Guitar talk, and easy guitar lessons from beginner to jazz with Birdsnake Brown
I wired up my Stratocaster with the super-switch so that I could get all of my favorite pickup settings. Neck, Neck + Middle, Neck + Bridge, Bridge + Middle, and Bridge. I also put the a treble bleed circuit on a push-pull knob… when it’s in the “in” position there is no bleed. I usually don’t like the treble bleed but it’s still a cool option to have.
Here’s a really ugly diagram for the super switch wiring:
I originally built this Tone Bender clone way back around 2010 but the wiring was sloppy and it ended up just a circuit board in a box. More recently I decided to rewire it and give it a permanent enclosure.
The OC75 transistors were in some of the original units and they truly sound fantastic in this build. I got them matched from Small Bear Electronics way back in the day.
The MKII circuit can go from splatty gated fuzz to something smooth and violin-like depending on how you bias it and where the controls are set.
Here are three videos of this Tone Bender. First the build, then some demos.
Tone Bender MKII Fuzz Build:
Tone Bender with a Stratocaster Demo:
Tone Bender MKII with a Les Paul
This was my second time building a Jordan Bosstone Fuzz. The first one was one of the best fuzz circuits I had ever played, but somehow I misplaced the board after having it in a multifx box. I wanted to recreate that magic so I built this one.
What a cool sounding fuzz! The trumpeting is spectacular, and depending on where you set the controls you can get quite a few distinct sounds.
There are three videos here… one video is the build, one is the demo, and the other is from when I received the parts in the mail.
Jordan Bosstone Parts Haul:
Jordan Bosstone Build Video:
Jordan BosstoneFuzz Demo:
In this video, I documented the entire process of building a clone of Dumble Overdrive Special #102. It took me about a month of soldering in all of my spare time to go from parts to a guitar amp.
This was my second Dumble clone build and I am really proud of how it turned out. I’ve been playing it for over a year now and it’s still my favorite amp (don’t tell the Twin Reverbs). It’s such a versatile guitar amp… great cleans and a killer overdrive.