Doug Kovach sent me a link to this awesome project he recently completed. It’s a cross between two iconic effects pedals, the FuzzFace Fuzz pedal and the Colorsound MKII ToneBender. In the video, he presents a little history of the pedals, his research into the circuits, his experiments (and failures) in creating this new dual effects circuit, and his final success. Here he describes a little of his process:
The pedal is a cross between the Fuzz Face of Jimi Hendrix fame and the MKII Professional of Jimmy Page fame. The footswitch on the left switches between the two modes and the footswitch on the right bypasses the effect. The knob on the left is the attack knob which adjusts the distortion characteristics while the knob on the right controls the output volume. Both of these pedals are considered to be the holy grail of distortion pedals and many a dollar has been spent in acquiring either. Here I have combined them into what is arguably the finest distortion device ever presented to musicians. I have used military grade Germanium transistors in the circuit to prevent the dreaded temperature based instabilities and also to provide the healthy germanium creaminess both of these pedals were known for.
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It seems as though I will hopefully be manufacturing a couple of productions runs of the updated version of this pedal. Same specs and transistors and mostly the same circuit but 4 modes of operation as opposed to the 3 modes this pedal has. By the way the owner of this pedal still loves it and uses it everyday both on stage and in the studio. I also constructed his custom designed 100 watt tube amp as well as the channel switching device. He has had no problems at all in the past 4 years with any of them. The only things in his rig I did not make were the guitar and the cords and the pick. I have made two more of these pedals and they sold right away. I barely had time to finish them because they were so eager to use them. The creamy lusciousness of the germanium allows full chords as well as single notes unlike a lot of modern distortion devices. I will make an announcement on this thread when the new pedals are available for sale if anyone is interested. I have not had the time nor the place to do any electronics work in the past few years due to life and medical problems but now I am back to stable again so look for new devices again soon! My website is http://www.duoglassix.com if I am allowed to post a link outside of makezine.com. My YouTube channel is also DuoGlassix.