Tonefiend Forum

I'm strongly considering putting a clean booster in my axe. I love having one on my pedal board, so why not make sure I always have one with me? They open up a second floor of dynamics. Sometimes you just want to wack your amp something fierce without any solid-state distortion getting in the way.

Also, Matthew Bellamy is a god among onboard-effects men. Love that skinny, british man.

At the moment, I'm debating whether to attempt building an onboard Pigtronics Philosophers Stone in one of my upcoming guitar builds. I've got the circuit schematics and I think it might be the perfect onboard effect set - germanium distortion, compress/sustain, blend, and volume. It really needs about 15-18 volts DVC so it would be a two battery job or I might try to build a power pedal that sends the voltage on a stereo cable and mono out to the amp/effects. Yeah, it's foolish and overkill, but who wouldn't want to be able to fine tune distortion and compression directly from the guitar?

sorry, it should have read Philosophers Tone. The guys over at freestompboxes have it diagrammed on vero that fits into a 1590B enclosure so it's not actually very big. Four knobs, but i'd probably split those so only the dirt and sustain are close to the bridge. I'm thinking of adding this to my steelcaster project so there will be ample room in the body for the circuit and i can just add the knobs to the pickguard for easy access. I need to check if it is an easy mod to switch between the stock and the ltd ed. germanium diode. Being able to switch between those with another small toggle would pretty much cover the bases for me. Here' the thread with the schematics - https://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11954&start=100

Quote from smgear on August 15, 2012, 10:13
sorry, it should have read Philosophers Tone. The guys over at freestompboxes have it diagrammed on vero that fits into a 1590B enclosure so it's not actually very big.

Well if that's so, cool! All I knew is how big the original pedal was. Building that steelcaster will definitely give you a unique opportunity for space, sure enough.

Again going back to my childhood hero F. Zappa, he often had a parametric EQ (two controls - frequency and boost/cut) installed in his guitars so he could fine tune the feedback for whatever hockey rink he was playing in. My guess is that most people are not playing in those size venues or at that level. Nevertheless, a lot of time when playing, you want to cut through a bit more and an EQ could give you a bit more subtle control than simply stomping on "boost" or grabbing the amp's volume knob and twisting it. Also with a fair amount of boost, you could have a hand controlled "wah" and with a deep cut, a hand-controlled subtle phase shift type sound.

Frank also claimed to have had a Green Ringer installed in one of his SGs, however I cannot discern this being used obviously in his recorded output (and believe me I have listened to it a LOT). I do think I heard it being used in some 70's era bootlegs I may have once listened to accidentally.