Wednesday 29 July 2009

Fred Briggs - Hummingbird Overdrive

Here's another one. I've had a lot of emails for this one. The best way I can describe it is as an "enhancer" - it makes and already good overdrive tone better! It produces a great low overdrive, the compression and shimmer controls are very interactive with regard to both the gain/clipping structure and the overall tone and feel of the device..

This design was born from a challenge set to me and a few others by Bjorn of BJF effects to build a circuit that sounded like the honeybee. Soulsonic came up with a very elegant and simple design called the Hunny Bunny: http://www.soulsonicfx.com/?page_id=88 (I love that circuit). The Humming Bird De'luxe is what I came up with and you can see the schematic below.



Here's a vero layout by Harald Sabro (http://www.sabrotone.com):


[NOTE] One of the capacitors is marked as 47k on the schematic - this should read 47n. Point B goes to the input of the mosfet stage.

4 comments:

  1. hi, I was looking for a new overdrive and this one could be something new and interesting..could you post please some bigger images? I can't read any value!

    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6741&hilit=hummingbird

    Scheme is there!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Fred,
    How are you? I find myself returning to your blog page often.

    Has/have anyone/you ever come up with a PCB layout for this? I've come across multiple threads in multiple forums on this design. The description sounds very interesting to me.

    -stevewire

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can you post a sound sample please? I have built a few of your circuits and love everyone of them.The PAF OD,64 vintage and Face.i'm going to go ahead and build this one cause i think i'll like it.i love the sound of germanium transistors.Thank you for all your work.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are welcome on Revolution Deux. However, please do not spam links to unrelated sites - these comments will be removed! Thanks - Briggs.