Thursday, July 25, 2024
One Delay Is Not Enough
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
A Pickup Review: DiMarzio HS-3
When I was about thirteen I asked my brother to teach me how to play guitar. Part of his instructions included a list of guitarists to listen to for inspiration. Many of those guitarists are still favorites of mine to this day. Randy Rhoads, Paul Gilbert, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Johnson, Vernon Reid, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jake E. Lee, the list goes on and on. The one whose speed caught my attention the most at that age was Yngwie Malmsteen. After years of listening to Yngwie I had decided I needed to add a strat to my arsenal. Naturally I want an Yngwie strat, but that was, and still is, far beyond my realm of attainability.
This led to a pair of attempts at what I called Project YJM on a budget. I took any strat style guitar and tried to make it look and sound as close to a YJM strat as I possibly could. The key ingredient though has to be pickups. While I see a lot of people getting really close to Yngwie's tone with stock pickups, I felt my projected needed DiMarzios for authenticity. I eventually found an HS-3 in stock on Scamazon, so I bought it. When it arrived I couldn't have been happier. My banana yellow partscaster was finally ready to have its day as my YJM strat clone. Once the pickup was installed I noticed two things; firstly this pickup was microphonic, like REALLY microphonic. Secondly I noticed just how weak the pickup was. I knew it was a low output pickup, but I didn't know it was this low output.
To say the least, I hate this pickup. I thought I knew what I was getting into when I bought it, but apparently I didn't. Unless you have another HS-3 or HS-4 in the other positions it's impossible to match the volume and gain. Currently my project YJM strat has a cheap unknown brand single coil in the neck and the HS-3 in the bridge. I can't lower the neck pickup enough, nor raise the HS-3 enough to get them to match. It's such a weak pickup. I understand the concept behind it; allow the preamp and amp to do the overdrive, not the pickup, but I honestly think a pickup's contribution to the overdrive is part of the whole package. Sure, Yngwie's tone sounds great, but this pickup just doesn't appeal to me. Not anymore.
Another of my favorite guitarists, Jero Ramiro, plays what appears to be a YJM strat, and it sounds like a YJM strat, but every thing I can find says he's not using the HS-3, and I can see why. I hate to dump on this pickup, but I just can't see why this pickup costs as much as most other strat pickups and does far, far less, and even then it's less than that.
I did search around as to why this HS-3 was microphonic the word "fake" was floated around in a few places. The reality being I don't think anyone could possibly fake such a low output pickup. You have to plan to fail as badly as the HS-3 fails, you can't fail this badly on accident. I contacted DiMarzio and they said to send it to them for potting. This was during the pandemic, so that was an impossibility, and thus this pickup is what it is. And certainly at some point this pickup won't be in this guitar anymore.
If you're considering a DiMarzio HS-3, try to find someone who has one, or try a guitar store that has something with one installed already in stock. It might be your dream pickup, but for me it just fails on every level except for the fact it's kind of got me addicted to humbucking single coil pickups. That is this pickups one singular saving grace. I guess.
Friday, July 19, 2024
Pedal Builders Anonymous: Admitting I Have a Problem
Hello, I am addicted to building pedal circuits. I suppose there are far worse things to be addicted to, but it has become a bit of an obsession as of late. About a month ago I had seven builds left to go. I've since built ten circuits and I now have twelve left. See what I'm talking about? I swore 2024 wouldn't have anywhere near as many builds as 2023. I just checked and if I complete all of my current kits that I've put together, I'll be at the exact same number of builds for both years. That's if I don't add any more to the list!
My most recent build is the Cornish CC-1 clone. It was one of the last larger builds I have on the list. Everything works, with the exception of I had wired the bass control backwards. Mine does have a bit of a clean bleed that I've not heard in the demos of the actual pedal. I've x-acto knifed the gaps and made sure everything is in the right place, but still the clean bleed persists. It's not a bad circuit, it's just not exactly what I was expecting.
This one is short because if I talk any more I'll give away the plot to a few upcoming posts. Stay tuned, take care of yourselves and hug the ones you love. If you can. My arms don't stretch 2000 miles, so I can't. Currently. But she's more than welcome to come get that hug!
Thursday, July 11, 2024
A Little Fuzzy Muff Diving
Saturday, July 6, 2024
Freaky Fuzz for the Fourth: Finalized!
In the original post I wasn't exactly sure which input cap I was going to use. After testing I really liked the 22nf and some error/oddball caps I have that are marked 104 (100nf), but read 40nf when tested. I'm not sure if my tester just doesn't like these caps or not, because there genuinely seems to be quite a bit of different between 22nf and 40nf, but that's what I went with. Instead of my original idea to just use the one I liked best I went with an on-on switch to choose between the two.
I usually test my circuits with a strat, so I had to make sure humbuckers didn't make this circuit too bassy. After testing it with humbuckers it sounded pretty good. I even did the Kami test and both the overdrive-ish sound and the fuzz sound came out really nice. I've been thinking about building another and tweaking it a bit to just be an overdrive, but that's a potential project for the future. If I had one complaint about this build it would be that it's a tinge bright. I expected it to be bright with the 22nf input cap, but even when I switch it to the fuzz setting it's still bright. Again, this is only if I had one complaint. For my purposes it's perfectly useable and I'm glad it's my 110th build.
The update is now I have seven projects left to do. Yeah, builds keep being completed, but the project number never goes down. Three of these projects still require parts, four of them should be ready to go. I've seen a few smaller projects I might be adding to the build list. It really depends on size of stripboard, because I really want to find a purpose for my scraps. It also really depends on other parts, but mostly on stripboard size.
Thursday, July 4, 2024
Freaky Fuzz for the Fourth
Yadda Yadda Yadda, Sam doesn't like fuzz. WRONG! I've been lying to you, the readers, and myself. I'm sorry. I promise to do better from here on. I've built numerous Bazz Fusses, a Fuzz Face clone, a Muff style clone, and countless other fuzz circuits that I'm currently forgetting. Most of them danced sonically in my head for brief moments before being packed away and forgotten. The Seymour Duncan Tweak Fuzz however, it's a different beast.
The layout popped up, I searched for demos and immediately I recognized how highly tweakable this circuit is. Which is the whole purpose of the original pedal. In some cases, such as the Diaz Texas Ranger, I love the idea of switchable input caps. I never thought this concept would be what won me over to the dark side of fuzz though. The original layout was a bit much, with all the input caps, so I decided to slim it down and use sockets as the input device. This way I can pick and choose what input cap I like best.
With capacitors ranging from 10pf to 1uf I've decided to go on a bit of a journey. The circuit can sound like a nice mellow overdrive or a hairy, velcro ripping fuzz. The only drawback is if you expect it (by which I mean my slimmed down version) to clean up crystal clear, because it doesn't. It's still a bit fizzy, but it does clean up with the guitar's volume control. Anywhere between 4.7nf to 150nf seems to be my favorite, with each value giving the sound its own unique qualities. I tried a 470nf and that's when we reached velcro territory. I've not been brave enough to get into the 1uf world yet, but I have to try, just to be thorough.
The only changes I will suggest are C4 should be sockets, and to use an anti-log, or C/reverse, taper for gain. There is a teardown video on youtube that states the gain pot is C2k, I used a C1k and it works fine. Other than that it's verified, it sounds pretty good and it's highly tweakable. Once I've decided what value I like best as the input cap I will remove the sockets and solder it in. Either that or I'll find a good overdrive sound and good fuzz sound and make it switchable between those two.
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
Vox Treble Booster: A Circuit So Nice, I Built It Twice!
Welp, I did it again! Just out of curiosity I checked my parts boards to see if I had enough to do another Vox Treble Booster, and I did. At this point it wasn't even a question, I had to build another. Scraps of stripboard that may otherwise go unused, 1/8th watt resistors and transistors I may otherwise never use. It just felt like I being guided by some supernatural force to build another one. It took all of 5 minutes to solder together and it's a really nice little treble booster.
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Dime for size comparison. |
Do I need two of them? Probably not, but I wasn't using the parts for anything else. I did add a 1meg input resistor on the second build, just in case. I figure I'll find a use for them at some point. No biggy!