Circuit Bent Instruments

This is Midfi Electronics “Random Number Generator”. It’s a radical fuzz that adds oscillation notes that randomly arpeggiate off of the fundamental note played. Crazy noise maker pedal. I’ve built several of these now by request. The owner of the design over at Midfi was gracious enough to share the schematic on the DIYstompboxes forum which is why I want to make it clear that this is NOT my design, and if you get one for me you are strictly paying me to make a clone since these aren’t available anymore.

This is the first one of these I’ve built. I added the mods of changing a 100k resistor with a pot, and a diode that is switched into the circuit, but quite frankly they don’t do a whole lot. Any others of these I build will just have the volume knob as original intended.

The Uglyface effect is an oscillation based distortion/fuzz pedal with envelope controller designed by Tim Escobedo. It can do a wide varitey of off the wall sounds (laser guns, bagpipes, drones), and it has many different ways to modify the circuit. I’ll liked it so much I built it into one of my old junker guitars (details below).

This is the first Uglyface I’ve built. I built it into some crazy electronics box with huge heatsyncs on the sides. Seemed to fit the circuit some how lol. I did the standard controls of Volume, Threshold, Frequency, and Sensitivity, and added a mix control that worked ok.

I had this old guitar knocking around for a while, so I decided to mount an Uglyface inside of it. It has all the same controls as the pedal above, but I also added a Light Sensor with switch for controlling the frequency knob.

Here’s some of the “one off” pedals I’ve built. Some have already been sold, some I built for folks that aren’t handy with a soldering iron, some for friends, and I’ve actually even kept a few for myself =)

Junkifyer
This was one of my very first pedals. I called it the “Junkifyer” and it’s based off of a circuit by Tim E. called the “LoFoMoFo”. Basically what it does is sends a guitar signal through a noisy transistor with a high pass filter. What that does is make your guitar sound like it’s being played through an old radio. I have a work a like design of my own that’s similar to this, but I added another transistor stage, and did the “Broken speaker” distortion differently. If I build them it will be under the same name.
This pedal is sold.


PWM
This pedal is Tim E.’s “PWM”. It routes the guitars signal through an oscillator, giving your guitar’s tone a synthy quality. It also has an LFO that will modulate the Osc. frequency in time with the LFO’s rate. I wired a switching jack to the frequency knob that will allow an expression pedal to control the frequency. Controls from left to right are= Volume, Frequency, LFO Depth, LFO rate. It has a bright blue LED to show bypassed state. This pedal is now with Shawn from Child Bite. I’ve built a handful more of these. I have one currently I need to take photos of that has a better LFO with triange and squarewaves.
This pedal is sold

before                                                                          after

Red Llama
This is the Red Llama. The circuit is a clone of the infamous (more then famous) Way Huge Red Llama. It gives fat tube sounding distortion. I disassembled this for a while to use some of it’s parts, but I decided to put this back together in a new enclosure to sell.
This pedal has now sold.

Auto Crash with mods
This is John Hollis’ “Crash Sync” pedal. It’s an oscillator based distortion, pretty thick and noisy. I added the envelope control from Moosapotamus’ “Auto Crash”, and also did a few modifications circuit bender style. I found a two points that change the timbre of the oscialltion. One makes it a more mid-rangey wah type sound, and the other causes the Osc. to be prominent then the guitar’s signal. I also added a momentary stomp switch that removes the guitar’s signal completely for some laser gun fun.
This pedal is sold

Heart Throb Tremolo
Hearthrob Tremolo by MarkM. I had an old Kay Tremolo that I foolishly sold, and now that I’m trying to build a pedal board I knew that I would need a good tremolo. With simple controls this one really gets the job done. Speed works as described, and there is also a switch that will decrease/increase the speed in half. The really cool feature is the “Dwell” knob. This allows you to dial in exactly how deep you want the tremolo to be. From sublte waver to full on choppy thumps. I added the mod to make the LED pulse with time of the tremolo. I’ve reboxed this pedal due to space, just need to take an updated photo.
This pedal is currently on my “surf” pedalboard.

Pedals without photos (yet):

Fool Drive 2
Built this from a project a found online. First time using an etched PCB. Thanks to John Lyons for making them. Check out his site for awesome wood pedals enclosures. I’ve added several mods to this pedal. The switches on the back control a bass boost, gain boost, clipping switch (asymetrical diodes and LEDS), and a switch to change the diodes to symetrical.
This pedal is currently loaned out to a friend.

Psychtar
The Psychtar is a Sitar simulator+Octave fuzz. It’s another of Tim E. circuits. Really cool pedal. I gave this to my friend “P” before I could take a photo of it. Hope to get one soon. I’ve built another of these since. I’ve built another one for myself, just need to get a photo of it also.
This pedal is in my current rotation.

Peppermill
Awesome project from the guys at . Pics soon. This is a great very light overdrive. The exact sound I was looking for when I first started building pedals. Pefect for Rockabilly, roots, and surf.
This pedal is on my pedalboard.

BYOC ESV Tone Bender
My first “Kit” pedal. This “Build your own clone” kit is a work-a-like of the original MKII Tone Bender fuzz pedal. The awesome thing is it came with NOS OC44 Germanium transistors! I added a switch that takes out the booster stage making it more like a Fuzz Face, and I brought the bias trim pot out on the case.
This pedal was sold to a friend

BYOC Confidence Booster
Pics soon. Came free with my ESV Tone Bender kit from BYOC. I made it into a true boost pedals by mounting it in an enclosure, adding a bypass switch, and outboarding the boost trim pot.
This pedal is currently on my “surf” pedalboard

After building a couple of their pedals for myself I’ve decided that if there’s anyone out there that wants a B.Y.O.C. pedal, but doesn’t know how to solder, that I will build them for you for a fee. It will be the cost of the pedal on the B.Y.O.C. site, plus a $40.00 to $60.00 build fee depending on the level of difficulty. That will be for a bare box, if you want it painted then we can dialog about the cost of that.

B.Y.O.C. has clones of some of the most famous pedals out there (Fuzz Face, Big Muff, Tube Screamer, etc) that come with the highest quality parts. On top of that most are true bypass, and several of the pedals come with additional mods that stretch out the versatility of the pedal futher (I have the “Rat” clone that has a 5 way rotary switch for 5 different clipping options).

Here is the main page for B.Y.O.C. You’ll find a list of the clones they make here, and if you are interested in having one built by me, then send me a line through the contact page here

Been a while since I added to, or even updated this site, even though I’m still working. I recently built two Midfi Random Number Generator clones, and circuit bent a VL-tone. Here’s some rough pics. Hope to get some more content, and maybe even some revamping of the site soon.

After being gone for over a year I’m trying to get things going again. I have three things up on ebay that I’ll list below (click on the pics to go to the auctions links). Hoping to get some new content up on the site here as well.