FUZZ WAHD™

This is the Fuzz Wahd ™. It's a guitar pedal I made and it's my first creation from conception to the physical box. I love the sound of the Fuzz Face and I wanted it to be a little louder and with more gain to be used as a lead pedal for solos. I also wanted the tone to be able to cut through so I combined all of that with a wah-wah like filter. All this makes a cocked wah sound (like a wah-wah pedal set in one position) with Fuzz Face like tones that's boosted. It's juicy like a big wad of bubble gum. The fuzz itself reminds me of Jimi Hendrix sound from the Isle Of Wight show (listen to Red House from minutes 6-8). I LOOOVE that. The cocked wah tones are like that of Mick Ronson on songs like The Man Who Sold The World and Ziggy Stardust. Super glam rock. (Ronson, by the way used a Tone Bender with wah-wah)

It was actually a DIY Premier Guitar Magazine article that got me off in the right direction in building something like this from scratch. I've been building pedals from kits for a few years now but wanted to try to create one my self and learn more about that process.  So with research I combined three circuits to pull this off. I ordered the parts and bought what's called a breadboard to attach them on to for testing circuits. I drew out a detailed schematic and tried to make it all work on the board. A major challenge. This took me quite a while.

I built each circuit separately and adjusted and swapped out components that I felt made it better and the way I liked it with my amp (Marshall 50W JCM 800). After that I hooked them all together in the right combination. In many instances Fuzz Faces and wah-wahs don't play nicely together. In this pedal they do. When I first got signal I was so amazed and happy with my accomplishment!! It sounded so killer! Now I knew how Zachary Vex must have felt when he built his first fuzz.

Getting them onto the breadboard was one thing, getting them off the board and onto something that will fit into an enclosure is another. I had it sounding so good I didn't want to have to take the components off of there. Another hurdle of a challenge. I got a vero board to do this. When you by guitar pedal kits it comes with a PCB board that has everything laid out for you like a map and you just put your components on and solder it up. Here with something like the vero board, you have to make your own map.

Again, my first experience with this thing. I read about how to do it and then drew out a vero board layout. For reference, I also drew out and took pictures of what my bread board looked like. I spent a lot of time checking and checking and checking my layout maps and comparing it to my bread board set up. When I thought I had it right, I added the components and soldered them on.

I ordered an enclosure and a page of decal paper. I added titles to the knobs and added someone blowing a bubble gum bubble to the top of it. Brushed it with Mod Podge. The next step was to put the populated board inside of it and wire it up. Another big challenge. Lots of research on this. Apparently there are many ways to wire up a fuzzbox. I wired it up to my best ability. The LED didn't work. I had to figure that out. Then I got signal and was super happy with that but the pedal didn't work how it should. There was fuzz but I was getting a constant tone coming through and none of the knobs worked. This took me weeks to figure out. Checking my work over and over and just staring at that thing. I got really frustrated at this point. I knew that I had a great sounding circuit but this was just not working. Taking the board out of the box and testing each section of the circuit still baffled me. I came pretty close to just walking this thing downstairs, laying it on the driveway and backing over it with my van. After that I would put it in drive and run it over a second time. Luckily it didn't come to that. I think I was just in a good state of mind when I was looking at it one day, checking my work and I found that I needed to drill an extra hole in the vero board to block a connection. Could that be it??

I took the whole board and tested it on the breadboard and.....IT WORKED!!!!!! Oh man I was so happy and thrilled. Wow, I did it!!! I wired it back up and plugged it in. Boy did I crank my amp for that. Loved it. This thing rocks. Have a listen.
What a cool project. Very proud of myself. Now lets see if I can duplicate it. You might want one.

Inquire at LittleMBD@gmail.com.

Special thanks to ZVEX for the inspiration. Chase Bliss' Joel Korte for the education and KJ Audio's Kris Johnson for the confidence. One small leap for a little man. One giant leap for mankind.

The Magician

This is the Build Your Own Clone Leeds Fuzz. It comes as a kit with all it's parts and a plain metal casing. You can decorate it how ever you wish. This guitar effects pedal is a clone of the Vox Superfuzz made famous by the great Pete Townshend of The Who heard on the Live At Leeds album.

Here I decoupaged a copy of one of my favorite Tarot cards The Magician (this one is from the Rider-Waite deck) on top and painted the casing yellow to match. I also replaced the stock black knobs for red ones to match the artwork. It has a switch that changes it's settings from a tighter wooly harmonic fuzz that sounds great playing two notes at once, to a wider aluminum heavy sounding fuzz. I find that the first option cuts through in a live band setting and this has got pretty good volume too. I used this sound on Little Man's song I Know Who You Are off the Original Face album. (in the video I state using it on "We Understand" but that is not the case.)

Here's a little Tarot lesson on The Magician, but first take a look at this image and see what your gut feeling is about it. Trust THAT. The Tarot is for you. It is card number 1. The number of unity. The connector of the many to the one. The Magician takes things out of thin air and makes them appear just like a songwriter takes ideas out of the ether and brings them into reality. The conscience between sub-conscience to cosmic-conscience. He has everything he needs to perform. Awareness of dreams. Captivating performer in the moment. Infinity, not of time.

From the Marseilles deck.

This is a fun hobby for me. I like to listen to my vinyl collection and work on stuff like this and them test them out and get creative with the sounds through an amp and then with the band. You can check out my other builds The Fuzzy Face, Fat Rocket and the Tube Dreamer if you're into it.

Tube Dreamer

This is the OD2 Tube Screamer clone from BYOC. It comes as a kit that you build. This is the 3rd build I've done (see previus posts of my Fuzzy Face and Fat Rocket) I call my version the Tube Dreamer. I took a picture from one of my LP covers and stuck it on there and painted the enclosure green like the original Tube Screamer. This guitar effect pedal is an overdrive. It's great when used with a clean tube amp and then this bumps it up a couple notches. Stevie Ray Vaughan is probably the most notable guitar player that uses this. It's a very popular classic pedal. BYOC's pedal also has a separate boost on one side, that gives you an increase in volume and that "just right" break up tone from amp.

The build ables you to make some modifacations or "mods" as they say from the orginal TS808 Tube Screamer it's built off of. I chose to (and here's the tech talk if you want to skip ahead) replace the final 470 ohm for a 220 for a little more gain. Added Mosfet B5170 clipping. Replaced the .22uf Tantalum capacitor for a .15 for better tone knobe frequency responce. I did some research on the mods to learn about them and figure out which ones I wanted to do. It even has three trim pots inside that you can adjust for Louder, Min and Max drive. I also added the blue LED's.

I had just gotten a new record player and a whole mess of albums from a friend so it was really cool to put on an LP and work on this project. The build was fairly easy but a little more difficult then the others I built.

I tried this pedal with my little Silvertone tube amp. Playing the amp at half volume gives a nice clean tone, a little dark, that's just the character of this amp. Using the boost of the pedal I can make it sound like it's up all the way breaking up nicely. With just the "tube screamer" side on, it gives a great overdriven distortion brightening up my amp and giving it a little more of a Vox amp sound. Both sides on lurches out a ripping tight zip tone kind of similar to a low batteried Fuzz Face.

Listen to the demo:

Fat Rocket!

I finished building an effects box for my guitar. I call it the Fat Rocket. It's the BYOC Large Beaver, a clone of the classic Big Muff. This distortion pedal has been around since the early 70's made by ElectroHarmonix. You'd be familiar with it if you've heard Pink Floyd, Dinosaur Jr and The White Stripes among countless others. It's a very thick and heavy guitar tone with lots of sustain. My first build was the BYOC Fuzz Face clone (see earlier blog post) and loved not only the sound of it but the experience of building it as well. I haven't had a hobby like this since I was a kid building lots of airplane models. It's great to get back into something so detailed. Something my mind can be present with. To be focused on something, to zen with.

Although easy to lots of builders, this one was just a step more complicated than my previous build. I started with preparing and painting the case first. I had never done this before. My other one I covered in fuzzy fabric, this one I spray painted red layers on, over and over again. Then I figured out a design and got some stickers of a fat looking rocket and some gold stars to put on there and hand panted the name I came up with. Very steady hands!! I had the words painted on there so nicely until I tried to make one final touch with one of the letters and a big drop of paint fell from my paint pen onto it. I was so upset!! Why did I have to perfect something that was already good! Ugh. I quickly had to wipe it down and spray paint over it. In my rush I completely sprayed my hand that was holding the case. Even after trying to wash it off, my hand looked like it had been bloodied after a killing for a day or two.

While this stuff dried I started soldering the components to the board and then added the pots and jacks. You can build this to the Ram's Head or Triangle versions of the Big Muff. I went for the Ram's Head. The trickiest part was wiring this thing. It took a little while to get my soldering skills up to speed too. Some of my first soldering attempts were pretty sketchy and I knew that if this thing didn't work, that was probably the problem to be looked at. I worked on the pedal on and of and in bits over a couple of months.

And then I finished it. ooohhh ... will it work?...what will it sound like?...what's going to happen? I got all excited to plug it in and step on it! Plugged it in. Turned on the amp. With it off, I got clean signal going through it. That's good. Then, the moment of truth, I strummed a chord and hit the switch and POW!! We have lift off!! It worked!! What a great feeling. It really sounds good.