NZGuitars.com

Hi all,

I'm new here and have a possibly silly question. I'm about to build my first pedal using the following instructions:

http://tonereport.com/blogs/do-it-yours ... -bazz-fuss

Can someone confirm for me that this requires a centre negative adapter? I think it does, but I'd like to check before I buy the wrong one and fry my new creation!

Thanks!
Jay

Looks like it from the photos. You can always reverse the wires though if your building it yourself.

Cool... I will give it a go. I'm sure it will all become clearer as I go through the steps.

Thanks for the quick response!

As above, it depends how you wire it. The pitfall here is, if you got your bits from jaycar, you will have seen these great metal 2.1mm school barrel sockets, they look so good. Problem is if you wire them up centre neg. your pedal is shorted out and won't work. So don't use them.

That pedal is a great starting point, tweeks to resistors, caps and transistor s will change it, so once you get one working, have a play.

Snarblinge wrote:As above, it depends how you wire it. The pitfall here is, if you got your bits from jaycar, you will have seen these great metal 2.1mm school barrel sockets, they look so good. Problem is if you wire them up centre neg. your pedal is shorted out and won't work. So don't use them.

^ This! I have a pedalboard in for repair and it's a mishmash of commercial and DIY pedals - many of the latter with these 'earthed-barrel' DC jacks despite it all being centre-negative powered (centre-ground, really). The customer was wondering why his power supply would lie down and die as soon as he connected his custom pedals. Isolating these metal-cased DC jacks from a metal enclosure is a must, unfortunately.

DSE did a nice plastic DC jack when they were still around and carrying some components, haven't seen anything similar from an NZ supplier but I'm sure they are available somewhere (I've just run out so I'd be interested to know)?
Otherwise you can isolate the metal jack but it's a bit of a pain tbh.

I isolated one once using fibre washers from Mitre10 and some heat shrink, lasted well.

These isolated panel-mount 2.1mm jacks might be your best option within NZ: http://nz.rs-online.com/web/p/products/0448370/

Both options, yeah. Cant beat the convenience of a nice round plastic jack though, shame Jaycar don't do one.

I ordered all of my parts through Mammoth (great service BTW, and very quick shipment to NZ), so this is the one I'm working with:

https://www.mammothelectronics.com/products/4sjk-101dc

Thanks again for the input, folks. Just found this site the other day and you seem to be a helpful bunch!

Alright, the good news is that it works, and makes things fuzzy!

The bad news:
- I need to have my guitar volume fully open. There is no sound if I turn down below 8 or so except when I go right to 0, in which case there is a static-y noise.
- It is VERY low-end heavy. I lose all treble.

I followed the directions I linked to above exactly, except I subbed in a 1meg for the 100k pot at the suggestion of a friend who has built a bunch of these. Could that pot value have anything to do with it?

I was also kind of hoping the pot would control the level of fuzz, but it just seems to function as a volume knob with the fuzz being constant the whole way...

Paging Toany!

well if it makes noise and it's your first one, then you are in the upper end of ability, based on my years of forum following... (that is a compliment)

reducing the value of the input and output caps will generally alter the bass response, check the value of the transistor you bought, the code often has a sorting component e.g.. C456a c456b c456c, they are the same transistor but the gain range is determined by that last letter, depending on what you bought will depend if this is the case. I have been caught before. gain is on the data sheet usually as "hfe" a bigger number is loosely "louder" but circuit dependant. also try the stock pot. in my experience, tweeps are best attempted after the thing is up and running. if you are placing an order from mammoth or similar again, collect a handful of pots of different values (the shipping is the killer part anyway) buy a few switches, toggles and stomps, as these are the bits annoying to source local. then buy basically everything else as required from RS. the shipping is free. I now also stagger purchases from element14 and Mouser depending on what i need they have minimum orders for shipping. but they sell the hammond enclosures we all love, and the fancy resistors that look like sausages, which i like to use. also on dc barrels, I like the lumber ones, mouser have them, banzai also sell them (but the shipping is killer) they are only good if you don't want internal battery (i.e. no switch) but small and nice looking. if you need random little bits, ask, I may be able to help.

Snarblinge wrote:well if it makes noise and it's your first one, then you are in the upper end of ability, based on my years of forum following... (that is a compliment)

reducing the value of the input and output caps will generally alter the bass response, check the value of the transistor you bought, the code often has a sorting component e.g.. C456a c456b c456c, they are the same transistor but the gain range is determined by that last letter, depending on what you bought will depend if this is the case. I have been caught before. gain is on the data sheet usually as "hfe" a bigger number is loosely "louder" but circuit dependant. also try the stock pot. in my experience, tweeps are best attempted after the thing is up and running. if you are placing an order from mammoth or similar again, collect a handful of pots of different values (the shipping is the killer part anyway) buy a few switches, toggles and stomps, as these are the bits annoying to source local. then buy basically everything else as required from RS. the shipping is free. I now also stagger purchases from element14 and Mouser depending on what i need they have minimum orders for shipping. but they sell the hammond enclosures we all love, and the fancy resistors that look like sausages, which i like to use. also on dc barrels, I like the lumber ones, mouser have them, banzai also sell them (but the shipping is killer) they are only good if you don't want internal battery (i.e. no switch) but small and nice looking. if you need random little bits, ask, I may be able to help.

Sorry for the hi-jack, but where do you get your jacks and 3pdt switches from?