the Filthy 9 fuzz

[pryde]

Get it in the contest. This is coming from a May contender! I love it.

I think the sound is just great. I listened with good headphones to really hear the textures. Fantastic sounding fuzz and playing sir  

EDIT: I see you did enter, good deal

[ch1naski]

Hey, cortexturizer.

That thing is a work of art.

The sound cloud link on your blog only appears as text, not hypertext (using Netscape on my tablet).
Anyone else mentioned this?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

[Cortexturizer]

Your words warm my heart good sirs of infinite awesomeness! Thank you all for the compliments.

Ch1naski thank you for pointing that out, I'm gonna fix that immediately. Cheers.

No, that's what I like about the photos.  They're so stark and harsh.  That's a very cool look.  Plus the pedal just rips.  Nice demo.  I've never built a version or variant of a Muff that has panned out.  The other guitar player in my old band in Canada and I get together every few years and I can play his rig with his mid 70's Muff and it sounds like crap and when he plays the same setup it's magic.  I keep hoping I'll "get it" one of these days.

I found your comment especially interesting Mainly because I was a "never Muff" guy for soooo long, I always thought that kind of pedal sounded like crap. Just overly compressed, with no pick attack at all, every guitar through it sounds the same, etc...But to be quite honest I wasn't really into fuzzes for a long time, but hi-fi perfectly smooth distortions and overdrives.

But since then I've learned. Needless to say fuzz is the only source of dirt I enjoy now. All the dists and ods just sound without a soul to me and like two dimensional tools, whereas fuzzes sound like they have five dimensions and are entities on their own, it's like you play with the fuzz, and if you two get along than it's magic, like with a great band member with whom you experience great chemistry, whereas with dists and ods you are playing alone, driving those tools to some goal. I don't know. I'm just busting my head right now, should stop
But yeah, I decided one day to build a Pharaoh muff inspired pedal, and I loved it, it had a muff character and sound but none of the major setbacks of the original. Not to say that I haven't grown to like the original as well in the meantime, oh brother, I love it, but this is still my favorite variant of the circuit.

[pryde]

I have not found a BMP that I really flip over either. I have a P19 that I like alot but it renders a very specific Gilmour sound very well and not much else IMO

I really like the sound of your pharaoh. Did you use the tagboardeffects vero?
At one point I think someone was going to convert the mudbunny board to pharaoh specs. Not sure if that happened or not?

[billstein]

Loved your demo, both the sound of the pedal and your playing. Well done sir!

At one point I think someone was going to convert the mudbunny board to pharaoh specs. Not sure if that happened or not?

Is this the thread you're thinking of?

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=2385.0

After that demo I can see a mad rush with all of us building that board. 

[Cortexturizer]

I have not found a BMP that I really flip over either. I have a P19 that I like alot but it renders a very specific Gilmour sound very well and not much else IMO

I really like the sound of your pharaoh. Did you use the tagboardeffects vero?
At one point I think someone was going to convert the mudbunny board to pharaoh specs. Not sure if that happened or not?

No, I got burned once with their veros, not gonna happen again I used Harald Sabro's vero layout, he is the man. Google Sabrotone.

Haha guys I recorded a bunch more demos of previous builds, for example

Here's a bluesy demo => https://soundcloud.com/earthless/faraon
and a sludge metal demo [ts-808 into a pharaoh all the time, recorded live in the studio, just me and the drummer] => https://soundcloud.com/earthless/faraon-heavy 
this combo is the shit guys. build a ts-808 and a pharaoh in one enclosure and it's the best and most organic metal sound hands down.
and, a metal core deftones kind of demo => https://soundcloud.com/earthless/faraon-downtuned-heaviness   [tele on the bridge pickup, with a particular down tunning that I won't get into now]

yes, you all should build one
this last demo, downtuned heaviness, it's recorded with this build depicted in this thread but with 2n5089 transistors, it has more sag to it to my ears, much more gain and saturation, for this kind of demo it works nice but I had to tweak the sound a lot...with lower gain trannies like the ones I used in the end [bc192s] it sounds much better overall...

[Loztboy]

Good looking and nice Fuzz texture in the sound clip!

[angrykoko]

Question on the pre-gain mod,  am I right that it's the 6.2K resistor following Q2 and the .47u cap?  What value pot did you use (if you dong mind giving up your secrets  ).  I don't have a lot of parts around so I'll have to order a pot to try it.

Thanks!
Koko

[Cortexturizer]

Yes man, you are right! I used 10K for the pot. Anything past that I would asume would result in extreme fizziness...

Thank you for the kind words Loztboy!

[pryde]

Cortex,

I have been hankering for a new fuzz sound and I may give the pharaoh a go as I got a few mudbunny boards here.

Just to clarify, you would recommend changing the tone control per above specs and omitting the "highs" pot (sub with 15k) all together?

Is the highs pot not that useful in this circuit where the tweaked tone control wound serve better?
Thanks for any additional info/help you can provide.

[angrykoko]

Thanks!
Glad to see you entered this!

Koko

[Cortexturizer]

Cortex,

I have been hankering for a new fuzz sound and I may give the pharaoh a go as I got a few mudbunny boards here.

Just to clarify, you would recommend changing the tone control per above specs and omitting the "highs" pot (sub with 15k) all together?

Is the highs pot not that useful in this circuit where the tweaked tone control wound serve better?
Thanks for any additional info/help you can provide.

Hi Pryde, sorry it took me so long, was away from the computer for some time...

Here's the mudbunny standard tone stack



what I did to my pharaoh spec mudbunny in terms of ditching the highs pot and making a traditional style one knob tone control was this



At this time I can't really remember was it 10 or 15k between Tone and 22n cap, but I'm pretty sure it was 15, still you should try both and see what you like. I can't guarantee that this kind of tone control would work nice on a standard muff but with the pharaoh spec'd muff it is just great. The Earthbound Audio Supercollider which is another highly regarded muff variant uses a 50K pot for the Tone control as well.
As you can see on the graph you never loose bass as much, just fiddle slightly with the middle content and strongly with the top end frequencies.
It worked for me just brilliantly, hope it will for you too.
It's all a matter of trying out what works for your gear as you know

[GhostofJohnToad]

I think this has inspired me to make a Pharaoh.  I really like the sound a lot, especially the first demo.  May have to resurrect the idea of doing the Pharaoh off the mudbunny.

[Cortexturizer]

Great! Do it!

Now when I take a look at that second diagram above, I can see that the Japanese builder Sho Iwata has done a very similar thing here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPHKHVBTsAM

and Burgs naturally says it's fantastic never to loose the bass. I don't know, it worked fantastic for me

[GhostofJohnToad]

So where did you find the BC192s?  I can't find them anywhere?