Most Wanted Stompboxes?

You guys are what makes Revolution Deux a worthwhile project. What I want to know is which pedals you all want to see on the site? I'll then do my homework and see if I can cobble together the info that I need to create a few projects for the "most wanted" stompboxes. 

To vote for the pedals you'd like to see projects for just leave a comment down below with the pedal name and manufacturer.

Happy bounty hunting!

10 Son of a Clay Jones Overdrives in the pipeline.

Hi there,

I've had so many requests to build up the "Son of a Clay Jones Overdrive" (Which I will refer to as the SOCJOD from now on) pedal for you guys I've decided to produce a small run of them, 9 units to be exact. 

Basically the SOCJOD is a Tubescreamer-808 Overdrive circuit built to Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive/Clay Jones Overdrive specs but without the input and output buffers, for more info on the exact circuit structure see here. 

The sound they produce is identical to that of the original Landgraff/Clay Jones pedals but they come in a much nicer enclosure (See the image below!) and for a tenth of the price! Of course you can imagine it's all the lovely usual true bypass/geek tech/boutique techniques and quality parts to boot! Great for blues, rock and (If you push it with a booster) even heavier territory. For further ideas about sounds and gear compatibility check out youtube for videos of the Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive and the Clay Jones Overdrive.

OK, how much? Simple: £80 + Shipping*, a decent price that makes it worthwhile for me and an affordable price for yourselves. You're getting a good exchange rate at the moment too, check it out with http://www.xe.com/ucc/ Just look at it, our poor old pound is struggling more than ever :-(

To get your name on the list for one please just drop me an email and I'll get back to you with confirmation whether you are on the list or not. I'm only going to build up 9 because I already have the enclosures painted and my time resources do not allow me to produce a larger run. Expected completion date for the pedals is around 3-4 weeks from now! For anymore info, again, just drop me an email, you can find my address above ;-)

*Insured airmail to the US is £14 so the total cost of the shipped pedal would be £94

  Insured first class within the UK is £5, total cost shipped £85

  Insured airmail within Europe is £10, total cost shipped £90

Lovepimple Purple Pills : Lovepedal Purple Plexi / 800

Here's another delightful Lovepedal design for you. Again produced from the freestompboxes cauldren of joy! As we can all now see it is a simple 386 power amp chip distortion device, been around for years yet still pleasing to the ears. Check out the demo video;

Thanks to all of freestompboxes for the research work and especially Ghandi (for the scheme). Expect a PCB layout soon when it's been verified as correct :-)


And below is the Purple Plexi 800, which is just a slight variation on the Purple Plexi;

On a side note the 386 chip can be quite entertaining, check out Colin's Parallel Universe design over at www.eaced.com in the schematics section for a truly wacky machine!

Want to find a cheap pedal for modding?

Well here is a cool little feed put together by Modman from the freestompboxes forum. Check it out if you want to find a few little goodies :-)

http://www.freestompboxes.org/feed/pimp.html

Baldwin Burns - Buzzaround Uber-Fuzz

Here is another one for you, the sought after Burns Buzzaround fuzz pedal:

Full on uber-fuzz researched and revealed by a number of stompbox experts around the world. Dragonfly of Soulkitchen FX (Check out the crazy boxes!), David Main of D*A*M FX in the UK and various others all contributed to this great piece of DIY reseach and destroy stompbox mythics. Firstly a demo video of the Buzzaround in action:

Turns out to be very similar to the old 3 Knob Tonebenders. Still worth a build though for some real full on fuzz antics. Here is Dragonfly's scheme and the great Torchy's vero.





Here's a tagboard layout from Sinner of turretboard.org:

And the freestompboxes.org forum thread: http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1211

If you want the Buzzaround sound but don't want to have to fiddle around finding three germanium transistors that fit the required gain and leakage requirements check out this Buzzaround-a-like designed by mictester:

I tried this and actually preferred it over my Buzzaround clone - you can get all the original tones and a lot more! Here's mictester's description:

"The original consisted of two stages - a two-transistor amplifier and a distortion stage that could have both the amount of signal sent to it and the bias point adjusted by external controls. The third control was a crude tone control which fed the output. Originally, the output was unbuffered, and the leads and amplifier following would load the unit, and the top end would be rolled off, and often the tone control would have little effect. 

The first stage in the sound-alike is just a high input impedance op-amp gain stage. You may wish to increase the gain by increasing the value of the feedback resistor, but it sounds pretty good as shown. In the original, the first stage didn't really have much effect on the sound - it just amplified it enough to drive the following stage into conduction.

The heart of the beast is the germanium transistor stage. Apart from using an NPN transistor, this remains true to the original (why screw up a classic?), and still gives a wide range of sounds from the thin toppy fuzz beloved of sixties bands through to gated spluttery farts, with smooth warm distortion sounds in between!

The final stage is just a buffer - it isolates the tone circuit from the outside world, and allows a full range of control from muffled to glass-shattering!"

And here's a vero layout for the Buzz-a-like by roseblood11 (the layout is verified):

A recommended hfe for that transistor? About 80hfe, you'll need one with a bit of leakage too for it to work properly. Here's the freestompboxes.org forum topic for more info and help: http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9401