Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

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danmunners
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Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by danmunners »

I got the pedal building bug again. Wanted to try something simple this time and I don't have any fuzz pedals so I just picked one at random and built it, a Z.Vex Wooly Mammoth clone from here: https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/20 ... -vero.html

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I probably should have read more about it before I built it, turns out it's a bass fuzz. I liked the sound but waaaaay too bassy for my guitar. Googled a little bit and found out that I could swap the input capacitor for a lower value to reduce the bass. Went from 0.22uf to a 0.022uf and that tamed the bass a lot but it still had a bit more than I needed so I figured "What the hell, I'll change the other 0.22uf to a 0.022uf as well and see what happens." Worked a charm. Never had a fuzz pedal before so I have no idea if it's good in comparison to a good fuzz but I really like the sound.

I have the parts for an Earthquaker Devices Bit Commander so I'm going to have a blast at that one next.

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Re: Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by jeremyb »

danmunners wrote: I have the parts for an Earthquaker Devices Bit Commander so I'm going to have a blast at that one next.
Awesome! They're a great sounding pedal! Is it a difficult build? PCB?

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Re: Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by danmunners »

The Bit Commander is definitely more complicated than the Wooly Mammoth. Seems similar complexity to the Tremulus Lune tremolo I built.

I'm not sure if I'll use Stripboard again: https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/20 ... ander.html
Or go with this: https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/captainbit/

I'm leaning towards the latter because it'll be smaller.

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Re: Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by Single coil »

Dude send it up and I’ll make a shitty video about it :D
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Re: Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by foal30 »

danmunners wrote:I got the pedal building bug again. Wanted to try something simple this time and I don't have any fuzz pedals so I just picked one at random and built it, a Z.Vex Wooly Mammoth clone from here: https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/20 ... -vero.html

Image

I probably should have read more about it before I built it, turns out it's a bass fuzz. I liked the sound but waaaaay too bassy for my guitar. Googled a little bit and found out that I could swap the input capacitor for a lower value to reduce the bass. Went from 0.22uf to a 0.022uf and that tamed the bass a lot but it still had a bit more than I needed so I figured "What the hell, I'll change the other 0.22uf to a 0.022uf as well and see what happens." Worked a charm. Never had a fuzz pedal before so I have no idea if it's good in comparison to a good fuzz but I really like the sound.

I have the parts for an Earthquaker Devices Bit Commander so I'm going to have a blast at that one next.
I'm a bass player and have wanted a go on a Wooly Mammoth

There's another one called Grizzly Bear that looks cool

I currently have an Attack Goat
Genuine Old Frontier Gibberish

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Re: Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by Green Bastard »

I just ordered a few pcbs from that pedalpcb place, looks like some relatively complicated builds on there that i couldn't be bothered trying on stripboard.
Got a diezel vh4, friedman boost and a couple other more basic ones on the way to mess around with. Just trying to track down the last few parts that i couldnt find on Tayda.

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Re: Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by Optical »

danmunners wrote:Went from 0.22uf to a 0.022uf and that tamed the bass a lot but it still had a bit more than I needed so I figured "What the hell, I'll change the other 0.22uf to a 0.022uf as well and see what happens." Worked a charm. Never had a fuzz pedal before so I have no idea if it's good in comparison to a good fuzz but I really like the sound.
The input capacitor value together with the components which set the input impedance form a high pass (bass cut) filter
In a fuzz face (which the wooly mammoth mostly is) the input impedance is quite low, around 8kohms. So the high pass filter frequency is something around 90HZ with the 220nf input cap (f = 1/2*pi*R*C). Changing that to the 22nf cap changes this to 900Hz - a big difference.

Most circuits also have a capacitor on the output is similar and forms another high pass filter in conjunction with the output resistor. But on the Wooly mammoth that other 220nF cap is part of a big muff style EQ. Changing that 220nF cap actually increased the mids and highs a ton, which probably made the bass seem like it was reduced, relatively speaking...

Anyway, changing the bass going into the circuit has pretty dramatic effects on the gain texture - more bass = more low mids to the point where things get muddy. The filter on the output just changes how much bass the final tone has. So depending on what you're trying to achieve you can change things at the input or the output...

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Re: Anorexic Wooly Mammoth

Post by danmunners »

Optical wrote: The input capacitor value together with the components which set the input impedance form a high pass (bass cut) filter
In a fuzz face (which the wooly mammoth mostly is) the input impedance is quite low, around 8kohms. So the high pass filter frequency is something around 90HZ with the 220nf input cap (f = 1/2*pi*R*C). Changing that to the 22nf cap changes this to 900Hz - a big difference.

Most circuits also have a capacitor on the output is similar and forms another high pass filter in conjunction with the output resistor. But on the Wooly mammoth that other 220nF cap is part of a big muff style EQ. Changing that 220nF cap actually increased the mids and highs a ton, which probably made the bass seem like it was reduced, relatively speaking...

Anyway, changing the bass going into the circuit has pretty dramatic effects on the gain texture - more bass = more low mids to the point where things get muddy. The filter on the output just changes how much bass the final tone has. So depending on what you're trying to achieve you can change things at the input or the output...
That was incredibly enlightening! Thank you. I'm going to have to have a fiddle with those values now and see how it changes the fuzz.

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