@bilansley
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If you are trying to go for the “OG” sound of that circuit, 1n34a (if they are in fact legit), NOS 1n60p, and those USSR D series are all real good choices. I have found that in a K style circuit, taking the time to measure the fV on each diode, then trying to match two together that are extremely close in value will get you closer to the classic sound of this pedal than trying to go for a specific part.
I normally use the Soviet D9E in there, but only because they are inexpensive, plentiful, usually pretty close to the stock pedals fV, and normally have a tight tolerance spread making finding two matches ez.
Barry’s suggestion on using DPDT mod board is for sure the easiest way to A/B your selections. You could even have your preferred GE diodes on the board for position “A” and call is “stock”, then have some other interesting and unconventional diode option (asymmetrical Ge, Si diodes, LED, or some combination of those) on the other side “B” and call it “mod”
Yep the originals are as Billy listed above. All of them are obsolete stock now and are relatively pricy if you can find ones that are for sure not fakes. Small Bear Electronics has all of the above mentioned transistors. Their stock is legit and prices aren’t too bad.
But most importantly you are basically looking for a mid to highish gain silicon NPN transistor! There are literally tons of options and all will have slightly different characters to them. I will also note that NPN is the main characteristic of the transistor you are looking for. Germanium NPN transistors would likely work straight away in that board and will give you a much different sonic texture. Just be sure to use transistors that have been tested to have low leakage! (this is very important for germanium NPN, as they are notorious for being very very leaky).
My recommendation would be for the BC183 as they are pretty readily available for a reasonable cost, if you want the “vintage mojo”, but the 2N5088 is super cheap and well for sure work for you! Also be sure you confirm the pin out of the transistor before you solder anything up lol, most are the same unless its one of the millions of transistors that arn’t 🙁
That is a really cool look for the aesthetic! I’ve not really seen a whole of folks using acrylic like that to integrate the enclosure with the pedal art. Looks extremely clean and pro. I really like it! The green screaming face kind of reminds me of the Pickle Rick episode of Rick and Morty lol.
You could say that that their tones were just going through a phase………..
Kirk Hammett’s out of phase setup is generally attributed to an error made by his tech, but even earlier Fleetwood Mac’s co-founder Peter Green had a similar set up with out of phase pickups as well. If I’m not mistaken his modification was intentional.
I *think* that when Kirk found out that his guitar sounded amazing because of the out of phase situation, he realized that it was a similar sound to Peter Green’s tone and that is why Kirk’s LP with an upside-down pickup was named “Greeny”. Im pretty sure I also heard somewhere that sometime right before Peter Green died (2020) Kirk Hammett purchased Green’s 59′ LP for some silly amount of money. That means Kirk Hammett has his “Greeny” LP made by mistake and now has Peter Green out of phase LP which started this whole thing! What a lucky dude.
Awesome Darren! Glad I was able to shed some light on it.
I tried really hard to be as “to the point” as possible. I work in the engineering field and the last thing I wanted to do was to put someone through the kinds of lectures on discrete electronics that I had to sit though in college LOL! The whole phase topic IS really interesting however, and actually plays a fairly critical role in the vast audio universe, especially in live sound applications. So, if you ever want to give your brain a solid workout I totally recommend watching some YT or doing some deep Wiki reading on the subject!
one last side note on phase: If you are running your pedal rig into a modeler or amp connected to a load box and not using a speaker cab (your taking the line out from the modeler/load box and going into a mixer/Audio interface) AND you will ultimately bring that line signal from the mixer/interface into a channel of your DAW then consider this – once the signal is “in your computer” i.e. it has gone though AD conversion and is now “bits'” instead of an analog waveform, in some but not all cases your DAW either automatically accounts for and adjusts phase relationships , or its pretty simple to “flip” the phase in post processing. I’m starting to ramble and we are going down a rabbit hole at this point, but it should be noted that there are many ways and places you can “fix” phase if at all’
That brings me to my very last comment on the matter…..I swear. Phase mis-alignment isn’t necessarily a “dirty word” or bad thing. In fact lots of producers and musicians intentionally flip or otherwise manipulate phase to exploit some cool effect that can be generated (we are familiar with phaser pedals yes?). My favorite phase related tid-bit of music trivia is the story of Kirk Hammett’s “Greeny” Les Paul. Long story short his tech was repairing a Les Paul that Kirk was using at the time and when the pick-ups were replaced the tech accidentally installed one of the humbuckers upside down. As a result the signal of the guitar in certain positions was out of phase. When Kirk used the guitar he immediately noticed that it sounded different, but he liked the way it sounded so much he told his tech to leave it and that tone became something he is really well known for as an artist.
This concludes part II of my musings on phase and audio signals…..im for real done now
Here is how to correct phase in post in Logic (I assume similar in other DAWs):
Go for it Playsforfun! I was the same way at first with the whole P2P/turret board builds at first. I’ve only done p2p rangemasters and FuzzFaces for the record however.
Mine IS functional and DOES sound good, but it wouldn’t be hard to beat mine in term of a clean build. There are really talented people out there who make absolutely insane p2p builds. They sound good for sure, but the actual design and build goes far beyond functionality. they are truly works of art. I am not anywhere near that level! But thanks for the props!
The RM circuit is so simple and that helps, literally a handful of components. Actually populating the turret board with the parts is very strait forward and soldering it all up can get a little tricky but with any kind of soldering experience one can get the feel of it pretty quickly.
The only part that can get kind of hairy is wiring it all up. Unless you are very nimble it helps to have some “3rd” hand clips and other various tools I tend to waste a bunch of wire, but I like to have the extra slack to give me room to work.
With this particular one, I totally used vanity parts and maximized the mojo factor because its a gift for someone that I know will really appreciate the details, but if you just want to build a P2P RM or FF don’t worry to much about all that.
The cheap-o carbon film 1/2 or 1/4w resistors are great, and the electrolytic caps can be any axial type (doesn’t need be NOS). The only parts that I have ever seen make any kind of difference are the film caps. But again I’ve used all kinds and while there are subtle differences they all sound “good”.
Transistor selection also will affect things, but the valid choices you can pick from contain a lifetime of experimentation. Don’t get hung up on exact hfe or brand or even the exact bias voltage. In fact I have not once never used a multimeter to bias a P2P build. Your ears will tell you when it’s biased 😉
Make sure to test and audit the transistor to verify it’s not wildly out of spec for the circuit and has low leakage. A leaky transistor is just about the only thing you can use parts wise that will make it sound objectively worse than a non-leaky one. Most often on the RM I won’t even use a trimmer, I just experiment for a bit with a couple of resistor values and find one that sounds good with the transistor I choose. It’s very much the lazy version of the proper transistor auditing procedure.
It’s a great learning experience too. Helps transition your mindset in electronics from “painting by numbers”, to seeing, understanding and manipulating a schematic to the point that you can articulate what’s going on and then how to change it to do something else lol!
NIce! I like the trippy tie dye swirl! I think this going to be the next Triple NT build I’m going to do. Absolutely love my Doom Prophet and 70s!
The phase toggle will be pretty hard articulate if you don’t have more information about what it’s plugged into. The phase inverter toggle takes whatever phase the input signal is and flips it. Therefore you need to know what phase the signal is in coming into the Paramix. What determines the final phase of the signal is made up of several things, but amounts to the specific combinations of particular pedal circuits you have going into the Paramix and also what order they are in.
To confuse you more 🙁 often times the the signal going into the Paramix will be in phase anyways because none of the circuits before it (or the final output the circuits sum to “in phase”) invert the phase……..thus flipping the phase inverter would actually be detrimental to your tone. But its subtle at best (subjectively to me) and there are lots of well known pedals that output an out of phase/inverted signal anyways. So there is that about the phase switch
As far as the wet gain goes the Paramix has an effects loop. Here you can take whatever signal is coming from the input and then send it to whatever pedals are in said efx loop on the Paramix. The signal then goes to the return of that loop. This if your “wet” signal. The “dry” is simply the input from the “in”. Using the wet and dry gain knobs you can adjust the relative levels of each signal to taste, then using the mix knob you can gradually blend your wet signal with the dry signal. Fully CW, the mix is 100% wet, fully CCW the signal is 100% dry. Noon is 50/50, etc. The blended singal is finally sent to the output when you can go straight to you amplifier, or even into another section of pedals if you like.
At this point and this point only should you consider the phase switch, as we need to consider the summed signal’s phase going to the output. In the simplest terms if its in phase leave it be, if its out of phase flip the switch. To honest the explanation of phase and how it relates to sounds and our perception of it is pretty complex, but I think Barry has whether or not the final signal is in phase for most of the circuits from guitarPCB, so if your pedal chain is relatively small it shouldn’t be hard to figure if your Paramix output is in or out of phase!
Two great ways to use a Paramix:
1- Put a distortion like a 250 or RAT or any drive pedal in the efx loop of Paramix and set it to 100% wet, add a little bit of dry signal back into the wet distortion signal. This will return some bass frequencies back into your signal that are often rolled off in pedals like RAT, Distortion+, DoD 250. Now you pedal setup is “bass ready” and you tweak it as you need it.
2- Take reverbs/delays or other time based modulations and stack them in the effects loop. These time based affects are in parallel to your input signal and can be precisely dialed in to blend perfectly with your main signal.
bonus use 1: Use the send of the EFX loop on the paramix as a 2nd output for stereo rigs. bonus use 2: Use the return jack on the efx loop to mix in another guitar input, OR down mix a stereo pedal into mono. All of this while keeping things in phase.
super useful little device actually!
Haha yea the mojo stuff is great. I love the whole vintage and collector aspect, not that it really super matters in terms of outright tone (ok the transistors sorta do), I just find it helps me get in the mindset and vibe of the period for what I’m jamming.
Agree about the the Japanese Ge. I’ve got a decent stash of transistors of all kinds and the Matsushita, Adzam, Toshiba, Sanyo etc are my favorite, especially for a RM (subjectively speaking). Even the Japanese NPN germanium are real good, Sanyo SD series specifically. They usually arn’t leaky and the gain is usually right around what the “spec” supposedly is for that particular part number. Plus the lower gain buckets when biased just so are incredibly smooth and creamy. More “velvet” less “velcro” type fuzz.
I’ve only been on these forums for a shot time, but from the very moment that I found this community most of the time any knowledge and answers I was seeking lead to a post or thread that Ray either personally wrote or provided the most useful insight on. It’s a real big loss for everyone.
People that have filled their life seeking and spreading knowledge are a particularly special variety of human and while I did not personally know him I was directly inspired and educated by his participation in this forum.
Thanks Barry for letting us know about his passing, but also thank you for sharing the wonderful experiences you and your family personally had with him.
I fully support the idea that Alan had above and would buy the heck out of PCB (possibly a NT TripleCombo style) based on some of the circuits that Ray really liked and talked about that was named after him. He always had interesting insights on fuzz pedals and provided some really neat mods to modulations effects like chorus and phaser.
You can mess with the R6/C5 and the R7/C6 section with the Ruetz trimmer to modify the bass response, but if you scour the internet about that section on the circuit you will find that it is very much as double edge sword, in that it alters the traditional tone of the pedal. If you want the classic sound but straight up need more bass, the only way to really do this is to blend in some of the clean guitar signal.
The Buff N’ Blend mentioned above by Barry is the ticket to do this. You can basically use the buff n blend to make any of the gain pedals “bass guitar ready”.
With silicon NPN transistors I personally have found that in general the leakage is nearly non-existant so that is kinda a non-issue to give concern to. Also it seems from my experience that when you are dealing with the gain ranges given for the BC10*(A,B,C) type transistors the actual hFE is also somewhat irrelevant.
Nearly all of the those transistors are above ~200hFE and from what I have tried in different fuzzes, once you get above the ~200 hFE in NPN silicon to my ears it all starts to sounds quite similar.
As an example, I currently have a silicon fuzz face w/ a trimmer inside to bias the transistors. In both Q1 and Q2 I have some really spicy BC109C transistors. Q1 is ~440 and Q2 is well over 700. To my ears it sounds extremely similar to another FF (Silicon SunFace) which has some BC108Bs in it that are in the ~200-300hFE range (it too has a bias trimmer). My point here is that playing with the bias on each of these pedals varies the tone much more that the transistors I started with!
Fortunately, Barry has done a really really good job on parts selection for the Nostalgia Tone boards and as long as you follow his guides lines about which parts to use, the actual stats (as long as they are not defective) doesn’t matter as much.
All of this of course is my personal experience, so this post should be taken with a grain of salt. My best advice mirrors what others have said: with transistors of a vintage nature, always socket them and play with it a bit!
Heck yea! Congrats on the completed Emexar! It’s such a good circuit to get your feet wet in pedal building, plus it sounds soooo good.
Running into problems during assembly can be REAL frustrating, but the satisfaction of successfully troubleshooting an issue and then fixing it is a super satisfying feeling. It’s a huge confidence builder.
You totally got the zoso pedal under control. Im sure that you will have success with it.
I also completely spaced out and forgot I also have these projects. Doom Prophet and WATT amp. I REALLY can’t wait till my 2 week vacation starts on Friday.
I’ve been so busy at work recently that when I get home I don’t have a lot of time so I just look for easy things to complete like soldering in all the resistors, but the result is that a lot of unfinished projects have piled up…..its almost certainly my ADHD too.
Total vanity backdrop of Orange amplifiers (the finest amps on the planet imo).
I figured that it probably wouldn’t make too much difference. Interesting about the mis-biasing, Ill have to read up more on that.
Either way I will say that Raytheon makes a darn fine chip. They are really high quality, they have the strongest, shiniest pins I’ve ever seen on an IC. So I suppose they will be perform as expected. Plus they were really inexpensive when I bought them. I think I paid like $0.58 ea for a whole grip of em.
I like the simplicity a lot. Very efficient and practical plus it looks really good. Are you just hand spraying the enclosures and hand drilling?? They look really clean and pro! Looks like you’re going to be busy this weekend and looks like a ton of fun stuff to work on.
All of em looks like great builds!
Boost pedals are a great first pedal to try and build.
I’ll be honest with you, the fact that you have taken the initiative to use basic tag board and are trying to wire up a circuit shows that you understand electronics far more than most first timers. In reality the way your’re going about it will teach you the most and make you much better much faster than simply putting together a kit!
Im sure that if you dove in with a premade PCB you would have success!
Also on your build you said you have sound when its bypassed but no sound when your active? Im not being silly at all, but have you check to make sure your volume/boost potentiometer is not turned all the way down? I kid you not when I tell you that even to this day, 99% of pedals I finish I kick on to silence because as habit when I wire pots, I ALWAYS turn them all the way down. I don’t know why I do this, but I do and it throws be off constantly.
