NEW Hand-made Guitar Synth-Fuzz, Bit-reduction Pedal w/Optical Compressor "Atomic Fyreball"

Atomic Fyreball 

Sparkly Blue-Green!

This one was a custom order for a local musician. He uses Fuzz a LOT in his band live and Crazy-Destructo Noise a good bit in solos and intros.  He wanted a pedal that would give him those options but NOT blend into the general 'wall-o-noise' the rest of his band puts out.  With a Bass player using distortion/fuzz on his bass, another guitar player doing same, key player putting out noise in the same end of the audio spectrum, and REALLY loud drummer..well, it meant I couldn't just mod a typical fuzz pedal or make a few changes to a guitar synth schematic.  I'd have had to change them so significantly that they wouldnt actually BE those things anymore.

What was the answer?

I dunno.  But I decided MY answer would be to add an extra and totally external compressor to the effect pedal.  That way he could turn it on and turn it off depending on whether the rest of the band was playing live or if he was in the studio or playing alone.

In general, I strongly believe in providing as many options as possible with the audio devices I design and create. I think they will be more useful in more situations and to more people if that is done.  Often times, its simply adding a potentiometer (knob) and a couple of wires or a switch and some wires. It hardly ever means really doing to too much trouble...so why not?

looking down on destruction!

Anyway, in keeping with that ethos, I added the extra compression circuit-a simple optical compressor. I used as many vintage components as possible-things like vintage transistors and semiconductors and germanium diodes-and stuck the whole thing on old-school through-hole perfboard. There are two knobs to control Gain and Compression-which are all that a guitar player should really be interested in -in this case, anyway.  Since it was totally separate, I didn't feel like it was a good idea to just slap in a SPDT toggle, and instead threw in a whole other footswitch/led/in/out & true bypass-so that he could just use the compressor if he wanted to.  Certainly at least he could toggle it off with his foot and the Fuzz would come through the true bypass.

For Fuzz/Synth/General Destruction I used a version of Tim Escobedo's original Uglyface via a modified MusicPCB.com's Uglyface PCB.  He wasn't doing a lot of complicated or noticeable GuitarSynth stuff so he didn't need the additional options adding a LFO/Modulation would have offered-so I stuck with modifying the Uglyface towards Fuzz and Dstruction and away from GuitarSynth duty (it can do all 3-to varying extents, depending on the modification and resistance returned into the circuit from the control generally via potentiometer).

The result is this beauty. Im going to try and get him to let me video him using it for the video demo. Im also going to make about 10 others as there is some interest. Since only 5 of them are spoken-for already, Im going to put the other five on the http://www.newvoodoosound.com site.
If they prove really popular and sell fast, I'll make some more.
Please, if you check them out and think they're too expensive or you'd prefer some slightly different version-let me know. 
If I agree or a lot of other people agree--then I'll make & sell it that way.