Zen Drive built with a PCB from Aion.
Klon clone built from a PCB from Aion.
These are two purple sparkle IC Big Muffs. These were built from PCBs from OSH Park.
This is a great fuzz/distortion a nice alternative to the classic Big Muff.
This finely crafted guitar body was made from plywood with a mildly figured masonite top. The construction is much like the Danelectro guitars from the early sixties. The body shape is a Gibson Melody Maker, the neck and bridge are from a Fender Telecaster. The pickup arrangement and wiring will use three pickups and a five position switch like a Fender Stratocaster.
This is a guide to building a Fuzz Face. It’s a step by step set of instructions. The build uses perfboard and mounts the pots on the board which makes a for a clean build with little board wiring. This is a great sounding project the parts are pretty easy to get.
Big thanks to my pal Joe who proof read and edited. He writes a really good blog you should check it out: http://tonefiend.com
Started thinking about synthesizers the other day this prompted me to dust off the old modular synth and get it working again. I was expecting more trouble but in the most if not everything seems to be working.
To get things working I needed to untangle and sort the massive amount of power cables and other wiring. In reality I disconnected almost everything and reconnected it all again. At this point I had the mixer setup and powered. From there I could run a test on each module. Lo and behold thing were functioning.
Here are a few images. Most of this would fit in the palm of your hand and run from your mobile phone these days. That said in this case I can see the entire interface and there is a very real tactile experience. Of course I’m not taking this with me.
I just got these templates from Ponoko.
A nice opamp big muff PCB 
Mad bean Shark Fin. Based on the maestro filter sample and hold. I’m obsessed with this circuit, I’ve built several versions of it and own some boutique iterations.
Ooh look an ugly face, this is another effect that had become a minor obsession. I’ve built more than a few of these. 
Mad bean zero point mini. 
Okay so, here we take a look behind the scenes at the pile of unfinished work. This picture was taken inches the left of the previous images. 
Tube Steak build was originally published on Super-Freq
These are some more PCBs from OSH Park. There is an IC Big Muff, Tube Steak, and a Woolly Mammoth.
The Tube Steak I created from a schematic posted by Charlie Barth at Moosapotamus.net. Tube Steak Fuzz is a cross between the Tube Sound Fuzz, and Way Huge Fat Sandwich. Here’s a link to Charlie’s article read it for yourself: Tube Steak Fuzz.
The IC Big Muff also called the op-amp Big Muff was a version of the Big Muff that used two op-amps in place of the four transistors used in the classic Big Muff Design. Here is a link to more information in the op-amp Big Muff.
The Woolly Mammoth is a PCB design that I made as a clone of the ZVex Woolly Mammoth. I really like the sound of this one. Designed as a fuzz for bass, it sounds good with guitar also. The design is based on the Fuzz Face.
Completed clone of the Ezekiel 25:17 Bass Distortion by D*A*M. I built this with PCBs from OSH Park, see my previous post.
This Zeke Bass Distortion is a clone of the D*A*M Ezekiel 25:17 Bass distortion. The PCB came from OSH Park. This worked out well. The board is pretty big so soldering parts is easy. The rotary switch and pots are all mounted on the board, which makes assembly easy, this is a good PCB.
There was no documentation on OSH Park for this, so I reverse engineered the board to match the parts in the schematic. Here is the schematic I used with part numbers that match the PCB.
Overall the board turned out pretty good. I used a socket for the dual op-amp. I threw a random 1458 in that was sitting in a pile of parts on my bench, and it fired up first test. This is supposed to use a JRC 4558. I think I have a couple of these squirrelled away, I’ll dig them out before I box things up. I might try some other op-amps also.
There are three sets of diodes. D2-4 are Ge, D5-6 are Si, and D7-8 are LED. I used some 1N34 for the Ge, and 1n914 for the Si, and random 3mm LEDs from the parts bin.
With 3P4T switch the circuit is only using one pole. I only soldered the pins used by that pole. This way if I made a mistake, it’s been known to happen, I had fewer pins to de-solder. With these switches there is a small ring with a tab under the nut. Be sure to set this for four positions.
To mount the pots, I would suggest making a box first, mounting everything in the box. This will position the pots at the correct height above the board compared to the switch. Then solder from the top of the board. I made some holes in a piece of cardboard, and mounted everything in that before soldering, since I didn’t have a box drilled yet.
I put everything on the test rig, and it fired up first! Good for me, and thanks to bmossma at OSH Park. It’s always inspiring when things work on the first attempt. The sound was pretty good, it didn’t sound like much with guitar, with bass, the effect started to make sense. I tested with my baritone guitar and it seemed to sound pretty good with that also. Definitely more of an overdrive, distortion, than a fuzz to my ears.
