Great overdrive/distortion with good dynamics and clarity cleans up well with volume knob. You can buy this one at my Reverb Shop. Or, build your own! Order PCBs from OSH Park and follow the build doc.
Doom Bloom (Fuzzhugger clone)
Built with PedalPCB.com PCB good range of heavy overdrive through distortion and fuzz tones. I built three of these and put this on my Reverb Shop.
UBE Screamer by RunOffGroove
This UBE Screamer by RunOffGroove.com is a unique twist on the venerable Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-808. It replaces the op-amps and transistor stages with a single hex inverter using an inverter in place of each op-amp and transistor. This has a great sound that stands up to all of the other overdrives. Read more about it over at RunOffGroove.com
Well worth the effort, build it yourself! I’ve created a public project at OSH Park. Order boards and follow the build docs.
Ugly Face on OSH Park
Just published the Ugly Face v 1.1 to OSH Park. Built and tested, it works well! This is classic DIY project, it’s almost a rite of passage for new DIY stomp box enthusiasts.
The Ugly Face is more of a synthesizer than fuzz pedal. It produces square output from the input guitar signal. You can imagine the internal oscillator running whenever the input signal reaches a threshold. This gives you frequencies above or below the input frequency at the output. The Ugly Face also adds an envelope control to animate the oscillator frequency. The sound is surprisingly more musical than a lot of other “harsh” distortions.
Order some boards at OSH Park and follow the build docs below to make your own.
Vulcan V1.2
Here’s a Vulcan V1.2 circuit it adds reverse polarity protection, and ground pads for input and output jacks. These are available on OSH Park.
Order some boards and follow the build guide to build your own Vulcan.
Parentheses Fuzz (EQD Life clone)
Vulcan v1.1
Vulcan pcb built up. This is version 2.
Vulcan v1.1 PCBs
Vulcan PCB. This is a great sounding overdrive by Joe Davisson.
DIY LFO, Sampls & Hold, Stepped voltage generator, and Noise
Some old fracrack synth modules. The last is a Blacet Mixer Processor. The others are DIY. These DIY modules are
2 x 8 step sequencers. These are barebones they don’t have any quantization or even LEDs for the steps. These have a clock trigger out, forward backward switch, reset, and a carry out which can be used to chain them together.
A 10 step step sequencer it outputs a trigger at each of 10 steps. This has a clock out, and and end step which can be used to make shorter sequences.
2 x LFOs with triangle, square, saw, noise, and step out. These also have a sample and hold.
Milling a PCB
Making PCBs on the Othermill. Designed in Eagle. I played with the trace size. The default traces in the bantamtools DRC is really small. The 8mil traces are easily damaged.
Pile of PCBs
Building some ugly faces
Vulcan by Joe Davisson
This is Joe Davisson’s Vulcan overdrive. Starting with a prototype board made at home with the Othermill, then turned this into a board from OSHPARK. Boxed up and is working well. This is an interesting overdrive with a couple unique circuit features.