UNION TUBE & TRANSISTOR: Tourbender

This is a little unusual - let's jump straight to the obvious, the giant capacitors.  The Union Tube and Transistor Tourbender is their take on a MKII Tonebender using readily available silicon PNP transistors with a negative ground power supply. 

Basically invert a PNP circuit and then stabilise it with a lot of capacitance.  Watch the Grey Bench teardown, note that when looking at the schematic, he forgot to include the input cap on the drawing.

Can it work without the giant caps?  Maybe, try it and see what happens.  You can always chop down the vero board, as I've left all the power up the top. 

Do you need to use the weird resistor values show?  No - use whatever you can get hold of that's close.  I listed them as that's what is on the Gray Bench schematic.

UNION TUBE & TRANSISTOR TOURBENDER - VERO LAYOUT

TEARDOWN VIDEO BY GRAY BENCH

VIDEO DEMO

UNION TUBE & TRANSISTOR: Bumble Buzz

The Bumble Buzz is based on the Kay Fuzztone, which is a simplified Univox Super Fuzz.  It's a collaboration between Union Tube & Transistor and Third Man Records (Jack White).

There are no knobs; just stomp and go.  Raw octave fuzz....  

UNION TUBE AND TRANSISTOR BUMBLE BUZZ - VERO LAYOUT

UNION TUBE AND TRANSISTOR BUMBLE BUZZ - POINT TO POINT LAYOUT

ON THE BENCH

I should have cleaned up the edges a bit - but hey...  it was a quick and dirty build. 

ON THE SCOPE / FFT

440hz sine wave, approx 130mv TRMS

A very distinct octave can be seen, along with a lot of high-frequency content.  As you can see, the actual trace here, is almost identical to the LTspice sim shown below.

LTSPICE

VIDEO DEMO