duhvoodooman
Addicted to solder....
Here's a quick DIY pedal project I knocked out in a couple of days. It's a slightly modernized version fo the classic Tycobrahe Octavia octave-fuzz pedal made famous by Hendrix. I'd been wanting to make one of these for a while, and finally put a bill of materials together a month or so back and ordered the parts. I didn't buy a full kit, though both BYOC and General Guitar Gadgets (GGG) offer them, because I already had a spare prepainted & predrilled enclosure that I wanted to use. But if anybody wants to build one of these, I'd recommend the GGG kit. At only $58 + shipping, it would be tough to make it cheaper even by sourcing all your own parts. If I hadn't already had the enclosure, I definitely would have gone this way.
I used the GGG circuit board ($13), which is a very nice double-sided, silkscreened board. It's small, too, so it's easy to fit in a standard 125B enclosure with plenty of room to spare. The build is quite an easy one; relatively few parts to solder on the board. Though it's mostly the usual array of resistors, caps, diodes and transistors, this effect includes one rather unusual component--a small audio transformer mounted on the PCB. The pedal is designed for true bypass, and it also contains a feature not found in the original Octavia--a "pre-gain" control that lets you dial down the fuzz so that the octave effect comes through more clearly. I installed one optional feature--an SPST toggle switch that lets you cut out the octave effect and run the pedal as just a fuzz. The switch connection points are already provided on the board.
As I said, it was a quick build, with most of the time going into wiring the pots, jacks and switches into the PCB. At this point, the pedal is fully assembled and in 100% working condition, but I haven't done the labeling layout yet for the full-face decal. Here are a couple of photos of the pedal as it stands; I'll be using slightly smaller knobs for the final version. Also, there a "quick & dirty" demo clip attached just to show the basic octave/fuzz sound. After a few clean notes with my Strat through the Blues Junior, the effect kicks in. Forgive the quality; it was thrown together quickly and once again, I forgot to turn on my noise suppressor pedal to knock down the hum in my pedal chain. My CRS disease acting up again!
BTW, like the Fuzz Face pedals, this effect sounds very different depending upon whether it's placed before or after any pedals with a high impedance input buffer. I recommend leaving it at the front of your pedal chain, in front of any buffered effects. YMMV....
I used the GGG circuit board ($13), which is a very nice double-sided, silkscreened board. It's small, too, so it's easy to fit in a standard 125B enclosure with plenty of room to spare. The build is quite an easy one; relatively few parts to solder on the board. Though it's mostly the usual array of resistors, caps, diodes and transistors, this effect includes one rather unusual component--a small audio transformer mounted on the PCB. The pedal is designed for true bypass, and it also contains a feature not found in the original Octavia--a "pre-gain" control that lets you dial down the fuzz so that the octave effect comes through more clearly. I installed one optional feature--an SPST toggle switch that lets you cut out the octave effect and run the pedal as just a fuzz. The switch connection points are already provided on the board.
As I said, it was a quick build, with most of the time going into wiring the pots, jacks and switches into the PCB. At this point, the pedal is fully assembled and in 100% working condition, but I haven't done the labeling layout yet for the full-face decal. Here are a couple of photos of the pedal as it stands; I'll be using slightly smaller knobs for the final version. Also, there a "quick & dirty" demo clip attached just to show the basic octave/fuzz sound. After a few clean notes with my Strat through the Blues Junior, the effect kicks in. Forgive the quality; it was thrown together quickly and once again, I forgot to turn on my noise suppressor pedal to knock down the hum in my pedal chain. My CRS disease acting up again!
BTW, like the Fuzz Face pedals, this effect sounds very different depending upon whether it's placed before or after any pedals with a high impedance input buffer. I recommend leaving it at the front of your pedal chain, in front of any buffered effects. YMMV....
