Spring Reverb with tank from old amp

 How I came about building this was the result of an unfortunate event. Don't let people with booze near your gear!!! Some one dropped a boubon and coke all over my Marshall VS265 and it dribbled inside, all over the circuit board while it was on. Fried it, and although not impossible to fix perhaps - too major for my abilities at the time. Sigh,  I loved that amp. I had to replace it with same. Took a while looking out for one. $500 later all's well that ends well I suppose.

The fried Marshall has been saved for parts for No2 mostly, I've pulled the speakers and made a couple of extension cabinets out of plywood with them. There was also this spare reverb tank that turned out to be exactly the one required for General guitar gadgets "Centre Stage Reverb". Thanks to them for posting this stuff. Had to build it, and it works well. A very analogue reverb. I'm happy enough for this to be my keeper. I only use it when I'm playing clean stuff, and a bit of subtle delay, nice and glassy.

Artwork was done during the sticky decal film period. Painted the enclosure white, then had a go wrapping it entirely in the printed film. Not something I'd recommend. I managed to do it reasonably tidy. The overlap splices are mostly where it looks less than pro. It's not too bad though and allowed me to continue the art pattern all over.

RECYCLED MARSHALL SPEAKERS 

Made up from what I had lying around. Rubbing the stain on ply turned out quite cool I thought.

Klon Buffer

 

 

So if you end up with more pedals on your board than you really need- like me, you might find one of these little things handy. Volume drop through a lot of pedals, or signal strength more to say weakens. One of these will re-invigorate your signal. I use the Silver Klon at the beginning of my chain. It's on a lot of the time in a subtle fashion, so boosting my incoming signal when on and doing the same when off with the built in buffered bypass.

To avoid my signal having to go through everything on the board, I use a 5 position true bypass looper. I've just finished making my own version of this. Will post later.

My chain is from IN🠊 Tuner 🠊 Klon / BUFFER🠊 loop1 distortion/high gain pedal/s 🠊 loop2 Overdrive pedal/s  🠊 loop3  Modulation -phaser, chorus, tremelo etc  BUFFER🠊 loop4  Delay 🠊 loop5 Reverb 🠊 Noise gate 🠊 EQ 🠊 Boost 🠊 Out to Amp. Right or wrong it works for me.

 The looper allows me to true bypass most of the pedals not in use at the time. With the EQ and boost at the end I don't find the need for a buffer there. I made this one up to sit at the end of whatever modulation pedals I have on board at the time.  It's these pedals I mostly suffered losses from and placing one here seems to have erased that problem well. I found a small box so it can be placed without much room grab. 

I've made another out of a used Mustard box- thought it seemed appropriate to the purpose of the circuit. Works sweet. Switchable with a 3pdt toggle, led indicator, wired the input straight out to a plug due to access restrictions. This one will go on my ultimate pedal board in the end.

The circuit is basically a trace of the buffer built in the Klon, small and easy to build with common TL072 ( probably many dual op-amps would work here). You can find circuit for this on many of the sites I've put up that offer layouts

Fuzz Factory from Musikding

 

The Factory

 

 Ok, so starting off I got a kit from Musikding in germany. “The Factory”. To New Zealand was very reasonable I thought. Against my principle of “from scratch” I know. I needed the matched germaniums, AC125’s in this case and putting together an easy circuit and the offboard wiring from a kit seemed like a good way to introduce myself to making these things.

The kit was great, easy to follow and easy to make if you’re good at soldering already.

This circuit is crazy, thats for sure.

My artwork at this stage is printable clear sticky film with clear-coat topping.

Incidentally, in my search for germaniums AC128’s at the time, i came across some from Ali-express. 10 for $10. What the hell, got a pack to see what you got. I don’t know whether they purposely plant them or it was just sheer luck , but there were 2 out of the 10 with the perfect HFE/gain measurements. One at 70 the other at 110. They sit in this now and doing the job very well. AC125’s will go on a future project. I'm aware Ali-express is risky, and it is. Last resort perhaps. I have had a fair success and some failures here for parts i cant find elsewhere for a reasonable price.  

Barbershop

 Raw, gritty, warm, smooth, open and transparent are all terms that have been used to describe this overdrive. It sounds great with any setup, but truly shines when used to dirty up a tube amp.

Another early pedal. I'm still using the decal film. The circuit is the fairfield circuitry "Barbershop"

A very nice organic transparent overdrive. After playing it for awhile, bliss really summed it up for me . Sounds just like demos. Circuit in vero layout is here : https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/search?q=barbershop