ASSLOAD OF PAIA DOCS

HERE is a link to the Paia forum with 4 pages worth of projects and their original documentation.  included is the ubiquitous Rocktave Divider among others.  unfortunately many designs use the now extremely rare 4136 ICs, so the layouts will have to modified or redrawn.  none the less, the schematics are there, along with breakdowns of the circuit as well as construction instructions.  check it out.  i'm sure there is something there from the Paia workshop that you haven't yet seen..


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FSB forumite roseblood, pointed out to me that you can get the 4136 on eBay pretty easily. he's got a vero layout that uses a 4136 for a dual tube screamer circuit. check it out over at freestompboxes.org!

a comment from a Russian friend.

I received this very nice comment from a reader of the blog who lives in Russia, so I thought I would share it here.

Good day! I apologize for my English. I'm from Russia. Build your overdrive. Used j201, 2n2222, 2n2907 and 2n5458. I want to thank you for the scheme. Great sound! Previously collected your panzerfuzz. In Russia, the guitar forums, are often discussed your scheme. I wish you further success! People need to like you.
All the best!
Dmitry. Rassia.

thanks a lot, Dmitry! that means a lot, and I'm glad you are enjoying the schematics! I didn't know that anybody talked about any of my projects on Russian forums. that's very cool! if you could provide a link to the forums, I would love to see it. thanks, again, and please tell other Russian builders, that I am glad they like the projects!

MONA LISA OVERDRIVE

alright, here is my latest offering to the faceless electronic gods of the global interweb.  it's called the Mona Lisa Overdrive after everyone's favorite cyberpunk masterpiece, and dystopian premonition written by William Gibson.  if you haven't heard of  it, check it out!  anyway, on to the the goods- 

i thought i would build something that would turn on the guys that were into the lighter side of things- something different than my usual wall of fuzz tones.  with the MLOD, you can get a heavy boost, or a light overdrive reminiscent of vintage microphone preamps.  the fancy thing about this circuit is the lack of coupling caps in the audio path- something usually reserved for mic pres and hifi circuits.  this lends itself to the "transparent",  uncolored sound happening here.  if you encounter any oscillation at the highest gain settings, simply raise the value of the 100 ohm resistor near the gain control to lower the amount of maximum gain. 

as always, if anyone happens to put this on the breadboard, or if it sounds like something you might want to build, let me know, and i'll whip up a layout for it.

take it easy!

ALL ABOUT CIRCUITS WORKSHEETS

this page from the ALL ABOUT CIRCUITS website has a multitude of worksheets for the electronic diyer to learn from and test themselves with.

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/worksheets/index.html


there is everything from AC, to DC, to FETs, opamps, filters, and BJTs.  even such simple stuff as ohm's law and caps and resistors.  seriously, everything from atoms to active circuits!

for example, here is one of their "design projects".   the objective is to help you in designing tone control circuits.

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/worksheets/proj_tone.html

with these worksheets, there should be no excuse not to have some serious kung fu!! hiiiiiieeeyahhh!!!!

BUILD A LAMP LIMITER

i recently decided to start monkeying around with some tube amps that i have aquired over the years, namely a couple of bogens, a bell pa head, a couple of small voice of music phono amps, and my big ol traynor yba-3.  a great gadget that is a must have for beginning tube amp tweakers is the Lamp Limiter.  it allows you to power up the amp while being able to tell if the amplifier is drawing too much current off of the mains.  if there is a short in the amp, the lamp will light up brightly.  here is a nice article from a UK radio sight about the lamp limiter, and a cool thread about "reading" the action of the bulb.


LAMP LIMITER
THREAD

these UK articles recommend a 100w bulb, where as this article from R.G Keen says that a 25w or larger bulb will do.
GEOFEX ARTICLE



a lamp limiter is a great way to help the learning process when working on tube gear, and hopefully can keep you from needlessly blowing anything up!