Category: Projects

  • Ugly face with tone control

    The Ugly Face has an interesting set of options. The Threshold knob has to be the most interesting though least useful. Last year I thought I’d add a tone control in it’s place. I wanted to build an Ugly Face and keep it in 1590B sized box. This format makes it hard to fit more…

  • Building an Ugly Face

    I built an Ugly Face last week and took some pictures. This uses the Ugly face PCB I made and the typical DIY stompbox parts. I used the alpha 12mm pots in a B sized box. The more common 16mm pots would also work.  

  • Ugly Face in neon tufts

    Here’s an Ugly Face in a neon tufted fur.

  • Fuzzy Elephant

    Here’s a clone of the Zvex Wooly Mammoth. Came out pretty good, sounds good too. I used strip board layout here: http://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4&start=40 It’s about halfway down the page. I modified it to move the parts closer together. My layout ended up being 17 holes wide which fit in the box a little better. I used…

  • Fuzz Face for Joe part 2

    Here’s Fuzz Face wired up and stuffed in a “B” sized box. This box is from 4Site electronics. Great finish and excellent screws much better than the Taiwanese boxes that are commonly available.

  • Fuzz Face For Joe

    A few pictures of a Fuzz Face I made for a Joe. Turns out Joe hadn’t heard of the Fuzz Face. So I thought I make one for him. This one uses a Silicon 2n3906 for Q1 and a Germanium transistor for Q2. The Germanium transistor is a Chinese model not sure what the number…

  • Silicon Tone Bender take 2

    Whenever I build something I usually build two. The parts are cheap. If I make a mistake or the PCB doesn’t etch correctly I have a spare. If you build the first and it doesn’t work you can build the second and compare the two. In the case of the Silicon Tone Bender I used…

  • Silicon Tonebender

    I built this Silicon Tonebender posted by mictester over on Freestompboxes. I used this layout. Everything worked the first try and it sounds good. I used BC109CN for transistors. These sounded good and have that metal can with a little tab mojo. I used a ceramic .1µf cap for the input cap and skipped the…

  • Bee Baa

    This is a Roland Bee Baa Fuzz. It’s sort of a booster followed by a two transistor silicon fuzz. The sounds is pretty heavy and doom like. Interpret that how you will. The original came in a larger case with three stomp switches on top, bypass, boost, tone. I used stomp switches for the boost…

  • Ugly Face

    Here’s a picture of an Ugly Face I made recently. For the graphics on this I used PnP. Not sure how this is going to work out. This is second effect I did with this method. This one came out better than the fist. ‘

  • Shocktave first impression

    This worked right after I found a small solder bridge grounding the input cap. The PCB layout I posted has some very small traces that are very close to the ground plane. I thought this was going to be a nightmare to solder. It was actually not too hard. I found careful application of small…

  • Shocktave PCB

    I have been thinking about making Joe Davidson’s Shocktave for many years now. I have yet to build it, the PCB in this post is unverified so far. I’m finally getting around to it. I had built a BSIAB II while back that had all of the transistors in a row. This made for a…