Every now and then, I miss having All Electronics within driving distance.
It is one of the last of an almost extinct species, the surplus electronics store. Even into the 2000s there was one in Pasadena, a second All Electronics location in downtown L.A., Apex Electronics (an astonishing place full of space-race leftovers up in Sun Valley), and Apex Jr. further south down the Harbor Freeway, in Torrance.
Old ham-radio operators and electronics engineers I knew in L.A. used to speak of a golden age of surplus electronics stores in the '70s and '80s, that had already mostly disappeared by the time I moved to the LA region about thirty years ago.
-Gnobuddy
All Electronics is a great store. Last night I went looking to order a lot of additional parts including some older ones for future projects and had browser windows open for Mouser, Newark, and AE. AE had several parts that the others did not have (probably purchased as surplus), and some of its prices were better on parts also sold by the others.
Anyways, as I was preparing to start drilling holes in the enclosure for the Ruby, it occurred to me that I could also fit the innards for a Fuzz Face FX pedal in the same enclosure. Both the Ruby and the classic FF circuits are relatively simple. Indeed, the FF has even fewer parts than the Ruby. Schematics attached.
Apart from the need to actually finish the Ruby (my first electronics project), is there any reason - a hundred? - why I couldn't just build them in series in the same enclosure? For example, attaching the signal line out of the Ruby (at the very end, at the speaker connection) to the signal line into the FF (before C1 in the FF circuit)? I would need to make other changes as a practical matter, of course, such as replacing the Ruby vol pot with a fixed resistor value and using the FF vol pot to control volume, and removing the foot switch from the FF circuit because it would be always-on. And replace the FF jack out with the speaker connector(s). But, "other than things like that," any reason the FF could not be built immediately after the Ruby in the same box? Is this a terrible idea? Absurd because the Ruby would need to follow the FF?
Anyways, as I was preparing to start drilling holes in the enclosure for the Ruby, it occurred to me that I could also fit the innards for a Fuzz Face FX pedal in the same enclosure. Both the Ruby and the classic FF circuits are relatively simple. Indeed, the FF has even fewer parts than the Ruby. Schematics attached.
Apart from the need to actually finish the Ruby (my first electronics project), is there any reason - a hundred? - why I couldn't just build them in series in the same enclosure? For example, attaching the signal line out of the Ruby (at the very end, at the speaker connection) to the signal line into the FF (before C1 in the FF circuit)? I would need to make other changes as a practical matter, of course, such as replacing the Ruby vol pot with a fixed resistor value and using the FF vol pot to control volume, and removing the foot switch from the FF circuit because it would be always-on. And replace the FF jack out with the speaker connector(s). But, "other than things like that," any reason the FF could not be built immediately after the Ruby in the same box? Is this a terrible idea? Absurd because the Ruby would need to follow the FF?
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The Fuzz Face can't drive a speaker.
Correct.
It wouldn't be impossible for an experienced electronics constructor to build a Fuzz Face and Ruby amp into the same enclosure, the fuzz being before (not after) the Ruby. But the more stuff you build into one package, the more complications you add, and the more things there are to go wrong.
Also: Based on a clip I heard, I think the Ruby is already designed to fuzz the signal. Does a Fuzz-Face into a Ruby sound good? Darned if I know. Do you? Is it even a sound you'd want, if you manage to build it?
If you did stuff both fuzz and amp in one box, you would have yet more gain in an even smaller space. If the separate external fuzz pedal and LM386 hummed and buzzed, chances are combining two equivalent devices into one shared enclosure using one shared power supply will worsen the hum and buzz.
Maybe you could pull it off, who knows. Only one way to find out!
But, FWIW, my suggestion is first crawl, then walk, then run, then jump, rather than struggle to crawl for a while, never quite manage it, and then decide to skip all the other stages and go directly to competing in the Olympic pole-vaulting event...
In our ADD-raddled, ever-distracted, short-attention-span society, this one step at a time approach might appear to be very stodgy and left-brained. But this is the only way I know of to build understanding of complicated things - one brick at a time, until you have the entire edifice put together.
-Gnobuddy
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