Mini Fuzz Shootout/Comparison: Si Tonebender, Devi Ever Hyperion, Roger Mayer Octavia

Happy new year!

Been ages since I've posted anything, but that's not to say I haven't been having some fun with building a pedal or ten...!

I happened to have been talking about fuzz pedals with a friend a while back, and as I had a few plugged in and a mic facing my AC4 I thought I'd record a quick comparison for him to have a listen as he was keen to.

The fuzzes are:

 - Silicon Tonebender - not an "official" Tone Bender design as far as I'm aware, but rather an adaptation of the MkII circuit to work well with low gain Si transistors. Layout, discussion and a few more info HERE on Mark's blog.

 - Devi Ever Hyperion - extremely simple to build yet great sounding fuzz from Devi Ever. Dirty attack, singing sustain, like some kind of ratty bastard son of a Big Muff. HERE you can find layout, discussion and a few more info, again on Mark's blog.

 - Roger Mayer Octavia - To call it the Purple Haze fuzz would be to celebrate it and do it an injustice at the same time. Worthy of its legendary status and yet it can lend itself to so many different sounds and contexts. I built mine using the layout made by Harald at Sabrotone, which can be found HERE

Please keep in mind all fuzzes are set to maximum or thereabout so, while this demo can give you an idea of each individual pedal's tone, it won't quite showcase the range of sounds they can achieve.

Fender Jazzmaster > pedals > Vox AC4 <Shure SM57 / Play in full HD for best sound quality.

Enjoy!

Roger Mayer Octavia Clone

The Roger Mayer Octavia is a circuit I've been wanting to put together for quite some time, but never got around to until now.

The reason why I've wanted it for so long became clear as soon as I stomped on it. The reason why I waited until now remains a mystery. I love the sound, the fuzz is dirty but very responsive while the octave is always lurking in the background but really comes out with the old neck pickup/rolled off tone combination.

That said, I only ever found one strip board layout for it on a rather impractical 30-something long board, which would have required an unnecessary large enclosure.

After having a go myself at a more practical layout and failing to come up with something reasonably compact I thought I'd try turning to someone who'd know better. I left a little message on Harald's request page at Sabrotone with a link to the schematic and within a couple of hours or so there it was. Brilliant.

Here's the great layout by Harald (click on it to be redirected to his website's post):

I didn't have any C10Ks (rev logs) for the gain control and opted for a B10K (linear). The result is not ideal, as over half the swipe gives clean tone with little or no gain variation nor octave. I will be replacing it with the correct taper hoping for a more usable range. The schematic didn't indicate how to orientate the pot and I ended up wiring it backwards, something I will correct when I'll switch for the rev log taper pot. The diodes used were metered and matched.

I housed it in a Hammerite-looking 1590B I bought a while ago in Maplin's reductions corner and have since kept on the side for this very pedal. Great to see it all finally boxed up! Put a couple of (pretty ugly) knobs for the time being, but will replace with black Davies 1510s. Here's the result (alas not yet 100% final):

And finally, a demo I recorded. Do keep in mind the Gain knob is wired backwards. It can sing, clean up, spit and fart. I love it for noisy, octavey, gnarly sounds as those towards the end - lots of fun to be had with this one. Definitely a personal favourite.

Electra Ranger

This is a fun circuit which is very simple and good sounding. It is a direct derivative of the Lovepedal Woodrow, which is an Electra Distortion with a few value changes.

The layout for the Woodrow was posted a few days back on Mark's layouts blog and, as every simple, low parts and good sounding circuit, pretty much had to be built.

I love pedals that are simple and have never been a big fans of 5+ knobbers that offer endless combinations, but I felt it would have been nice to give the Woodrow something extra, and opted for an input cap blend control, which basically control the amount of input capacitance and hence the amount of bass that comes into the pedal.

The input caps values I opted for are 4n7 (for that Rangemaster, trebley feel) and 2u2 (which should make it very bass friendly, too). The higher value cap is blended in parallel to the lower value one by a potentiometer which I call Range.

I adapted Mark's layout to accommodate the extra cap and potentiometer and here is what I cam up with:

It's probably not the most compact way of doing it, but I preferred to stick with Mark's original layout as much as I could and didn't feel the need to made a simple and small layout even smaller.

The result is a very nice sounding overdrive, with more than enough volume to push the front of your amp. A gain control can be added, too, as shown on Mark's blog entry.

So there you have it, a slightly modded Electra Distortion with a Range control aka the Electra Ranger.

I socketed the transistor and clipping diodes to try a few different combinations and quickly recorded the results. It is fair to mention that I adjusted the volume of the clips in order to make them all as loud as each other as the germanium diodes (1N34A and OA91) resulted in less output while the LEDs gave a higher output. Unity was under 12 o'clock in all cases anyway, so far from being a quiet pedal. The range control is set halfway all the way through. Path is Fender Jazzmaster (bridge pickup) > Electra Ranger > Vox AC4, recorded straight with an SM57.

Here's the quick test/components shootout:

After a little playing around I think my favorite combination is the 2N5089 with Germaniums (differences between the 1N34A and OA91 are very subtle but having to choose I'd probably go for the latter). I will record a few more clips with that combination in place and play around with the range control at different amp volumes, so do check back. Good tones to be had!

Alex

First post!

Just thought I'd spend a minute writing a quick, introductory post to explain a bit who I am, what I do and what this is about.

First and foremost, despite this being a blog about building pedals, I am not an electronic engineer, nor have I taken electronics as a subject at any point during my life as a student. What I really am is a guitar player. I've been playing guitar for roughly 13 years and, like most of us do, always loved an effect pedal or three - or even more - which is why I decided to take some time to learn a bit more about how they work, how they are made and how they can be made.

In this blog you will find reports, sound clips, schematics/layouts and, in general, information about some of my builds, with the aim to show how I get things done, make a few recordings available for reference and simply share what I'm learning as I put together different circuits.

I know it will be fun for me, and I hope it will end up being useful for someone, at some point...!

Enjoy,
Alex