Fuzzie's overdriven build thread

[fuzziebro]

Been gassing for overdrive lately and coincidently got the gas to build, so amongst a whole heap of parts ordered recently, I scored this old sound board from a guy in
Texas who specialises in vintage electronics and has a few early '80's boards available loaded with original JRC chips...



Board cost me $50 incl freight and contains lots of JRC4558D's. From 808 builds I've done before and general 808 tinkering, I can confidently say that the old early 80's JRC chips do sound better than the new production JRC's... although to be fair the new ones do sound really good, the old ones have a bit more crunch and texture, I wouldnt be wasting my money and the hassle of de-soldering these if I didnt think it worth the effort. Plus I think some of the reason that the guy's I've built 808 type pedals for in the past liked them soo much is the vintage chips I put in them!

Once desoldered and tested, I MAY have one (or two) spare; (if anyone wants one you can PM me...) the guy does have some more boards, but I'll want to test these first before ordering any more!

Also got some NOS red-and-blue clipping diodes (1S1588 I believe) coming...




Need these for authentic 808 clipping? ... well they look nice anyway!


Also got plans underway for around 15-16 other overdrives, (all klones and klones of klones of klones...) basically the idea is that when the overdrive gas takes hold
I'll have a whole board of overdrive flavours to select from to (hopefully) nail the tone and mood I'm looking for at the given point in time...hopefully also this may seed the creation of a new OD circuit from all the tinkering goin on...

[Cdog]

Nice find! I'd be really keen to try an old 4558 if you do have one spare.... love me a good screamer

[fuzziebro]

Nice find! I'd be really keen to try an old 4558 if you do have one spare.... love me a good screamer

Yep sweet as, I wont be desoldering until end of next week; I'll be in touch ASA...

[MogwaiBoy]

Nice score : )

Da Fuzziezbro sounds inspired and we like to hear that!

[Aquila Rossa]

I sold my FB808 because at the time i was using Dist+ and an EQ to boost. Missed it. Just bought it back. Happy. Opened it up last night to look at the NOS bits in there. JRC 4558D and carbon comp resistors. Two switch large enclousure is chocka full. Noty even room for a battery. Sounds good.

p.s. i want to spray paint or get it anodized. Problem is i will lose the Fuzzie Bro sticker on it if i do.

[fuzziebro]

Nice score : )

Da Fuzziezbro sounds inspired and we like to hear that!

Thanks. Yeah I'll be listing and detailing the planned builds as and when... At this stage I want to keep this particular project to strictly klones of popular overdrives and looking at some, well MOST modern boutique overdrives, they all have they're roots pretty closely associated with the 808... I should say at this point big ups to Fred Briggs @

http://revolutiondeux.blogspot.com.au/

thanks to him and his collaborators at freestompboxes lots of hype and goop dissolved surrounding so-called 'exotic' and/or boutique pedals and brands have revealed themselves to be schematically not much more than 'hot-rodded' 808 derived circuits... and/or based on the 'Son-of-tube screamer' circuit first 'discovered' by the venerable Jack Orman @

http://www.muzique.com/


anyway I worked out that by designing around 4 PCB's I can get 15 different boutique pedals!

This is pretty much the batch planned and in the planning.

PCB group 1

TS808
Keeley 808
Clay Jones Overdrive
Shins Music Dumbliod


PCB group 2

(Son of)
808
Clay Jones
Keeley 808

Love Pedal Eternity Drive
Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive


PCB group 3

Zendrive
Zenkudo
Jetter gain stage red


PCB group 4

Timmy
Love Pedal OD11
Vemuran Jan Ray



Gonna be away from home for a couple of weeks so wont get much more done for a bit.

[fuzziebro]

I sold my FB808 because at the time i was using Dist+ and an EQ to boost. Missed it. Just bought it back. Happy. Opened it up last night to look at the NOS bits in there. JRC 4558D and carbon comp resistors. Two switch large enclousure is chocka full. Noty even room for a battery. Sounds good.

p.s. i want to spray paint or get it anodized. Problem is i will lose the Fuzzie Bro sticker on it if i do.

That was the FB808 vers.1 board, still got a few of those in storage in NZ, but I've designed a new board, to accommodate the versions listed above and also to fit in a 125B sized enclosure, havent used those b4 and looking forward to trying them out.

I dont have any more stickers unfortunately, I'm not building many pedals for other people atm (its a bit of 'my' time now for that...finally!) but there are always some projects on the the back-burner and I may be able to get some stickers/decals to you at some point...

[Cdog]

nice! be sure to post some pics

[fuzziebro]

Ordered PCB's for this project back in the beg of Oct. so nearly 2 months and counting... If anyone was thinking of ordering boards from Futurlec
I would unfortunately be hesitant in recomending them at this stage... be a project for next year now... got other non-guitar related stuff to do now...

[Bg]

ah bugger, thats a shame

[Cdog]

Oh they're notorious! I've had long delays myself, I know of others too... most of the time an entire order was put on hold for an unspecified period because of something in your cart on backorder... Have you contacted them?

[fuzziebro]

Yeah, they told me on the 2nd Oct that it would be done in 4 working days and then shipped. They also gave the impression that they were based in Australia, so when I contacted them recently, turns out it was shipped on the 16th Oct but from Singapore! and using a cheaper freight method than the one I actually paid for... oh well it still may turn up, but its rather poor service...

[fuzziebro]

Looks like my PCB order has arrived... think it may have been my fault for the long delay as I didnt get down to the Post office in time and they had to re-send it...will be a couple of months before I can assemble anything tho, cos I'm away from home on an extended work contract...

[Cdog]

[fuzziebro]

Finally got all the PCB's done, second order are the screenprintd/solder-masked ones, Futurlec came through pretty quickly with the second order - just less than a month - also helped paying about $60 ish in DHL freight to ensure quick delivery...

Hopefully a few builds up soon...

Oh yeah, so did another PCB from what I originally set out to do, 'had to" to a board for KOT/POT Bluesbreaker variations...

So from these 5 PCB's can make actually 17 different OD circuits...