I've decided, after a protracted but intermittent period of research, to build a Colorsound One Knob Fuzz guitar pedal. The criteria that guided my choice of circuit are -
1. As my first "proper" stompbox build, the circuit needed to be simple. I've made AB boxes, TB loopers and a couple of tap tempo switches, but they were all totally passive, so this one has to have as few parts to wrong as possible. A single volume knob, 12/15 components, a couple of jacks, a switch and 9v powering should be managable.
2. I don't want to mess around sourcing matched tranistors or testing them myself or endlessly swapping them out for different pairs to hear the diffence - this circuit is reputed to sound pretty good with a BC108 and BC109, which seem easy to come by.
3. The parts needs to be cheapish - This first build is really only a excercise to learn about building stompboxes: I have much grander plans to make a couple of boxes that you can't really get commercially, e.g. a Lovetone Meatball. You can pick up a cheap, basic fuzz for £30, so a cheap basic fuzz made by me as a practice attempt needs to cost a third of that or less.
My brother-in-law gave me the parts to build an AB box, so I've got the 3PDT, jacks, LED, power jack and battery holder, so the stripboard and components shouldn't come to more than £3.00ish. Next step - Sort the layout and look into grounded-input switching....
Sunday, 12 April 2009
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