Question: How to make the Sabertooth not so extreme?

[soonerrob]

Hey Guys,

Breadboarded a sabretooth for a bass player friend of mine and had him try it out last night... I noticed that with the Fuzz knob turned all the way down the pedal was producing quite a bit of fuzz based on the fact that he had the volume knob on his guitar turned all the way up.

This makes the pedal very extreme and im afraid that he either would rarely use it, or if he did would never be able to bring if off very low settings.

Instead of forcing him to keep his volume knob backed way down on his guitar, is there something I can change on the circuit to get more usable controls?

We really like the sound of the subtle fuzz that was produced when he kept his guitar volume rolled back... I would prefer that this is what the pedal would sound like on low fuzz and then be able to bring it up from there...

I noticed that the Fuzz pot is a 2k pot.. would increasing this be a place to start?

It just seems like the circuit gets flooded too easily by the guitar volume knob.

any help is appreciated.

he was playing with a passive bass.

Or is there another bass fuzz circuit that I should take a look at?

thanks

Rob

[mgwhit]

I would try a 50kB pot on the input, similar to the Strain control on the Zygote project.  This is a classic Fuzz Face mod that simulates rolling off the guitar volume, but on the pedal itself.

[soonerrob]

ah yes... that sounds like a great place to start.

on the saber schematic, would i put it between between R1 and C1?

[stecykmi]

Ya, duplicate the input from the zygote schematic (the 10pF cap isn't needed, i believe it's to help prevent popping when switching).

another solution might be to hook the circuit up a separate blend circuit, such as the ROG splitter-blend http://www.runoffgroove.com/splitter-blend.html