime at the high end. Exactly what I was looking for, and just really fun to play.
One oddity – and since I haven’t played the real pedal, I don’t know if it’s a feature or a bug. The boost function isn’t so much of a traditional boost though it does add a little extra sumthin’-sumthin’ that sounds good. However, the boost tone knob doesn’t really seem to do much to the sound until you have the boost knob really cranked up between about 80% and 100%, and then you can definitely hear the boost tone knob working as you turn it.
The enclosure: It’s a film-free decal on an enclosure I bought from StompBoxParts years ago when I was first getting into the hobby and never found a use for. As far as the design, because the enclosure is a dark gray, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do with film-free decals other than a monochrome design (I can’t print in white, and using other colors really doesn’t work as they basically all turn brown when placed on a gray enclosure).
The original pedal is called “Tim“, which I always really liked just for its simplicity. That being said, I figured I would just call mine “Tom“ , and I actually came up with a graphic that I sort of liked with Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump on the park bench. However, my complete lack of taste visibly offended my daughter, who is a better artist, so she commandeered the project and did the artwork based on Tom Nook, a character in the Animal Crossing video game series that she loves (did I mention that she’s almost 25 years old? She’s almost 25 years old). Anyhow, I’m not precious about these things and it’s always nice when she shows interest in my hobbies, so Tom Nook it is. Just for shits and giggles, I’ll share my original artwork I was starting from as well before my daughter metaphorically slapped me and took over the project.
Mike
And the original artwork (it was just a draft!)
Then it was down the rabbit hole of Timmy versions and variants. I decided that for my first Timmy circuit, I would rather do something more faithful to the Paul Cochrane versions and so will build something like the Cast Iron Overdrive later. Of the various Cochrane Timmy pedals, I quickly decided that I actually preferred the sound of the Tim the best, as it seemed just a bit more open than the Timmy when I heard them compared side-by-side.
If you don’t know, the Tim is a larger format version of the Timmy that added a boost function and an effects loop. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anyone offering a board for the Tim. Luckily, our very own @HamishR previously traced the Tim and generously shared his layout in this forum in a couple of threads, although I had never seen anyone report back that they had actually built one. His layout replicates all of the functions of the Tim except for the effects loop, which is fine because I don’t see myself ever using that functionality. So we were off to the races.
The build: HamishR’s layout was very well thought-out, straightforward and compact. Because the Tim has six knobs and I’ve become incredibly weary of wiring up pots for strip board builds only to find that I don’t like the sound or the build was unsuccessful (and because almost all of my pots or PCB mounted, it’s an extra pain in the ass to wire them up to the PCB-style lugs) I took this opportunity to build out and test a small breakout board for temporarily hooking pots up to a build for testing. It worked like a charm. I wrote about it and showed some pictures over in The Toolbox and won’t bore anyone further with it here.
The original pedal HamishR traced used a 4559 as the main opamp – since I didn’t have any of those, HamishR recommended trying a 4558, TL072 and some others. I eventually settled on the TL072 as it seemed to be just a little bit sweeter than the others. But the difference is slight and I’m sure several opamps will get you to the same place with this.
(Yeah, I know there’s a lot of excess wire but there was a ton of wiring involved with all the pots and switches and I always like to leave myself a ton of wiggle room. When wiring, I try to leave enough wire so that I could continue soldering if someone took the other end of the wires on a plane and I had to keep soldering the box while chasing the plane down in the runway. (Yes, I do enjoy picking up Somali radio stations on my pedal, why do you ask?))
The sound: I love this pedal. I have tons of overdrives, but I really think that this one is sort of the sound that I have been hunting for through my whole journey, based on the types of music I like in my personal playing style. It can certainly get heavier with the drive dimed and the boost engaged, but where it excels is with the drive just a little shy of halfway or maybe a little lower with the boost engaged. As others have described it, it’s a very touch–sensitive pedal so you can really control the amount of grit just by varying your picking. A good solid low gain overdrive sound that still manages to retain a sense of air and definition across chords, with a bit of chime at the high end. Exactly what I was looking for, and just really fun to play.
One oddity – and since I haven’t played the real pedal, I don’t know if it’s a feature or a bug. The boost function isn’t so much of a traditional boost though it does add a little extra sumthin’-sumthin’ that sounds good. However, the boost tone knob doesn’t really seem to do much to the sound until you have the boost knob really cranked up between about 80% and 100%, and then you can definitely hear the boost tone knob working as you turn it.
The enclosure: It’s a film-free decal on an enclosure I bought from StompBoxParts years ago when I was first getting into the hobby and never found a use for. As far as the design, because the enclosure is a dark gray, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do with film-free decals other than a monochrome design (I can’t print in white, and using other colors really doesn’t work as they basically all turn brown when placed on a gray enclosure).
The original pedal is called “Tim“, which I always really liked just for its simplicity. That being said, I figured I would just call mine “Tom“ , and I actually came up with a graphic that I sort of liked with Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump on the park bench. However, my complete lack of taste visibly offended my daughter, who is a better artist, so she commandeered the project and did the artwork based on Tom Nook, a character in the Animal Crossing video game series that she loves (did I mention that she’s almost 25 years old? She’s almost 25 years old). Anyhow, I’m not precious about these things and it’s always nice when she shows interest in my hobbies, so Tom Nook it is. Just for shits and giggles, I’ll share my original artwork I was starting from as well before my daughter metaphorically slapped me and took over the project.
Mike
And the original artwork (it was just a draft!)
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super clean build 
