Gibson PCB Components

I had to find a new terminal for the ground wire in my 2012 Les Paul, for which I was successful. I decided it would be useful to myself and others to find and list component types. The Phoenix part is the only one I’m absolutely sure is correct. The other parts are my best guesses based on pictures from the manufacturers.

The green and orange grounding terminal is manufactured by Phoenix Contact; part number 1791855. The white connector for the pickups looks like a Molex Picoblade, Series 15134, 5-pin connector. The black connectors for the switch and jack appear to be Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 single row receptacles. With older PCBs, the black pickup connectors are the same type of Micro-Fit Molex 3.0.

As far as potentiometers go, I have not yet found a direct replacement. Any solder lug pot could be adapted by soldering wires through the lugs. Alternatively, the solder lugs could be trimmed to fit into the PCB.

Phoenix 1791855

Molex Micro-Fit 3.0

Molex Picoblade

Pumped Up Supa Fuzz Build

I recently built a modified clone of a Marshall Supa Fuzz from a board for a Tone Bender Mk. II. The circuit has a charge pump to supply power and provides negative ground at the jacks.The schematic also calls for a 1 M pull down resistor. This is a modern touch to prevent popping when turning the effect on. Otherwise it’s pretty much a classic Tone Bender circuit. You can find the pcb at: GuitarPCB. 

Contrasts of Filter Response For Dual Rec Vintage

I don’t have time to type right now, but here are the images from the analysis for a 2 Channel Orange, 3 Channel Vintage on ch 2, and 3 Channel Vintage on ch 3.  The responses of the 2 Channel Orange and 3 Channel Vintage on ch 2 are very close.  Other factors could influence the differences between them.

2 Ch Orange

Mesa Engineering Dual Rectifier Presence Pot Frequency Plots

I very quickly drew the negative feedback filter controlled by the presence control when using Vintage mode on a 2001 3 Channel Dual Rectifier.  The red line represents the -3 dB half boost mark from the point of the most filtering.  I tried drawing the entire phase inverter, but it didn’t make a difference on the plots, so I removed it and kept it simple.

R2 is being instructed to act as a variable resistor with 11 points to represent each 30 degrees of travel from 0 -10 on the control.  Anytime a part of the plot goes below the red line, the feedback is lessened by quite a bit and those frequencies pass the phase inverter more easily.  The maroon line on each picture is representing the control being at maximum and a massive amount of the frequency band is passing easily.

McBooster 2: Dr. Booster

Update: This is the final version of the DR Booster:

The R10 is actually a pot, not a resistor.  With R10 at 10k, the boost is 19.1 dB; At 0 it is 3.5 dB.  The frequency band is 33 Hz – 2.9 kHz, with 330 Hz as the center.

The McBooster

I breadboarded a simple and basic booster which began as a MXR Microamp clone.  I was looking for something to push the amp into a certain sweet spot and the Microamp wasn’t quite right.  I thought it was too farty, frizzy, and prone to clipping for what I wanted.  I changed many of the part values, moved the pot to the feedback loop, and adjusted frequencies a couple of times to have a wide-band-pass filter which increasingly loses treble as the gain is increased.  The gain of the booster is also decreased to 8 (18 dB), versus a gain of 20 (26 dB).  This is to prevent clipping the op amp to an extreme with modern humbuckers.  If a person is using vintage pickups, the values can be changed to get greater gain, but it isn’t really necessary.  I used it with my humbuckers in pseudo-single coil, parallel wiring and it made them pop right out, adding clarity and girth.

A Few Changes To Recto Articles

In some of the articles, I made statements regarding a possibility of mild power amp drive, because I had not had time to really dig into the power amp to confirm or deny it, and due to the sound of Modern mode.  The power amp does not overdrive.  If you come across anything relating to this, any descriptions should be discarded if they contradict the following paragraphs.

Modern has some distortion present, but it isn’t clipping distortion; It’s regular ol’ harmonic distortion, which is otherwise known as “the tube sound”.  I don’t have time or energy to get into it, but the power amp is designed to stay as clean as possible, but tubes do not always amplify in a “linear” way.  This adds curvature to the sound waves, distorting them by bending (coloring the sound).

Matching Vintage To Modern

The idea was to take Vintage on Channel 2 and make it sound very similar to Modern on Channel 3.  The results ended up being very close, but I didn’t have the time to completely match the EQ (for the most anal of comparisons).  The overall response was what I was going for and that is achieved. 

Irony and Iron Man

The younger version of me was very much into hard rock, alt-rock, and metal.  The types of amps and guitars I used all went to 11 and stayed there.  As I got older, I branched off into other directions.  In my mid-20s, I ditched electric altogether and played acoustic for 4 or 5 years, only to return to it with a Big Muff.  In my early-30s I explored more classic rock, but with modern tones.  Now, in my late-30s, I’ve gone from being an acrobatic, outside soloing, masturbator to being limited in my playing and learning about economy of notes and action.

Great Finds

This week, I’ve come across two great sources of information, ideas, and inspiration: