This monster of a pedal is a bastard child – two rehoused effects and an original circuit, each circuit bent to hell to give a wide range of crazy sounds.

The first pedal is a Danelectro Sitar Swami, a flanger that has an octave down to simulate the drone of a sitar. The controls are LEVEL and EQ, which sweeps the peak frequency from the bass to treble range. The Sitar Swami has three circuit bends – one that self-oscillates the PT delay chip, one that creates a feedback loop before the delay line and another that interrupts the repeat rate of the delay chip.

The second is a Boss T-Wah – a “touch” or auto-wah that has a two-way up/down filter switch, SENSITIVITY and PEAK. This also has been circuit bent to create two different notch boosts that adds some drive to the signal as well.

The third is a cubisteffects oscillating fuzz circuit. A wild and diverse fuzz that can give you anything from gated, static sounds, to garage-rock 60′s fuzz to oscillating madness. Turning the level knob to max sets the oscillation mode into overdrive and can then be used as a standalone noisemaker. Add the swami and some T-Wah filter and circuit bends and this thing gets crazy real quick.

I received a Roland AP7 Jet Phaser that was taken out of its original case (top left) and housed in a plywood shell and gigged to no end. The owner is Mitch Jones from Australian legendary post-punk band Scattered Order. The AP7 is a phaser/distortion pedal that provides the swooshing lead sound made famous by the hair metal gods of the ’80s. A six way MODE switch selects between two clean phaser modes, and four jet modes – a combination of differently filtered distortion plus phase sounds. There are also knobs for LEVEL (volume), RESONANCE of the phase and SLOW RATE. The final knob allows a “base slow speed” of the LFO of the phaser that is ramped up to maximum with a stomp of the FAST/SLOW switch. This take-off sound gives the Jet Phaser its signature sound.

I was asked by Mitch to move the RATE switch to a toggle instead of a stomp. In its place, a Mute/Killswitch was put in as he runs the effect into a mixer. The RATE switch is more of a ramp switch, with the rate increasing and decreasing much like a jet taking off! I was also asked to make the pedal extreme! So after much prodding around, I managed to find several circuit bends that took the pedal from an 80′s shred machine to a unique textured phaser. If you have heard Scattered Order, this will fit in quite nicely.

When circuit-bending I aim to provide a few different types of noises. Oscillations (sustained high/low pitched notes) are common, as are different EQ options by concentrating on filter/tone sections. I also like to add in some white noise bends and volume boosts to take the effect to the next level. Luckily, I was able to find all of these bends in this phaser. The video demo below shows the various EQ shifts in resonance, some white noise and some level boosts that work with different frequencies of the effected synth. Also, with circuit-bends being completely chaotic and random, some unexpected combinations of these bends gave some fantastic results.

After bending, I rehoused the pedal into a large new white enclosure, added the MUTE switch and a blue LED to show the rate of the LFO. The artwork is from the cover of a Scattered Order 12″ “A Dancing Foot And Praying Knee Don’t Belong On The Same Leg”.

The video below is a Korg Trident being played through the new AP7 and going through each of the circuit bends to show the combination of new sounds available.

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The MXR Blue Box Octave Fuzz has been a unique and peculiar effect from its inception. The clean signal is taken and a two octave dropped square wave output is spewed out. You can control the blend with your guitar signal and volume of the effect with the two knobs – and that’s it. This effect is at its best with a strong line level signal or neck pickup, past the twelfth fret, for some really lo-fi bass lead sounds. The pedal is chaotic and wild and not one to be reigned in. It does not track chords or the high string very well and is known for its volume drop, even with the OUTPUT at 5 o’clock. So I tried to address these issues and make it even wilder.

This pedal is an original 1977 Script logo that came in for some upgrades. First, the pedal was true bypassed, indicating LED added, and a DC jack added. Then, I aimed to give the pedal a bit more of a volume boost. If you read about Blue Box mods, a common one is the ‘C11′ mod. This involves cutting the C11 capacitor off the board to give more of a boost at output. However each board is labelled differently so if you haven’t modded one before beware that the C11 does not apply to all Blue Boxes. This pedal didn’t even have markings for any capacitor but I was able to find a similar capacitor to bypass for the boost.

But finally, the owner of this Blue Box wanted it to be extreme so I went about finding some mods and circuit bends for a unique effect. This included a switch to select between one octave or two octaves down. The other small toggle on the face is a gated fuzz sound – an almost square wave tremolo that chops up the -2 octave drop. The top toggle is a big volume fuzz boost that bypasses the octave divider and provides a really nice fuzz sound that pushes the amp’s preamp for a great overdrive/fuzz sound.

If the pedal was wild before, I think it can now be called extreme…

Below is a demo from Dunlop showing the sounds of a stock Blue Box if you haven’t heard one before:

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After circuit-bending the Livingstone Super Overdrive, I thought I would track down one of the pedals that inspired the line, the Ibanez 5 Series. I managed to get an AW5 Auto Wah for cheap and thought it would make a good candidate for bending. I was right…

An auto wah is also known as an envelope filter or envelope follower. The sound of the wah is dependent on the attack of the strings of the guitar and is much faster than moving your foot on a conventional wah, therefore producing unique sounds. This effect was THE funk sound of P-Funk and Sly & the Family Stone in the 70′s. The Ibanez 5 Series wasn’t a very popular line but it does have a number of standout effects. The AW5 Auto Wah is one of them and is a great pedal for a filtered lead guitar sound. This is straight from the Ibanez catalogue:

“Our version of automatic wah is a little different than other touch or auto wahs: it has just a hint of distortion which adds some warmth to this great effect. The sensitivity control can be adjusted to increase response to your playing. Not just for wah effects, the AW5 can also be a more subtle manipulator of attack and tone. Great for guitarists or bassists, especially for bass players who want to create their own “synth-bass” sounds.”

The AW5 Auto Wah has three controls; Depth, Range and Sensitivity. The range of this auto wah is not as wide as many auto wahs but it does have a unique sound. This pedal shines with distortion or fuzz before it, making a great fixed wah tone that brings out the harmonics in your playing. A clean guitar tone through the AW5 is reminiscent of an AM radio sound. However, the circuit bends described below have taken this pedal further than initially imagined…

Pictured is the Ibanez AW5 Auto Wah before I worked on it. I have made a couple of hardware changes to the pedal. Firstly, I replaced the PCB actuator switch with an SPDT “soft-click” momentary switch. This improves one of the design flaws of the AW5. Secondly, I replaced the standard LED with a waterclear bright green LED.

I got this pedal from a friend Dave. He picked this up from the cheap supermarket chain Aldi for a handful of dollars and uses it maxed for a noisy, feedback pedal. He threw it to me and asked what I could do with it and the Frankenstein above is what eventuated…

This range of pedals are under the Livingstone brand (with motto “Music For Life”) but similar pedals can be found on eBay under the Daphon name. These are pedals that have been constructed with the cheapest of parts, and no doubt the cheapest of labour. They are aimed at the beginner guitarist looking for new sounds at a very affordable price. Pictured to the right is what the original pedal looked like. They look very similar to the Ibanez Soundtank series – or 5 series. They featured a number of pedals in the same shaped plastic case, and whilst having a couple of good pedals in the range like the Echo Machine and Auto-Wah, their durability limited their life span.

Since this Livingstone is used for sheer aural abuse, I didn’t go for a Boss SD-1 kind of mod (which this pedal shares extreme similarities to). I decided to push it further and circuit bend the pedal. For the unfamiliar, circuit bending is the non-scientific approach of purposefully creating short circuits to yield a new spontaneous and random noise generator. Bending is very popular in electronic and noise music as it provides something outside-of-the-box. However a number of rock artists including Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson and The Rolling Stones have been known to experiment with these sound generators. Circuit bending does require some basic electronic knowledge or else blown capacitors and ICs will occur, but the craft itself can be very creative and boundless with many of the obsessed benders referring to it as ‘sound art’. For more circuit bending info, check out this link, this link, or the Godfather of Bending Reed Ghazala‘s page here.

So after replacing the fragile plastic on/off actuator with a heavy-duty switch, I began probing around certain areas of the circuit that I thought would truly make this a “feedback pedal”. I managed to find three unique sounds, each of which are controlled by a small on/off toggle switch. Two of the bends provide an octave down and octave up oscillation. The pitch of each oscillation could be controlled by the volume and tone knobs of the guitar for interesting siren-like effects. The third bend provided a big boost in volume and gain, almost like the tone bypass modification of the T-34 Big Muff Bass Mod. This bend gave instant feedback and a raw punk distortion sound. This was a winner. So with that, Dave now has a one-of-a-kind cubisteffects Circuit Bent Livingstone, ready to terrorise his audience at every gig.

If you are interested and have a cheap pedal laying around collecting dust, I can circuit bend your pedal too and create your next inspiring sound.

Here’s a quick loop I did of the Circuit Bent Livingstone.

Clip Details: Fender Jazzmaster> Circuit Bent Livingstone>Line 6 DL4> Marshall JCM 600
Settings: Metronome-like beat made with the Livingstone and looped with the DL4, overdubbed rhythm guitar is neck pickup/rhythm circuit on Jazzmaster also with the Livingstone and looped with the DL4, and feedback through Sweep Echo setting on DL4.
Recording: SM57 > Mbox2 > Reaper

Circuit Bent Livingstone Super Overdrive
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