Monthly Archives: February 2011

Championship grinder.

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This was a fun little project.  I learned that Hammond makes these enclosures with an optional CAGE TOP!!!  How cool is that?  Its like they’re practically begging you to build a Vox Night Train or an Orange Tiny Terror or the equivalent.  Well I decided to take that down a notch and try an ultra simple tone machine:  the Fender 5C1 Champ.

The 5C1 Champ was an early-ish tweed Fender that made its debut in 1953.  These early models used an octal 6SJ7 grid-leak biased preamp tube (later replaced with a cathode biased 12AX7), and I had heard about the sweet sounding front end that these had and was ultimately curious about the inherent LaGrange-y-ness of the circuit (uh huh huh huh huh).  The results were as sweet as promised.  Its a different kind of breakup than other amps….a bit more smooth and compressed feeling.  Kind of blues-y, but it does rock really well also.  It sounds positively whipass plugged into my Sunn 4×15 (dont ask).

These photo are early ones from when I was testing the amp with a solid-state rectifier (the copper tube) which I have since replaced with a NOS RCA 5Y3.  The power tube in the center is a 6V6 and the 6SJ7 is on the right.  The 6SJ7 is a metal-envelope tube instead of glass.

These enclosures also come in a bunch of different sizes.  Im sure i’ll be building in one of these again…and it’ll be a more ambitious effort.

Bing Bong.

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Klons!  For years these were THEE high demand overdrive pedal on the market, fetching hundreds of dollars to get on the year-plus waiting just to buy one, or going for even more on eBay.  Now that the manufacturer stopped making them (albeit temporarily) they can go for over a grand!  Holy crap.  People flip their shit for this pedal and rightfully so. Its a nicely built buffered overdrive, with a good tonestack in there, but where it differs from other pedals is its huge boost potential!  The thing has boost for days, which helps to drive your amp into its own distortion.  That coupled with the clipping-overdrive that the pedal produces and you get into some really sweet sound natural overdrive.

This is my take on the original unit.

The basic fuzz.

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To quote Tommy Lee: “fffuuuucccck, bro”.  This pedal was built for the wonderful Matt Murillo (Jettycats, Junior Varsity, The Ka-Nives) when he asked me to make him “something”.  Usually whenever I get asked for just something kickass, or if i’m just putting together a pedal for a gift or something I build one of these.  The circuit is simple, the controls are simple, but the sound is KILLER.

The basic circuit here is the Bazz Fuss designed by Hemmo, but I make a few part subs to get it to my liking.  Its kind of Muff-y, but a bit more textured sounding.  A killer fuzz, and one that sounds great on bass, as well! 

Frontiers.

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My buddy John Adams and I have this saying:  “Frontiers”.  It started a long time ago when John was kind of spaced out and said it to some automatic-opening doors at a Chevron station.  The point is that, then and now, it has been slang for “next-level shit”.  This is some next-level shit.

Enter the great Erick Coleman, who must be tired of just ordering single pedals from me because this time he ordered a whole rig of matching pedals.  These were based on an original couple of MKII Tonebenders that I had built, one of which Erick possesses.  Three new ones in matching style have been added to the original fuzz:  a boost, an overdrive, and a tremolo.  None of them have LEDs (by request), none have labels, and the whole rig will drive gearheads crazy trying to figure out what each box is.  Frontiers.

From left to right they are the boost (ZVEX super hard-on variant), the tremolo (modified Diaz Tremodillo), the overdrive (TS-808 tube screamer with bass-boost), the fuzz (stock MKII Tonebender).