This was a tough contest to judge because there were so many great entries.
BuddyTheReow was the first out of the gate with not one, but four entries: Lunch Crunch, Air Nutz, Muffin Stuffin & Bazz Fuxx. Then Dan M submitted the TremFuzzolo, a modified Bazz Fuss driving a Hummingbird. This one was definitely painting outside the lines. Took him the better part of a week to get to the final version, but well worth the wait. This was the only entry that included a detailed build doc. Turns out there is a little problem with Q4's biasing: the gate has no DC path to anywhere. Easily fixed by replacing C202 with a wire. I'll let that one slide. This circuit has a great tone and the sawtooth envelope can be used to simulate an echo. While Dan was refining the TremFuzzolo, Jubal81 show up with the FuzzDuster, an all-JFET Big Muff. Brilliantly executed, great tone, very smooth. Not as much gain as a typical BMP, just the right amount to get some great overdrive tones. Then two more entries from BtR, the Muff Nugget and the Plops of Doom. Does this guy ever sleep? The Muff Nugget uses a combination of JFETs and a BJT for some very smooth distortion. The Plops of Doom is a very unruly fuzz. Next up is another out-of-the-box circuit from Dan M, the Wah-Boost. This one is a paring of a twin-T bandpass filter and a SHO-type booster. Another great sounding pedal circuit from Dan. The Blend control adds a whole new dimension because it doesn't just dial-down the intensity of the filter, it turns it into a different kind of filter. While this one works very well as submitted, I found some opportunities for improvement and did some mods on my breadboard. More about that in another post. The next day, BtR is back with the Death Water. Yet another unruly fuzz. I'm sensing a trend here. A few days later, jimilee submits a BMP with some custom component value tweaks. Nice job, but the idea was to build something that wasn't a Muff. Then came Vigilante's Death Muffin. Wow. Jimlee's circuit may not have been far enough out-of-the-box, but this one is way off the scale. The Muffin board is relegated to being a daughter-board for a 4-stage vacuum tube preamp emulator, complete with 200V power converter. A killer circuit in every sense of the word. Very impressive, but too much stuff not on the Muffin board to make it to the winner's circle. This one hasn't been on my breadboard yet, but it will. Gotta dig my HV power supply out of the dungeon. The final valid submission came from, you guessed it, BtR. The Numero Uno. Clever idea and not a bad fuzz. Turns out I could not pick a single winner, so there will be two prizes awarded: One to Dan M for the TremFuzzolo and the Wah-Boost, and one to BtR for the plethora of top-notch designs, the Muff Nugget being my personal favorite. Honorable mention goes to Jubal81 for the FuzzDuster, one of the best BMP-type pedals I've heard, and to Vigilante398 for going way above and beyond with his Death Muffin. Dr. Frankenstein would be proud.
Many thanks to one and all for participating and to Mr. PedalPCB for providing some free Muffin boards and a place to have fun. I've learned some stuff and tried circuits I might not have tried otherwise. I'll be sending out Celestial Breadboard kits to Dan M & BuddyTheReow in the next day or two.
. Didn’t get around to debugging it, but I’ll try to at some point.
