Madbean's "kits" are all stolen from Freestomboxes

[madbean]

That's a great looking (and sounding, based on demos) circuit, Brian.
Now that the schematic for your board is on FSB, it is time for you to start selling Clusterfuzz kits!

Thank you, but Forrest deserves the kudos. He is a fuzz master, haha.
Yeah, I dunno about kits. We kinda talked about it at some point but never really got anywhere with it. Maybe we should revisit that now that the pedal is traced. I'll bring it up.

[diablochris6]

That's a great looking (and sounding, based on demos) circuit, Brian.
Now that the schematic for your board is on FSB, it is time for you to start selling Clusterfuzz kits!

Thank you, but Forrest deserves the kudos. He is a fuzz master, haha.
Yeah, I dunno about kits. We kinda talked about it at some point but never really got anywhere with it. Maybe we should revisit that now that the pedal is traced. I'll bring it up.

I mostly made that comment in jest. Then FSB could complain about you making a kit based off a schematic on their site that is actually your company's own pedal.

If you made kits or sold B-stock, you practically have a name already: Derivative f'(x).

[madbean]

Derivative F(x) will be the Chinese offshoot. Plot twist: we'll move to China to start it.

[culturejam]

Then FSB could complain about you making a kit based off a schematic on their site that is actually your company's own pedal.

It's a good joke, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility. 

We'll probably end up flogging a PCB just to grab some of the cash. It's reminiscent of Catalinbread's "Fuck it, you build it!" kits they had for a while.

[midwayfair]

I wasn't gonna post in this thread because it's already 4x longer than the thread it's referencing, but since there's a schematic:

1) That tone pot is makin' me sad. It could have been a SWTC.
2) Was C3 added so that the amount of bass present at the clipping diodes was higher than that at the output, or was it to prevent any possible DC voltage on the diodes if the pedal was plugged into something else that wasn't built right?
3) Someone mentioned the Darlington front end being limited by the DC resistance. It's fully bypassed by the fuzz pot, so the higher gain is absolutely being used. But while we're on the subject, was the DC point set by the 2K important enough that you couldn't use the fuzz pot as the emitter resistor?
4) A pedal company did the MOSFET clipping right for a change. Yay!
5) I am still amazing the 8 Bit pot actually does what it does.

[culturejam]

Jon, I knew you would swoop in and point out all the bad things. 

1) That tone pot is makin' me sad. It could have been a SWTC.

I call it SRTC: Simply Rat Tone Control

2) Was C3 added so that the amount of bass present at the clipping diodes was higher than that at the output, or was it to prevent any possible DC voltage on the diodes if the pedal was plugged into something else that wasn't built right?

It's purely JIC. Not really necessary, but it doesn't hurt and adds almost no cost to the product.

3) Someone mentioned the Darlington front end being limited by the DC resistance. It's fully bypassed by the fuzz pot, so the higher gain is absolutely being used. But while we're on the subject, was the DC point set by the 2K important enough that you couldn't use the fuzz pot as the emitter resistor?

As I recall (it's been a while), 1K pot sweep was more "natural" feeling than 2K. But I might be wrong.

5) I am still amazing the 8 Bit pot actually does what it does.

It seems logical to me, but then again I'm not an electronics expert.

[madbean]

2) Was C3 added so that the amount of bass present at the clipping diodes was higher than that at the output, or was it to prevent any possible DC voltage on the diodes if the pedal was plugged into something else that wasn't built right?

- I actually remember discussing C3 being extraneous but the consensus was that there was a slight alteration in tone without it.

3) Someone mentioned the Darlington front end being limited by the DC resistance. It's fully bypassed by the fuzz pot, so the higher gain is absolutely being used. But while we're on the subject, was the DC point set by the 2K important enough that you couldn't use the fuzz pot as the emitter resistor?

- We originally had that but it turned out there was a bit of scratchiness with the Fuzz pot turn so it was changed to what you see now.

5) I am still amazing the 8 Bit pot actually does what it does.

It's our fuzz unicorn.

[m-Kresol]

can I just say that I think it's awesome that you actually post feedback here and tell people if they traced it correctly. Amazing!

[EBRAddict]

Someone mentioned the Darlington front end being limited by the DC resistance. It's fully bypassed by the fuzz pot, so the higher gain is absolutely being used

Not my area of expertise but there is some intrinsic resistance in the emitter, nominally 26 ohms at some reference current (1mA?). With two tandem emitters you're getting at least 2x that. So gain is limited ~ 2k/52 = ~38 fully bypassed outside of the transistors. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. 

[midwayfair]

Someone mentioned the Darlington front end being limited by the DC resistance. It's fully bypassed by the fuzz pot, so the higher gain is absolutely being used

Not my area of expertise but there is some intrinsic resistance in the emitter, nominally 26 ohms at some reference current (1mA?). With two tandem emitters you're getting at least 2x that. So gain is limited ~ 2k/52 = ~38 fully bypassed outside of the transistors. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. 

I'm sorry, I thought you meant that the gain was limited to 2K. But yes, you're right -- the gain is 38x at the right current.

Guys, that's the exact gain of a 12AX7! It should totes be in your product literature that the gain structure mimics that of a dimed tube preamp!

Jon, I knew you would swoop in and point out all the bad things

As soon as I hit the Post button, I thought to myself "I am such a negative person sometimes." Thanks for calling me out on it.

As I recall (it's been a while), 1K pot sweep was more "natural" feeling than 2K. But I might be wrong.

I meant using the pot in a voltage divider arrangement like the Fuzz Face with the 1KC. 2K would sound different because you have an extra 1K of resistance to get through before you get to the meat of it. It lowers the collector voltage, too.

Not actually being critical, I was legitimately curious about some of these. You guys have a whole team involved and PCB space and components aren't free, so I assume the decisions were not made without consideration.

[madbean]

As soon as I hit the Post button, I thought to myself "I am such a negative person sometimes." Thanks for calling me out on it.

I don't really see it that way. Truthfully, it's not easy to justify every design decision after-the-fact because the process on this one spanned a few months. We did a proto, it had a few problems, we tweaked around those and once it sounded good that was the stopping point. Most of the time-to-production was mired in other less fun details in getting a pedal business going. Anyway, Forrest is great at coming up with really interesting circuits without bogging stuff down, and I'm pretty good at identifying and fixing problems. I tend to throw everything-but-the-kitchen-sink in my ideas and Forrest talks me off the ledge and makes it a better product. We work pretty well together that way. And, Dave writes the checks.

Haha, I'm kidding. We don't pay ourselves.

And, not to discount Dave's input because it's pretty huge and he's got a great ear. Plus he does a lot of things I definitely don't want to do!

[culturejam]

Guys, that's the exact gain of a 12AX7! It should totes be in your product literature that the gain structure mimics that of a dimed tube preamp!

Noted, haha. 

As soon as I hit the Post button, I thought to myself "I am such a negative person sometimes." Thanks for calling me out on it.

I was trying to be funny, actually. Your comments/questions are well founded. And truthfully, some of the things we did in the design were best guesses rather than carefully calculated. It's fuzz, after all: The more mindless you are in the design, the better the results. Or something like that.

I meant using the pot in a voltage divider arrangement like the Fuzz Face with the 1KC.

I read it that way, actually. I just meant that using 2K as the emitter resistor / cap bypass pot didn't sound the same as the way we ended up with it. This change happened (and was not at all planned or expected) right as we were about to finalize production, so once it worked, we stopped asking why and were just glad of the positive outcome. And then we promptly stopped thinking about because we had to focusing on selling. 

[m-Kresol]

well, that didn't take too long:

http://mklec.com/project-kits/guitar-effects-kits/function-fx-clusterfuzz-clone-kit

[jimilee]

Oh damn, I didn't know the layout was available.


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[micromegas]

well, not saying I like the idea at all. But at least he is not selling a pcb but the components to build it on vero.

mklec is a member here btw