So why circuit boards, I always hear that point to point wiring is so much better? I think the person that said this, probably has never designed a circuit board in his or her life. I have been designing circuit boards since the late 70’s. Back then you used red and blue tape to describe the top and bottom layers. Today with Altium, I can do circuit boards in a couple hours that have only rounded traces and fitted ground planes to reduce noise. This creates a duplication method that is better than point to point wiring.
Glass Pack Fuzz Pedal
Keeping with the car theme the Glass Pack pedal was derived from a Tonebender 1.5. To me that is the sound in my head I was looking for and continued through the 18 month journey to version 21. You can read about the TB 1.5 and it’s influence to the Fuzz Face and other Fuzz pedals and considering only a few were ever made it seemed the unlikely candidate, but it did create a world of sound.
This pedal started way before the Nitrous pedal did. The first 10 versions were various two transistor versions of the 1.5 using PNP to start then NPN to settle on. It was then suggested that I add a tone knob to the circuit which meant another transistor. I ended up with 8 versions of tone circuits and thought I was complete and yes this version is available with three germanium NOS NPN transistors. I then considered making a discrete low dropout regulator that would serve as both a bias and lower the noise. The first one was with a 2N404 germanium transistor. That version is available in small quantities. The next two used silicon transistors which made the circuit a little more stable.
In all there are 4 versions available. Three turbo versions and one standard version using the Toshiba NPN germanium transistors.
Turbo passive unit $400 three NOS Mullard Germanium Transistors
Turbo 2N404 shunt regulated $600 with 3 NOS Mullard transistors (4 available).
Turbo silicon shunt regulated $400 with two NOS Mullard transistors, one NOS TI transistor
Standard version with Toshiba transistors $300
All of these are hand made and have two switch options opening the bottom of the unit: Switch SW1 turns off the Tone circuit if you want a more realistic Tonebender experience. SW2 will add more capacitance to the input to make it more full range. Currently the Mial input cap has a high pass frequency of 250Hz.
Custom versions available on request.
