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Any DIY pedal builders on TB? Strut your stuff!
- Thread starter SubHuman
- Start date
Just realized I forgot to post this here, so:
[Copy-paste of intro blurb from the last time I did this:] I've been at the pedal building game for quite some time now, and I feel like I've come a huge way from my dad helping me solder up my very first Big Muff (love you, Dad) wherein I overpaid for every component, didn't understand the concept of positive ground and built it with 2N5087s, and burdened it with a completely
purple rattle-can paint job. After having discovered the magic of PCBs, UV printing services, powdercoating, etc., seeing some of my more recent builds next to the older ones was making several of the older ones look pretty sad. With that in mind, I thought it might be a nice exercise to revisit a few of my older builds with a fresh, more experienced perspective, and bring them up to today's version of my standards.
On today's episode, we're talking about the Greer Green Giant, which is a really interesting circuit. On the surface, the Green Giant looks like nothing - an Electra with a diode blend (or, let's say, a warp control) - but even that small change opens up a lot of versatility (this is not news to anyone, it's why we have 1500 "different" Electras kicking around) and it's really a decent sounding circuit. Back in 2014, a vero layout for the Green Giant was posted over at Tagboard FX, to which one builder offered the advice:
That advice turned out to be a million-dollar idea, and spawned a large community discussion and the eventual development of the "Germanium Giant", a variant of the Green Giant designed to accommodate a full complement of germanium semiconductors. The beauty of that was that almost any transistor and diodes in any combination could be used to similarly pleasing effect in the circuit, and there were lots of contributions from people describing their favourite combinations and modifications to the original. I got bit by the bug as well and was inspired to make my own:
While the pedal sounded great (more on that below), the build itself is embarrassing. The board had come unstuck from its mounting pad (who knows how long after I stuck it there the first time), it's a mess of spaghetti wiring, the jacks are salvaged switched-tip mono for no reason whatsoever, and I stuck it in a badly drilled, raw aluminum enclosure (if you look closely, you can see that the knobs are misaligned). I don't know what 2015 me was thinking with this. The pedal was ripe for an upgrade, and with the relatively recent release of the Jolly fuzz project at PedalPCB, I thought it would be timely to share my updated take on the "Germanium Giant", which I'm calling the "Germanium Giant Plus", through the magic of Retrospective:
First off, I've modified the circuit in a few ways, to address some issues and increase convenience. Firstly, there is an ICL7660S-based polarity inverter on board, and the builder can have the board accommodate NPN or PNP transistors at the flip of a simple slide switch. This maintains the ability to use the originally-specified MP38 transistor (an NPN device) if desired, but also allows the builder to tap into the much larger stock of good PNP germanium devices still out there. The most significant problem with the original Germanium Giant is that there is a substantial volume loss when the diodes are fully "on" - barely above unity. This version adds a second gain stage after the original "Green Giant" circuit block to recover the lost level. It's not just a clean gain stage, though - it's 80% of another Green Giant, with the caveat that the emitter resistor is not sent to ground but rather to the opposite power rail, so we gain a little bit of headroom.
The beauty of this circuit, the variability of using whatever components you like within certain broad limits, is retained. The diodes can be anything germanium, Q1 can be [almost] any germanium device you like, and Q2 can be any BJT at all (germanium or silicon). With a germanium Q2 and the diodes fully "off", the tone is not "clean" as you might expect from a regular Green Giant/Germanium Giant, but the bipolar power on Q2 helps it not get into crazy drive territory under these conditions (which is not desired). A silicon Q2 keeps things much cleaner at low values of the diode blend. I also adjusted the diode blend control in two ways: 1) it works oppositely to the standard Green Giant (turning it up turns on the diodes more, and so I've labelled it "Dirt" instead of "Clean" or "Blend"), which I thought was more intuitive, and 2) I have specified a B10K instead of the original B20K or B25K because I found this gave a more useful sweep.
I simply scavenged my old pedal to supply some of the parts for my personal build shown above. I chose a 2SA49 (42 hFE, 14 uA leakage) as Q1, an MP16B (14 hFE, 20 uA leakage) as Q2, and real vintage 1N34As from my dad's ham radio repair parts stash for the diodes. I chose to use 330nF coupling capacitors for low-end retention without blowing out the bass frequencies. Relay bypass comes courtesy of MattG at PedalPCB, who was kind enough to send me several of his lovely bypass modules in exchange for a long-term quality evaluation; this build contains his V1.0 module. So far so good!
The graphic, which might be recognizable to some of you, is a stylized frame from The Iron Giant (1999) where I edited a geranium into his hand ("Germanium?? oh, I thought you said "geranium"... you get it) and made the indicator LEDs his eyes. The title is rendered in a super cool font called "Dragon Is Coming", and the rest of the labels are Footlight MT Light. The knobs are some old bits from Tayda that I swiped from the original pedal because I actually liked them and wanted to reuse them. The graphic was printed at Tayda on a Pearl Grey 1590B. It was a tight squeeze for sure, but I did manage to get top jacks into a 1590B!
So how does it sound? I chose the 2SA49/1N34A combo for the original pedal because I liked the deep, smooth drive tone you could get out of them. This pedal is amazing for bass because you can blend in subtle drive without blending in your unaltered clean tone, which sometimes conflicts with the wet tone. This works doubly well with the bit of intrinsic drive you get from having Q1 drive a germanium Q2, and I chose the MP16B purely because of how well I thought it complemented the other two component choices. You can get A LOT of different tones and feels from this circuit just by changing the semiconductors. I didn't include any bias trimmers on this board because I found that the "stock" Q1 collector and emitter resistor values worked well for almost every transistor you could stick in there, with one exception - AC125/AC128 do NOT make good Q1s; they're very fuzzy and gross-sounding unless you take the collector resistor down from 47K to 10K or less, and even then don't have the most pleasing tone, so I would recommend avoiding these. On the other hand, those same devices make excellent Q2s.
I plan on sharing the gerbers and build documentation for this project on my website (see link in my signature) at some point in the near future, I'm just still working on some other stuff I want to put up at the same time. This batch of boards has a typo on the silkscreen, but I've fixed it and the uploaded gerbers will be corrected.
A lot of the ideas that went into these mods were proposed in the linked thread from Tagboard above, so I don't want to take too much credit, I just consolidated them with my own spin into one variant.
[Copy-paste of intro blurb from the last time I did this:] I've been at the pedal building game for quite some time now, and I feel like I've come a huge way from my dad helping me solder up my very first Big Muff (love you, Dad) wherein I overpaid for every component, didn't understand the concept of positive ground and built it with 2N5087s, and burdened it with a completely
purple rattle-can paint job. After having discovered the magic of PCBs, UV printing services, powdercoating, etc., seeing some of my more recent builds next to the older ones was making several of the older ones look pretty sad. With that in mind, I thought it might be a nice exercise to revisit a few of my older builds with a fresh, more experienced perspective, and bring them up to today's version of my standards.On today's episode, we're talking about the Greer Green Giant, which is a really interesting circuit. On the surface, the Green Giant looks like nothing - an Electra with a diode blend (or, let's say, a warp control) - but even that small change opens up a lot of versatility (this is not news to anyone, it's why we have 1500 "different" Electras kicking around) and it's really a decent sounding circuit. Back in 2014, a vero layout for the Green Giant was posted over at Tagboard FX, to which one builder offered the advice:
That advice turned out to be a million-dollar idea, and spawned a large community discussion and the eventual development of the "Germanium Giant", a variant of the Green Giant designed to accommodate a full complement of germanium semiconductors. The beauty of that was that almost any transistor and diodes in any combination could be used to similarly pleasing effect in the circuit, and there were lots of contributions from people describing their favourite combinations and modifications to the original. I got bit by the bug as well and was inspired to make my own:
While the pedal sounded great (more on that below), the build itself is embarrassing. The board had come unstuck from its mounting pad (who knows how long after I stuck it there the first time), it's a mess of spaghetti wiring, the jacks are salvaged switched-tip mono for no reason whatsoever, and I stuck it in a badly drilled, raw aluminum enclosure (if you look closely, you can see that the knobs are misaligned). I don't know what 2015 me was thinking with this. The pedal was ripe for an upgrade, and with the relatively recent release of the Jolly fuzz project at PedalPCB, I thought it would be timely to share my updated take on the "Germanium Giant", which I'm calling the "Germanium Giant Plus", through the magic of Retrospective:
First off, I've modified the circuit in a few ways, to address some issues and increase convenience. Firstly, there is an ICL7660S-based polarity inverter on board, and the builder can have the board accommodate NPN or PNP transistors at the flip of a simple slide switch. This maintains the ability to use the originally-specified MP38 transistor (an NPN device) if desired, but also allows the builder to tap into the much larger stock of good PNP germanium devices still out there. The most significant problem with the original Germanium Giant is that there is a substantial volume loss when the diodes are fully "on" - barely above unity. This version adds a second gain stage after the original "Green Giant" circuit block to recover the lost level. It's not just a clean gain stage, though - it's 80% of another Green Giant, with the caveat that the emitter resistor is not sent to ground but rather to the opposite power rail, so we gain a little bit of headroom.
The beauty of this circuit, the variability of using whatever components you like within certain broad limits, is retained. The diodes can be anything germanium, Q1 can be [almost] any germanium device you like, and Q2 can be any BJT at all (germanium or silicon). With a germanium Q2 and the diodes fully "off", the tone is not "clean" as you might expect from a regular Green Giant/Germanium Giant, but the bipolar power on Q2 helps it not get into crazy drive territory under these conditions (which is not desired). A silicon Q2 keeps things much cleaner at low values of the diode blend. I also adjusted the diode blend control in two ways: 1) it works oppositely to the standard Green Giant (turning it up turns on the diodes more, and so I've labelled it "Dirt" instead of "Clean" or "Blend"), which I thought was more intuitive, and 2) I have specified a B10K instead of the original B20K or B25K because I found this gave a more useful sweep.
I simply scavenged my old pedal to supply some of the parts for my personal build shown above. I chose a 2SA49 (42 hFE, 14 uA leakage) as Q1, an MP16B (14 hFE, 20 uA leakage) as Q2, and real vintage 1N34As from my dad's ham radio repair parts stash for the diodes. I chose to use 330nF coupling capacitors for low-end retention without blowing out the bass frequencies. Relay bypass comes courtesy of MattG at PedalPCB, who was kind enough to send me several of his lovely bypass modules in exchange for a long-term quality evaluation; this build contains his V1.0 module. So far so good!
The graphic, which might be recognizable to some of you, is a stylized frame from The Iron Giant (1999) where I edited a geranium into his hand ("Germanium?? oh, I thought you said "geranium"... you get it) and made the indicator LEDs his eyes. The title is rendered in a super cool font called "Dragon Is Coming", and the rest of the labels are Footlight MT Light. The knobs are some old bits from Tayda that I swiped from the original pedal because I actually liked them and wanted to reuse them. The graphic was printed at Tayda on a Pearl Grey 1590B. It was a tight squeeze for sure, but I did manage to get top jacks into a 1590B!
So how does it sound? I chose the 2SA49/1N34A combo for the original pedal because I liked the deep, smooth drive tone you could get out of them. This pedal is amazing for bass because you can blend in subtle drive without blending in your unaltered clean tone, which sometimes conflicts with the wet tone. This works doubly well with the bit of intrinsic drive you get from having Q1 drive a germanium Q2, and I chose the MP16B purely because of how well I thought it complemented the other two component choices. You can get A LOT of different tones and feels from this circuit just by changing the semiconductors. I didn't include any bias trimmers on this board because I found that the "stock" Q1 collector and emitter resistor values worked well for almost every transistor you could stick in there, with one exception - AC125/AC128 do NOT make good Q1s; they're very fuzzy and gross-sounding unless you take the collector resistor down from 47K to 10K or less, and even then don't have the most pleasing tone, so I would recommend avoiding these. On the other hand, those same devices make excellent Q2s.
I plan on sharing the gerbers and build documentation for this project on my website (see link in my signature) at some point in the near future, I'm just still working on some other stuff I want to put up at the same time. This batch of boards has a typo on the silkscreen, but I've fixed it and the uploaded gerbers will be corrected.
A lot of the ideas that went into these mods were proposed in the linked thread from Tagboard above, so I don't want to take too much credit, I just consolidated them with my own spin into one variant.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
deepestend
Commercial User
- Feb 21, 2003
- 6,249
- 8,171
- Disclosures
- Website and Social Media at Sadowsky
Question for you guys: I have a wren and cuff super russian. It's a germanium buffer boost>a russian muff with higher output. I love it and of course couldn't help but checking it out to see what was going on-- not my first time doing it with this pedal. It's laid out in a bit of a convoluted way. This is either my impression because I'm not sure what's going on or it's intentional on the part of Wren so that it's confusing.
Anway... it sat on my bench in pieces for a month and I just put it back together last night. Dang... wouldn't pass a signal. Okay, some investigation showed that I scratched a trace between the output and the switch. Jumpered that and a signal passes through both effects. Boost works as it should, but the Muff has an issue. Tone and Vol are fine but the Gain almost works in reverse... as you turn it up, the vol goes down and no fuzz.
Any thoughts on what's going on? Clearly the signal is not getting clipped... but why is the signal lowering the more you turn up the pot? Any thoughts?
Anway... it sat on my bench in pieces for a month and I just put it back together last night. Dang... wouldn't pass a signal. Okay, some investigation showed that I scratched a trace between the output and the switch. Jumpered that and a signal passes through both effects. Boost works as it should, but the Muff has an issue. Tone and Vol are fine but the Gain almost works in reverse... as you turn it up, the vol goes down and no fuzz.
Any thoughts on what's going on? Clearly the signal is not getting clipped... but why is the signal lowering the more you turn up the pot? Any thoughts?
Those solder joints above the bird beak with all the flux on them look kinda suspect to me. Can you clean that off with some isopropyl alcohol and see if the solder joints are Lund underneath?
deepestend
Commercial User
- Feb 21, 2003
- 6,249
- 8,171
- Disclosures
- Website and Social Media at Sadowsky
I agree... those are the 2nd stage clipping diodes. I took them out for a while just see what it would be like with this version of the pedal. The board got some wear and tear with the operation and that's what's there. But I get your point and will check it again... I was getting continuity between the components.
The only thing with that is that when you take the clipping diodes out of the muff circuit it's generally much louder! With this, it's quieter.
The only thing with that is that when you take the clipping diodes out of the muff circuit it's generally much louder! With this, it's quieter.
deepestend
Commercial User
- Feb 21, 2003
- 6,249
- 8,171
- Disclosures
- Website and Social Media at Sadowsky
I'm gonna call it. I'm usually good at fixing this kind of thing... but I'm only making it worse. And they have a "no questions asked" repair policy. I emailed them to ask for suggestions and they said that I should step away from the soldering iron. Humbling, but maybe true in this case.
I was curious about the "Dynamic Audio Grinder" that EQD came up with, so when PedalPCB offered it, I got one .. mainly to see how that marketing blurp ("a highly tweakable hi-fi and modern sounding distortion, but with the ghosts of old school circuitry to deliver a grind that is both instantly familiar and delightfully unique") translates into real life, but as I also had a hunch, that this might be a good match for cello, I decided to make a birthday present for my guitar/keys/cello player.
And as she often makes fun of my ("immature") graphic choices involving women, I gave her a hairy-chested Connery, in nice boots and some sort of borat-style diapers outfit.
(The scratch was a happy drilling accident.)
By the way: it's a fun watch, that movie (Zardoz).
Anyway, she tried it on cello and it sounds absolutely glorious! Gives the instrument mainly more presence and body and awesomeness, without even getting close to the "beware of feedback" territory.
I also made a sound-a-like of the SS/BS F*ck OD.
The circuit has been examined and slightly expanded (with a Sag Depth knob) by Deadend FX. I like their choice and treatment of circuits, but I'm often not too fond of their PCB layout. PedalPCB put it stock into a 125B, but I can't handle two footswitches on a 125B, so I decided to combine the "best of both" for me.
Which is the smaller PCB, in a BB enclosure with the added Sag Depth control for additional fine tuning of the sag effect (depending on Drive and Threshold settings).
I still need to spend more time with it, but so far, I really like the sounds it has to offer. I tend to have the "crackle" always on and turn up the Drive.
"Wheight" seems to need to be down to please me.
Another movie related graphic.
And as she often makes fun of my ("immature") graphic choices involving women, I gave her a hairy-chested Connery, in nice boots and some sort of borat-style diapers outfit.
(The scratch was a happy drilling accident.) By the way: it's a fun watch, that movie (Zardoz).
Anyway, she tried it on cello and it sounds absolutely glorious! Gives the instrument mainly more presence and body and awesomeness, without even getting close to the "beware of feedback" territory.
I also made a sound-a-like of the SS/BS F*ck OD.
The circuit has been examined and slightly expanded (with a Sag Depth knob) by Deadend FX. I like their choice and treatment of circuits, but I'm often not too fond of their PCB layout. PedalPCB put it stock into a 125B, but I can't handle two footswitches on a 125B, so I decided to combine the "best of both" for me.
Which is the smaller PCB, in a BB enclosure with the added Sag Depth control for additional fine tuning of the sag effect (depending on Drive and Threshold settings).
I still need to spend more time with it, but so far, I really like the sounds it has to offer. I tend to have the "crackle" always on and turn up the Drive.
"Wheight" seems to need to be down to please me.
Another movie related graphic.
Zardoz speaksh to youI was curious about the "Dynamic Audio Grinder" that EQD came up with, so when PedalPCB offered it, I got one .. mainly to see how that marketing blurp ("a highly tweakable hi-fi and modern sounding distortion, but with the ghosts of old school circuitry to deliver a grind that is both instantly familiar and delightfully unique") translates into real life, but as I also had a hunch, that this might be a good match for cello, I decided to make a birthday present for my guitar/keys/cello player.
And as she often makes fun of my ("immature") graphic choices involving women, I gave her a hairy-chested Connery, in nice boots and some sort of borat-style diapers outfit.
By the way: it's a fun watch, that movie (Zardoz).
Anyway, she tried it on cello and it sounds absolutely glorious! Gives the instrument mainly more presence and body and awesomeness, without even getting close to the "beware of feedback" territory.
View attachment 5398726
View attachment 5398727
I also made a sound-a-like of the SS/BS F*ck OD.
The circuit has been examined and slightly expanded (with a Sag Depth knob) by Deadend FX. I like their choice and treatment of circuits, but I'm often not too fond of their PCB layout. PedalPCB put it stock into a 125B, but I can't handle two footswitches on a 125B, so I decided to combine the "best of both" for me.
Which is the smaller PCB, in a BB enclosure with the added Sag Depth control for additional fine tuning of the sag effect (depending on Drive and Threshold settings).
I still need to spend more time with it, but so far, I really like the sounds it has to offer. I tend to have the "crackle" always on and turn up the Drive.
"Wheight" seems to need to be down to please me.
Another movie related graphic.
View attachment 5398730
View attachment 5398731
The gun ish good
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
i just finished this one last night. it's an Analog Nior Tonebender MKII. Point to point on an eyelet board, with all PNP vintage germanium transistors. since it required a center positive DC jack, i made and installed a voltage inverter so i could just use a standard center negative supply.
deepestend
Commercial User
- Feb 21, 2003
- 6,249
- 8,171
- Disclosures
- Website and Social Media at Sadowsky
Very remedial question here for someone who has been building pedals for a long time... how do I start with vero? There's a blend circuit that has instructions on how to boost the clean signal so that it's the same level as the blended in signal. I'd like to make one to see if I like it, but the PCB's aren't being made anymore and the guy isn't responding: http://www.rutgerockhorst.com/nucleonfx/documentation/fusion.pdf
Someone on pedal pcb sent me their layout, but I'm not sure how to get started with it. Any tips?
Someone on pedal pcb sent me their layout, but I'm not sure how to get started with it. Any tips?
deepestend
Commercial User
- Feb 21, 2003
- 6,249
- 8,171
- Disclosures
- Website and Social Media at Sadowsky
It was down for maintenance a few weeks ago. When it came back up, it was all jacked. I'm guessing he took it down again.
PedalPCB Drebbel submarine preamp.
Now I understand the hype to this mythical pedal. Each toggle switch setting sounds good in it's own way. I especially like the 1kHz boost position.
Now I understand the hype to this mythical pedal. Each toggle switch setting sounds good in it's own way. I especially like the 1kHz boost position.
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