Mellowtone - Wolf Computer  [traced]

General documentation, gut shot, schematic links, ongoing circuit tracing, deep thoughts ... all about boutique stompboxes.
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Beedoola
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Post by Beedoola »

Anyone played one of these? I had one but sold it. I opened it once and was amazed at how simple the circuit was. 2N3904 trannies I think.

Anyone have any info on it?

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soulsonic
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Post by soulsonic »

Bunch of Boosters! :P

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Post by earthtonesaudio »

PWNED!1
rocklander wrote:hairsplitting and semantics aren't exactly the same thing though.. we may need two contests for that.

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inabox
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Post by inabox »

i think it's a booster in front of a fuzz face with sag control to reduce the voltage in the Fuzz side only

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Post by letsgocoyote »

for those curious, it came about like this: my friend wanted me to build him a fuzz pedal like a fuzz factory. this was about a year ago. i had a copy of the fuzzfactory schematic, although i never built or breadboarded one, i havent even ever played one, just heard the video clips. its a cool pedal. i was always curious what was under the hood, the schematic revealed its a boost in front of a modified fuzz face. right?

so im thinking, ok, im gonna make my friend a sweet pedal. i hadnt really been building stuff for sale much before that, except the singing tree overdrive. i hadnt ever studied the fuzzfact schematic closely, so i just decided to to take it as a concept and build a crazy fuzz made from a 'booster in front of a fuzz face'.

strangely, my approach to building the pedal was i made the name and designed the label first, as well as what controls it will have. so i figured, well if i make this and jsut put bias and starve knobs on it, im sure it will do SOMETHING interesting.

which is kind of a dumb way to design a pedal, but an interesting challenge.

first breadboarded the boost/input stage. self biased transistor a la electra distortion, adjusted it such that, with no emitter restistor, and put the collector resistor to power at 4k7, sounded roughly unity and max volume. ok. so my concept was that with a unity booster in front of it (the fuzz face portion) i coudl work the fuzz/gain like this: the fuzz face circuit generally is considered (components often depending) good with volume knob clean up. so i wanted to make this unity type booster to put in front of it, then lower the gain on the unity booster to clean up the fuzz stage, as a gain control.

so the unity booster, 2n304, self biased, 4k7 collect resistor to power, and a 25k pot emitter to ground. ok this makes noise/crackle. bad design, but it turns out some knob twiddling noise people like it, for messing with through delay or what have you. you could make it not make crackle though, the stratoblaster gain control works good, if i was doign that, id put a 50k pot fromt he emitter, to a 10-22uf cap to ground. all in parralel with a 47k resistor.

this all goes into a basic fuzz face stage. no resistoer but a 100k pot is off the collector of q1 of the fuzz stage as a 'bias' knob. kind of acts more like a squelch/gate on the oscillation/noise. 1k resistor off emitter of q2, no electrolytic at all here. other than that pretty basic.

10k starve pot for the entire thing.

parts list:
100kA - volume
25k - fuzz
100k - bias
10k - sag
3x 2n3904
3x 100n caps
4k7
2m2
100k
1k
10k

i think thats it.

i think at the time, i was also inspired by dwarfcraft pedals, for the starve knob and such, as I had been frequenting the deviever forums and such.
much after the fact, browsing here, i found it shares coincedentally alot of similaritys with the Ultra lord design, although the controls and stages are a bit different, looks like his set up is more of a buzz fass into a slightly different fuzz stage, different gain control, etc.

the end.

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Beedoola
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Post by Beedoola »

Thanks Mellow man!

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Post by ShortScaleMike »

I know a guy who has this pedal and he absolutely adores it. It does some really interesting things.

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ifeellikeatourist
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Post by ifeellikeatourist »

just got mine in the mail today! Definitely a cool pedal, though it's going to take a bit more toying around with to really discover all that it has to offer. This will probably be my main fuzz sound from now on, along with the TAFM.

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noise31
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Post by noise31 »

i love this pedal..it´s
any info for diy¿

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Post by PurplePeopleEater »

A simple use of the forums [SEARCH] function takes you to THIS thread, with lots of info from the maker.

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fuzzmax
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Post by fuzzmax »

Is there someone who has one and want to share the solder side traces....I've got everything to make the pedal but only that is missing!!
thanx

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Post by RnFR »

all the info is above, straight from the horse's mouth. why do you need a track side shot?
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fuzzmax
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Post by fuzzmax »

because I'm a total noob when it comes to schem. Although my soldering skills uprises, I'm still a beginner and I need the layout to do it.. :roll:

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culturejam
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Post by culturejam »

I just read through coyote's post describing the circuit. I'm confused about this "self-biasing unity booster" he mentions as being the first stage. What the hell would that look like?

He mentions the Electra Distortion as being similar, but that's definitely not unity gain, and I didn't think that it biased itself.

:scratch: :hmmm:

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RnFR
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Post by RnFR »

i think he's talking about feedback biasing. 4k7 collector, 2M2 collector to base, 25K pot from the emitter so that it can be dialed down to unity gain.
"You've converted me to Cubic thinking. Where do I sign up for the newsletter? I need to learn more about how I can break free from ONEism Death Math." - Soulsonic

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culturejam
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Post by culturejam »

How does this look?

EDIT: schematic removed

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WhiteKeyHole
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Post by WhiteKeyHole »

R5.

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culturejam
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Post by culturejam »

WhiteKeyHole wrote:R5.
whoops.

I guess that goes on Q2, as specified above. So then I suppose Q3's emitter is grounded?

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Post by culturejam »

culturejam wrote:
WhiteKeyHole wrote:R5.
whoops.

I guess that goes on Q2, as specified above. So then I suppose Q3's emitter is grounded?
Wait, now that I read the description again, "Q2" is in reference to the second transistor in a Fuzz Face. So I think maybe I am right? :scratch:

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Post by WhiteKeyHole »

Look to the Fuzz Face.

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