Harry J's OD SHOOT OUT
Harry J ran a comparison of the following
overdrive pedals:
- MJM Blues devil
- Love Pedal White Dragon
- Tech 21 Sans Amp (Original model)
- Hermida Zen Drive (original model)
- Proco Rat (80's unmodded)
- Paul Cochrane Tim Pedal
- Fulltone OCD (newest version)
- ToadWorks John Bull
- Ibanez TS-9 w/ Analogman classic mod as
well as the SUPERB Vaughn dual tri-mode mod
- Xotic AC Booster
- Keeley modded Boss BD-2 (Blues Driver)
Complete with commentary and clips. Hats off
to you Harry, thanks for the effort!
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Stand Up PVC Bass
beatcatcher builds a stand up bass out of PVC
and various parts. Ingenious, wonderful, and a
full PDF build guide also.
" In my opinion the only thing that is
absolutely critical in this design is the
fingerboard and string length of the bass. This
is what gives it some upright bass
characteristics. Everything else could be
modified to the builder's liking. If you try
something different and it works, let me know.
This PVC EUB uses nylon strings from
traditionmusic.com, but one was built with a
length of square steel tubing attached inside
the main pipe which should make it strong enough
for steel strings, but this has yet to be
tested. I suppose gut would work, but why have
strings that are more expensive than the bass?!?
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Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass
Quote: "Abstract: The exponential
dependence of resistivity on temperature in
germanium is found to be a great big lie. My
careful theoretical modeling and painstaking
experimentation reveal 1) that my equipment is
crap, as are all the available texts on the
subject and 2) that this whole exercise was a
complete waste of my time. "
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BYOC Delay in a Wah Pedal
dotdotdot posted his latest creation on the
HCDIY forum. It's a BYOC delay kit
mounted in a salvaged wah pedal. The wah pot
controls the amount of delay mix. Very nice
pedal hackery and a clean looking build to
boot. dotdotdot is also the force behind
MonkeyFX, a great UK-based pedal foundary.
Wah Delay Pedal Thread
MonkeyFX
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Forrest M Mims III Mini-Notebooks
Back in the 1980's Forrest M Mims, one of
the great DIY writers and circuit explorers
created a set of Mini-Notebooks that were
sold through Radio Shack. I remember paging
through the 555 Mini-Notebook as a teenager.
The beauty of these works was that they were
all hand-written with hand-drawn circuits.
Just too cool. Forrest sells these volumes
from his site for a mere pittance. Well
worth the investment.
Forrest Mims
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Need a tube head with 18 tubes? How about
200 watts?
Before
Fred Nachbaur succumbed to cancer, he
was the tube genius. He's the they
guy who designed the great
Real McTube tube-based pedal overdrive
among other cool things. He may be gone, but
his legacy is still with us. Part of that
legacy is Dogzilla--the coolest amp head
I've ever seen. Specs:
- # Power output: Over 200 watts RMS
(original spec 300W Class B modified to
200W AB2, Apr. '02)
- Power consumption: Est. 800W max.
- Footprint: 17" x 14" (43.2 cm x 35.6
cm)
# Weight: ca. 70 lb. (32 kg) # Chassis
height: 9.5" (24 cm)
More at:
Introducing Dogzilla
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Love for the Shaka Tube
Here's Chuck's Shaka Tube build. Very nice
and you have to love the orange. Lots of
other Shaka Tube info:
Paul Marossy's
The Shaka Tube In A Hammond 1590BB Enclosure
and
Shaka Tube Clipping Characteristics and
The Shaka Tube Chronicles
Aron Nelson's
Original Schematic
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Gotta Love Those Europeans
When it comes to cool and inventive modding
ideas (i.e. synth stuff) these guys are the
doob smoking bohemian mofos. Quote: "Monome
Modular Synthesizer. My modular is a
System, that uses modules from different
sources. But most of the modules I've
planned to build so far are FormantPro
based.
Cabinett: The cabinet is made out of old
furniture (my old bed and a shelf *G*)
Frontpanels: The frontpanels are hand
drilled 19" blindpanels...I absolutely CAN'T
RECOMMEND this method!!! The panels are made
of steel and are very hard. So it's a real
pain in the a** to drill them. For myself, I
decided to order my further panels from
Schaeffer Apparatebau If you just let them
drill the holes, and make the panel printing
yourself, it's quite affordable.
http://www.monome.de/
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Build your own SMD soldering rig
More and more circuits are being built today
in big automated megafactories where robots
suck tape-mounted discrete Surface Mount
Device (SMD) components out of giant rolls
and blast them on to boards by the
thousands. You could use a typical soldering
iron to muck about with SMD but I wouldn't
recommend it. Will over at
Engadget provides a great step-by-step
tutorial on building your own SMD soldering
rig using cheap and commonly available
parts. As an added bonus--it does a great
job on heat-shrink tubing.
Homebrew SMD DIY |
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Modding a $100 Tube Amp
When Epiphone launched its ~$100 Class A
tube amp late last year, it was quite a hit.
But it had some issues, mostly with hum.
Various folks have mods that fix these, but
Dennis Cronin as done a really nice job of
both modding the amp and putting up a great
webpage that explains various things with
nice clear pictures. (Update: you can now
get a head version of the Epi Jr.!)
Plus: using light bulbs for attenuation and
compression. Nice work Dennis!
http://www.valvejunior.com/ |
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ToneCrafter: I'm Speechless
Here' the idea. A box with the basic
stompbox controls. Plus a breadboard. Plus a
bag of components and instructions to make
up to 7 different pedals. And get this, when
you order one, you can specify which effect
you want pre-wired and they'll do that for
you too. So you get it ready to run.
How much would you pay for this
other-worldly product? $500? $400? No
friends! This is 99 clams. Unbelievable.
Might have to order one...
http://www.killertone.com/ |
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Quite Lovely Hand-built Tube Amp Head
"EF86 input, ECL86 triode gainstage and
pentode output stage, EZ90(6X4) rectifier,
and EM80 magic eye output power meter.
Thanks to Tom Schlangen in Germany for
sharing the EM80 circuit! Play hard, and the
EM80 lights up brighter (fans out like a
little radar screen)... play soft and it
dims, comes to a fine vertical line. Here's
a closeup of a beautiful mesh-screen Siemens
EM80."
http://artifactaudio.com/ |
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Dualish Logic Drive: Combo Blue Box, PWM,
Uglyface, Idiot Wah, Booster
Processaurus over at the StompBox Forum has
designed and built a very nice looking box
that has some pretty imaginative circuitry.
"It's the blue box based thing where
the two channels you pan between get the
logic signal processed by two Tim Escobedo
circuits, and then get mixed together. One
side gets the PWM, and the other gets the
Ugly Face. There's some photo resistors
hooked to the CV input on the 555. "
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=43469.0 |
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Hand-made Pedals and Synths from Peru
Effects, modulators, oscillators,
synthesizers and modifications, all from
Peru. Handmade cool stuff. Check out the
sound samples.
Brought to you by Carlos Garcia and
Eduardo Larres, two musicians/electronics
dudes from Lima, Peru.
Check them out:
http://www.zebranalogic.com/indexdos.htm |
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MohoMods "Multi-Screamer" Pedal
These guys have come up with one of the
cooler mods to the venerable Tube Screamer.
Switchable between TS-808 and TS9 layouts,
and with switchable op-amps. How cool is
that?
"An actual TS9 tube screamer board
repackaged in a new enclosure with switches
to allow total control over the OpAmps, Mod,
Bass and increased gain. No more opening
cases to change out OpAmps!!!"
http://www.mohomods.com/store.htm |
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6 in 1 all analog multi-fx under $100
Guy re-houses low-cost Danoelectric effects
in a home brew enclosure. Figures out how to
make them true bypass and ends up with a
unique pedalboard. True genius in the best
DIY tradition.
http://thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=130262 |
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Best use of Chrome on Cool Effects
When I grow up and build pedals for real, I
want to be just like ToneCzar. Highly
regarded analog delays pedal, long waiting
list, pricey but supposed to be well worth
it. Also wins the slickest website award and
the use of thick lovely chrome plating takes
it all home.
http://www.toneczareffects.com |
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Sonosaur Analog Bass Pedal Synthesizer
$99 kit to build your own monophonic
synthesizer. Designed as a bass pedal synth,
you add your own footswitches. Looks be be
pretty controllable (eight pots!). Designed
by the highly respected Howard Cano. How
could I turn this into a guitar pedal?
Cano Electronics |
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WTF? Got a two by four?
The DIY ethic at its most primal form. The
sheer ingenuity. Nails on goddamn piece of
wood. This is Zen dude, this is real and
earthy. This is the way we should build
effects. Props to this guy--he's different.
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=36392.20 |
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