tone bender bender- variants

[harryklippton]

I'm starting to plan out building a handful of tone bender variants. I already have a mkii pro that I built a couple years ago. I've been wanting to do a mkiii and/or a park fuzz, so I have a pastyface and an aion phobos board. Maybe I need a second Phobos so I can do one as a mkiii and one with the park specs.  I also have an aion poseidon board to do the catalinbread katzenkonig thing. I need to snag a dustbunny and a bumblebee, which are sitting in my cart right now.

I should do a mki for good measure. I can get a pedalpcb tone vendor I guess. Looks like small bear doesn't have matched transistors for mkis currently, so that might prove to be a little tricky. I also want to do a, EQD black ash so I'm looking at the pedalpcb carbon black.

What other tone bender family projects should I look at? I'm aiming to do all these at the same time so I can try them all out. Might be a little nutty. I hope I can finish them all before the end of the year, along with everything else I want to do

[midwayfair]

Hint: you can replace the first transistor in a MKII with a FET.

[Invertiguy]

The Burns Buzzaround and it's meaner twin, the Elka Dizzy Tone, are both pretty closely related to the Tone Bender Mk III. I'd definitely recommend checking them out!

[gordo]

Anyone see the crazy money the Boss Waza version is going for on Reverb?

[G.G.]

I made the DAM Solasound MKII Si/Ge hybrid from a layout on Dirtbox Layouts and it sounds really good, there's actually a good range of dirt in there. I used a GT404 in mine. http://dirtboxlayouts.blogspot.com/2019/10/damsolasound-tonebender-mk-ii-hybrid.html

There's also a layout over there for a SolidgoldFX Rosie silicon MKII, which is a pretty good sounding variant. http://dirtboxlayouts.blogspot.com/2020/09/solid-gold-fx-rosie.html

[Thewintersoldier]

I have built a mk1, 1.5, 2, 3 and the scarab deluxe as well as a dizzy tone and buzzaround. I got all my sets of transistors from small bear and can give you hfe and leakage for whatever you need, assuming you have a bulk lot of transistors to sort thru.

[danfrank]

I have built a mk1, 1.5, 2, 3 and the scarab deluxe as well as a dizzy tone and buzzaround. I got all my sets of transistors from small bear and can give you hfe and leakage for whatever you need, assuming you have a bulk lot of transistors to sort thru.

Hi! Can you give good values (hfe, leakage, etc) to make a great sounding MKI? The MKI is the only one I haven't built yet and the info on the web leaves for a lot of guess work and assumption.
Thanks!

[harryklippton]

I have built a mk1, 1.5, 2, 3 and the scarab deluxe as well as a dizzy tone and buzzaround. I got all my sets of transistors from small bear and can give you hfe and leakage for whatever you need, assuming you have a bulk lot of transistors to sort thru.

Hi! Can you give good values (hfe, leakage, etc) to make a great sounding MKI? The MKI is the only one I haven't built yet and the info on the web leaves for a lot of guess work and assumption.
Thanks!

Seconded. I think this is gonna be the tricky one

[Thewintersoldier]

No problem I'll do it this weekend. I built it on a pedalpcb board. I decided to change out the Q3 bias resistor with a trim pot to dial it in. Other than that it was stock values.

[cooder]

No problem I'll do it this weekend. I built it on a pedalpcb board. I decided to change out the Q3 bias resistor with a trim pot to dial it in. Other than that it was stock values.

Chrism the fuzz man... great stuff.
I'd actually be keen to get your take on hfe and leakage on all of those circuits, as a reference on here. There seems to be a fair bit of discussion and some confusion around, so having your take here as a reference would be great since you have been on a Fuzz binge recently.
Also, what tester do you use to measure or do you rely on given values by vendors/Smallbear etc?
Last not least, which schematic did you use for the Dizzytone, I believe I have seen some different ones, might be wrong, not sure. Have you got a link and how did you like that?
That's enough questions for the day I spose...
Cheers!

[jjjimi84]

I highly recommend the basic audio scarab, covers a ton of bases and is super easy to build.

[harryklippton]

Cool I added the scarab to the list. Really appreciating all the input here guys

[Thewintersoldier]

No problem I'll do it this weekend. I built it on a pedalpcb board. I decided to change out the Q3 bias resistor with a trim pot to dial it in. Other than that it was stock values.

Chrism the fuzz man... great stuff.
I'd actually be keen to get your take on hfe and leakage on all of those circuits, as a reference on here. There seems to be a fair bit of discussion and some confusion around, so having your take here as a reference would be great since you have been on a Fuzz binge recently.
Also, what tester do you use to measure or do you rely on given values by vendors/Smallbear etc?
Last not least, which schematic did you use for the Dizzytone, I believe I have seen some different ones, might be wrong, not sure. Have you got a link and how did you like that?
That's enough questions for the day I spose...
Cheers!

https://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=30992.0
This is the thread from last year where I detailed the changes from a buzzy to a dizzy. I'm actually planning on doing another buzzaround so I'll have a build report coming on that soon. I'll pull all my tonebenders and buzzaround/dizzy tones and do an actual reading on hfe/leakage. As for testing I built the R.G. Keen tester. I use it for both npn/pnp and si/ge transistors. I get great results with a bit of mathematics but it cost me pennies to build. I did the same with my jfet tester. I build them on the free samples of flooring from home improvement stores lol. When I do readings I wear insulated leather gloves (OJ!) So I don't warm up the transistor and wait 5 mins after powering it up as I know handling and power can affect germanium, silicon just let it rip. As far as schematics I look for vintage . If there are different revisions I look for the most common. Also anything David Main at DAM pedals has made is the gospel as far as fuzz so his schematics are golden as well. Lastly Kevin at aion has outstanding build docs with great substitutions for variants of circuits as well as transistor specs and biasing.

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[cooder]

Cheers Chris for the hints and wisdom!
Yes I have built the R.G, Keen tester as well and I use the Chinese component testers you can score on evilbay et all for a 'second' opinion and they are great to check pinouts of unknown or dubious stuff.
This component tester is not too bad I think and it's what I use:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/233902185469?hash=item3675a81bfd:g:snAAAOSwwiFf7BJn

Also there's a Excel spreadsheet which is convenient to the max to put the test measurements form Keen method in, you'll find it as a link at the bottom of first (duhvoodooman) post here:
http://www.byocelectronics.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=38231&hilit=transistor+spreadsheet

[Zerro]

Basic skill for all transistors setting is to play with feedback resistor (here resistor with *) to get at output point (here Collector) DC value which is cca 1/2 of Ub. All transistors must to be "heated" by this and in most of circuits here goes at Basis some set of resistors: 1/ from output point, or 2/ from Bias power souce or from Ub via 1from bias or 2 resistors from Ub at ground. In the centre here is bias for Basis. See pictures. In the case of multi-level stage of transistors amp here is important output transisitor DC value. It all is very briefly but sufficient for good working.