Random/Arbitrary bits of Stompbox Flotsam

I've built quite few interesting pedals but haven't had time to come up with complete pages for them. So in lieu of that here's a page of some of the more interesting ones.

Marshall BluesBreaker
Another general guitar gadgets kit. Sounds nice and a bit tame.
For this one, I printed the label on transparency film, glued it
to the top and then finished it with spray poly.


 

DS-1 Pipe
Can you make a pipe for smoking dried plant matter from a Boss DS-1?
That was my challenge, the answer is yes.

Kapow JFet Boost
Very simple J201 booster circuit. It sounded so good I built
a few for friends.

Stereo 386 Amp
Here's a dual-LM386 amp with tiny speakers built inside
a sunglasses case. Sound is stellar, as long as by "stellar" I mean "crap."

 

Phase 45
Pretty standard phase 45 with a few mods. Built from a
general guitar gadgets kit. I found an ink stamp at the craft store and
used it on the front. Doesn't it look familiar (cough *lovepedal* cough)

Biasing a Fender Twin Reverb with a Pistol
Not a terribly effective experiment.

Triple Rat
I had a few BYOC Rat Boards sitting around gathering dust. So why not
make one box with three Rats? Why not indeed...

Rangemaster
Standard Rangemaster clone in a pinstriped box

Nipple Clamp
Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer Compressor with a volume knob.

Junk Fuzz
Single Transistor Fuzz made out of junk I had laying around the bench. The attached antenna ensures
 that I can pickup AM radio and have it mixed in with the fuzz signal automatically.

Noisy Cricket Combo Amp
Here's a Noisy Cricket battery powered amp built into and repainted practice amp cab.
Complete with back-lit power meter=RAWK!

 

Boss Delay
Here's a Boss DD3 delay rehoused into a wah enclosure.

Synth Box
Perennial work in progress, oscillators and filters in a wood box with a Plexiglas top.

Tube Thing
Attempting to get four cascaded space charge tubes to make a decent fuzz. Yeah, right.

Knob Layout Test Box
The less said about this one, the better.

TKC50: A Three Knob COT50 clone

440+ Envelope Filter
DOD 440 Clone with mods to increase the envelope range. I also added
a JFET pre-amp/gain stage in front of the envelope filter to give it
a bit more juice and versatility. This one was custom built for my
good friend James.

Nintendo-Tronic
Here's a standalone oscillator noise box based on an old
Forrest Mimms circuit. It uses a 556 to act as frequency
generator and divider. Made it for my son who picked out the
name and the look.

More 556 Oscillators
More oscillator boxes based on the Forrest Mimms circuit.

ClipBoard
I've spent a lot of time over the last few months twisting diodes together, using alligator
clips, breadboard--all in an effort to play around with different clipping configurations
in various distortion and overdrive circuits. This wack idea actually came to me
in a dream Why not put it all on a piece of perfboard with a switch. Have the standard
diodes pairs I like and add sockets to try others. Add a DIP switch to turn each pair on
or off and a volume pot at the end. It is completely passive, no power required. The
in and out pads have sockets on them, so I can plug it directly into the pedal enclosure
as shown, or just use the clipper board with various prototypes. As it turns out that it is quite fun
to put this after various clean boosts, and cook my own distortion with the DIP switches.

Roja Lamer
Way Huge Red Llama clone (which was a clone of the original
Anderton Tube Sound Fuzz. Moderately interesting. The box painting
was the most fun part of the project. Tin foil glued on, then auto paint, then
I poured acetone on the box and set it on fire. Multiple rounds of this
led to an interesting paint job.

Brown Sound in a Box
A great overdrive/distortion  box designed by Ed Guidry.
PCB and build guide from General Guitar Gadgets:

Jack Orman's Clean Boost.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the "go to" boost in the solid state world. In fact the
design is so good, Fuller stole it for his Fat Boost pedal. (I hope that Fuller has
had the sense to work out a deal with Jack and thereby restore my faith in humanity)
Order a PCB from Jack and you'll also get some special goodies.

runoffgroove.com's  Peper Mill
Light overdrive and boost that really adds some spice to your tone. I modified the
drain resistor on the second transistor to a lower value to get more gain.
*Very* nice circuit.

BuildYourOwnClone DOD Envelope Filter Clone
Super easy build of the classic 440 circuit.
This one has a permanent place on my board.

Lovepedal Magicboy Vibe (re-housed)
I bought this last year, and in a bizarre twist of fate, this is the pedal that got me
into building. It sounds very nice, but came with no LED, no AC jack, and one of the cheapest
crap cases I've seen from a boutique builder. Sean explains that he was looking to build
a vibe for the lowest possible price and that's why he decided to forego the LED and
jack. But that box just sucked a wad. Finally, the trim-pot only has a small useful range,
but you can dial in totally different sounds. Having it hidden inside the box was
counterproductive. So in the re-house process, I swapped the trimpot for
a pot and mounted it on the side.

OLCircuits/runoffgroove.com English Channel
ROG's JFET emulation of the VOX AC30 Top Boost Amp. Quite a nice juicy overdrive/distortion
unit. The OLCircuits kit made it a quick and fun build. Highly recommended.

OLCircuits/runoffgroove.com ThunderChief
JFET emulation of a Marshall amp. Dirt simple with volume and drive. This one can really
 crank, with loads of raunchy crunch. Turn it up through your favorite amp and hookers
will blush and nuns will run for cover.

OLCircuits Eclipse Valve Boost
This is quite an interesting design. A clean boost pedal with zero solid-state
components. It uses both halves of a 12AT7 tube run at 12 volts for a nice amount of
all-tube boost. The tone control is a very unique circuit, and the switch allows you
to go from a mid-boost to a treble boost. At first I was a bit skeptical about the whole
starved-plate design. But this one is truly different. Put it in front of your
favorite amp (tube or solid-state) and crank it up. Fantastic warmth and great tonal
control. I think Mark is going to have trouble keeping up with demand for this one.

Dan Armstrong Green Ringer
A fascinating circuit that provides and octave effect. I've built several and each one sounds
 a bit different. Close matching of the diodes is key to the best octave sound.
The build below has a null-carrier mod that allows you to change the response in
subtle ways. One of my favorite pedals.

Colin's Parallel Universe
Back in the 1930's, ZVex took a standard Fuzz Face and mutated it into the
bizarre, pot-infested Fuzz Factory, thereby cementing his place in the pantheon
of innovative metal box producers. Colin from Experimentalists Anonymous
(if you haven't been to Colin's site, well you haven't lived the full DIY experience)
came up with a similar concept in the Parallel Universe. Take a LM386 power amp
and slap pots and caps on to it in ways that would cause a break in the
space-time continuum. Feedback, oscillation, just plain funky shit. My build included a
disassembled AM/FM radio that I patch into various parts of the circuit
for even more devil tone. (tono diavaolo is Italian for....well you can figure it out.)