THE PEDALS SO FAR, PT1

Fuzz #1 

The above number is actually a lie. My first fuzz pedals enclosure now houses a clean boost and the remains of it's circuit board lay broken in a pile somewhere in my garage. So for the record, this is the first fuzz pedal I made which is still alive. 

It's based entirely on a fuzz face, but after spending a good few months sat on a breadboard, it also contains a number of modifications. The first of these are that it's controls include a volume switch/boost, a six way rotary tone selector and a gain knob.

The tone selector is probably my all time favourite thing I've ever done to a pedal. Capacitors incremented in nF, its explosive in tone and starts from a bright, controlled gain into insane bass and sustain reminiscent of a Big Muff. Its implementation is also extremely simple, the hardest thing to do is source a good quality switch. 

It completely switches out a capacitor from the input signal to the rest of the circuit, which although may be bad practice given the amount of wiring involved, it certainly works great. 

The volume boost is basically another switch to change one pot with another, simply setting volume two higher than volume one will boost the signal once activated, and of course it can be used to attenuate the signal also. This feature is great for live use.

The one thing I don't use on this pedal is the gain control, which unfortunately makes the signal muddier as you back off the gain, given a fresh look now, I may be able to correct that, but this pedal sounds best with its gain set on max anyway!

The circuit is pretty much your standard fuzz face except 2 micro switches. These add a choice of smoothing capacitors across the output resistor to simulate a more warm tube sound.

It's worth noting that I almost exclusively buy all my components and enclosures from Doctor Tweek. His online store supplies every part you could ever want plus insightful information about the components themselves. His delivery is insanely fast to the UK, and everything is at the lowest prices I've seen. 

This pedal was a real joy to build, and anyone who wishes to do so can too. I'll be posting layouts as I make them for all the pedals I have built and will build. 

Doctor Tweek - http://www.doctortweek.co.uk/