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.

C.

This is a custom pedal that I built that was based on the Univibe – a foot-controlled phase shifter that can produce “chorus and vibrato-esque” effects. However, the pedal has its own distinct modulation sound that has been immortalised by guitar legends such as Robin Trower, David Gilmour and Jimi Hendrix. It can be smooth and subtle to throbbing and percussive – enough to make you seasick after awhile!

This layout and PCB (called the Neovibe) was designed by DIY pedal guru, R.G. Keen who started GEOFEX, is an active member of DIY Stompboxes and now works for Visual Sound. The design is centered around a lamp as the light source that responds to a staggered phase stages, with photosensitive resistors responding to the amplitude of the lamp brightness. The pedal involves making a light shield to optimise the response of the photosensitive resistors by placing the lamp in a dark, contained area. The use of the lamp – the core of the traditional, vintage Univibe – provides a lagging, spongy latency that is unique compared to other modulation pedals like chorus and vibrato. For the tech heads, Keen has written an excellent article on The Technology of the Univibe.

This Neovibe has standard Volume and Depth controls on top, with a Chorus/Vibrato switch between them. To emulate the foot control without an expression pedal, the larger speed knob was placed on the side allowing the rate of throb to be controlled on the fly. Check out the demo at the bottom of the page.

Chris Tamm aka Konsumterra has been involved in street art for nigh 20 years with paste, stickers, stencils and character art. Originally from Adelaide, Chris is currently in Sydney working as a street art teacher, curator and artist. Most of Konsumterra’s work is a parody of consumerism and a celebration of low pop and trash culture.

Check out his work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/konsumterra/

Below is a demo of the Neovibe.
Clip Details: Fender Stratocaster > MI Audio Blues Pro Overdrive >Neovibe > Marshall JCM600
MI Audio Blues Pro kicked on halfway through.
Recording: SM57 > Mbox2 > Logic Pro

Neovibe by cubisteffects

…and here is a demo from the Neovibe’s new owner

C.

This is a custom pedal that I built that was based on the DOD 250 Preamp Overdrive. This is a great pedal to build for someone looking for a DIY project. The circuit is very basic and has a 741 op-amp at its core. The original grey 250s (pictured left) go for a pretty penny on eBay, and the newer reissues (also pictured left) are also climbing in value. The pedal even garners a special fan, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, and his fandom of the small grey box has earned him a signature YJM 308 Overdrive – again based off of the 250 circuit. In my opinion, it is a very under-rated overdrive pedal and had the potential, with some cubisteffects mods, to really become a versatile low/mid gain drive pedal.

This custom 250 has two footswitches – one for bypass and one to activate a clean boost. The boost can be used independently of the 250 circuit, thus providing three levels of gain (boost, custom 250 and custom 250+boost). The white knob controls the output volume of the boost.

The four black knobs control the Volume and Gain (as per the original design) plus a few modifications. There is an “Edge” control that limits the amount of signal hitting the clipping diodes. This provides a smoother tone and effects the character of the gain in a different way than rolling of the Gain knob. The fourth knob is a Tone control that rolls off high or low frequencies, and can be bypassed by the small toggle beside it. Bypassing the tone stack increases the output volume significantly and can really drive your preamp! The large toggle is a three-way switch that selects between three diode selections providing three different tones – fuzzy, boost and smooth. All of this in a hand-painted custom black and white swirl paint job as well.

BOSS have a range of looping pedals under the RC name. In this range there are the small standard BOSS size RC-2, the twin pedals RC-20 and RC-20XL and the big boy RC-50. Each of these loopers are popular for their abilities to rehearse and jam, and for the use in a live context. There a number of looping pedals on the market now but the Boss range maintain their popularity on the scene.

One feature of the RC-20, RC-20XL and RC-50 (which I’ll refer to as RC-) is the presence of a Phrase Shift or Ctl jack on the rear of the pedal. The Phrase Shift jack allows you to use an auxiliary footswitch to scroll up and down through your saved phrases (numbered 1-11 on the RC-20, -20XL). This provides a lot more flexibility as they only way to do this without the auxiliary footswitch is by bending down and physically turning the PHRASE SELECT knob. Practically, this allows you to scroll through your previously saved tracks, both up and down, via footswitch. This utilises much more of the pedal’s capabilities, rather than continuous overdubbing on the first phrase.

This auxiliary footswitch can also be used in the RC-50 as the Ctl1/2 or Ctl 3/4. the RC-50 allows you the choice of programming what the additional four switches will control. Such parameters include start, stop, one-shot, reverse, tempo… I could go on. So, in effect, with the use of two auxiliary footswitches, the RC-50 goes from a seven switch pedal to an eleven switch monster. Now that’s a lot of pedal!

This is a custom auxiliary switch I made for a friend Anna who wanted more control over her Boss RC-20XL looper. The switch controls the PHRASE SELECT for saved phrases and selects up and down. The status of the PHRASE NUMBER that you have currently selected is determined by the green PLAY LED. It pulses a number of times that corresponds to the PHRASE NUMBER, followed by a succession of fast pulses. This is very useful when queuing up your next track. Also your next track (after making your selection with the footswitch) will play after the phrase is finished its duration. No need to punch in the exact moment – another useful live aid.

The auxiliary switch requires a 1/4″ stereo to 1/4″ stereo patch lead or cable. This can be bought at most music stores but I can also make these up.

Another auxiliary footswitch that can be plugged into RC-20 series is a separate footswitch to control the REVERSE function of the looper. On the RC-20, reversing the loop, pre- or post-recording, requires a push of a small button. By using the small REVERSE auxiliary footswitch, this can be done at any time using your foot and leaving your hands free for playing. This REVERSE footswitch can also be added to the custom footswitch above for a three-button auxiliary switch that controls all functions of the RC- series.

The custom auxiliary switch for the RC-50 and RC-20 series also works for the RC-2 pedal. This provides even more flexibility from the small BOSS footprint. A 1/4″ stereo to 1/4″ stereo patch lead or cable is also required to scroll through the saved phrases.

However if you do wish to keep the size to a minimum, this small STOP/TEMPO footswitch expands on the single pedal design and provides the functionality of the RC-20 line in the footprint of the RC-2. By plugging this pedal into the STOP/TEMPO jack, the custom switch allows you to stop any phrase while playing and control the tempo by tapping a new speed whilst the phrase is stopped. This allows overdubbing, tempo setting and stopping to be so much easier.

Any 1/4″ mono cable or common patch lead will work in plugging the switch and the pedal together. These two small pedals provide a lot of looping and is perfect for home practice or simple looped phrases for a small piece of pedal board real estate.

All of the above footswitches place more control of each pedal at your feet, allowing you to create loops in ways others cannot. After some experimentation you’ll begin to wonder how you looped without.