Hendrix Pedals

Thanks for the tag, haha, I love pedals, and Hendrix.

I have 6 going on 7 fuzz face circuits built up at the moment.  The latest one is in a real Dunlop enclosure, might finish it today.

I like most of them fairly well.  For some reason the Dunlop JH-F1 Jimi Hendrix (silicon transistor) fuzz face stands out as one of my favorites.  I also really like the Analogman Sun Face circuit, very refined.  You, also, can't go wrong with the '69 or '70 from Fulltone, they've got attitude for days, and extra knobs to mess with.  Silicon is a little more real-world friendly.  I never have too many PNP germanium pedals on any of my boards, even though they are good fun to play with.

Regarding the wah wah pedal, the closest thing I have is a Vox wah.  I believe it's a V848.  I stuck some custom parts in there but it wasn't really needed, just something I wanted to do.  The standard Dunlop Crybaby is not going to have the right sound, more heavy metal.  The chromed out Vox wahs are a little more vintage sounding to my ear.  Probably most of the big-name "vintage styled" wah wahs will come close these days.

The closest I ever got to a Univibe was a Danelectro Chicken Salad.  It's good cheap fun, but no more than that.  If you want the real deal, the right options seem expensive, and I haven't tried any of them.  The nearest thing that I actually use for this general thing is the MXR Phase 100 or the Fender Classic Phaser.  Not exactly a Univibe but phasey and whooshy all the same.  If you want to go way over the top and get super weird, I love the Electric Mistress flanger from Electro Harmonix, the older versions not the new cheap stuff.

Octave Fuzz.  I've only played a few.  A little birdie told me the Fulltone Octafuzz is the real deal, as well as the Ultimate Octave, which I might build up eventually.  The Ampeg Scrambler was a little too wild and zany for this type of playing.  The Green Ringer pedal plus another fuzz can kind of go there.  Probably best to stick to an all in one pedal though.  I have a Z-Vex Octane 3 that does a good octave fuzz, but it's also quite gnarly and maybe not 'pretty' sounding enough, a little bit of that superfuzz/ringmod vibe.  That's a fun pedal, though, and the closest I have that I actually use.

There's a lot of good echo pedals these days.  The one I like and used the most is the TC Electronic Alter Ego X4.  The cool part about that pedal is you get a dozen different echo models, tap tempo, and 3 presets on separate switches.  Plus a looper, a clean delay, and "Tone Print" slots if you need any of that.  I just find it very easy to use and has great tone.  I especially like to add a reverb pedal on top of it for big ambience.  If you've got big bucks you can look at real tape echoes from Fulltone or T Rex.  (Other ones I haven't tried Boss RE-20 Space Echo, Wampler Faux Tape Echo, Strymon Timeline, Skreddy Echo, etc.)

I haven't tried it, but I don't see any reason not to just buy the Dunlop Echoplex pedal if you need something small.  It seems to tick all the right boxes.  A lot of people talk about those Catalinbread echos as well, they are out of my price range.

Specifically getting the 'tape echo' sound, plus a vintage style reverb, was a big deal for me. Straight up digital repeats and obviously digital delays are not my idea of a good time for guitar tone, so I never used to use them. Now that I've got the old school ambience going, I use it all the time.

These are simple circuits, easy to build yourself. Fuzz Central has all the schematics and tips.

I have a germanium Fuzz Face, germanium Solo 2 and 3 knob, Meyer Octavia, rebuilt wah with fasel inductors, a Fox tone machine and others. Modern Fuzz Face copies are all silicon, a different sound.

Hendrix used a lot of Fender amps in the studio, Twin's were fave's from his old NYC days. Voodoo child was cut with a Fender Bassman. The Electric Ladyland mix had the top end rolled off for a darker sound. Alternative takes show how much brighter that amp really sounded.

Skreddy (Marc Ahlf)'s pedal, the "Skreddy Echo" uses an analog limiting/saturation circuit in the feedback loop of the digital PT2399 delay chip, along with an analog modulation of the wet signal.  He was advised by Bjorn Jull of BJF pedals for the design.  That guy bjorn is some kinda freaky pedal genius, I tell you.

That pedal has not been traced and exposed to the public, but Marc did explain how to get a similar circuit on FreeStompboxes.com thread.  I designed my own, using his tips, and I gotta say, it does sound pretty dang good.  Unfortunately I gave it away to a friend and haven't built a second, so I'll be using the Alter Ego and my other delays at the moment.  My "digital tape echo" reference at the time of that build was the AKAI Headrush.  And I gotta say, the Skreddy-esque circuit mopped the floor with it.  My former friend, who I no longer am speaking to, said it was his favorite pedal in his collection at the time.  I also handed him a Demeter Tremulator and a Ram's Head big muff, so I guess that's saying something for the quality of the echo.  Those were fun times, when I was still in a band.

The PT2399 is a very cheap and great sounding integrated circuit.  Good for DIY designs.  I think it only does about 500 ms of delay, but that's better than a lot of expensive analog delays.  You can double them up too, for a longer max time.

I also use a Belton Brick reverb as my main reverb sound.  That's another digital brain component that's easy to integrate in DIY.  I'm using the standard GGG/Hermida circuit, but I plan to build another one copying the Earthquaker Devices Ghost Echo, just because I have at least two pedalboards at any one time and the reverb on my main Marshall head pretty much sucks.  The Belton 'spring reverb' brick is one of the best reverb pedal designs I have personally used.  I love the simple one knob interface.

Fuzz Face (easily built)> Vox Wah (Hendrix Mod) > Octavia (Build a clone, but the Octavix does it fairy well). Dirty amp, something Marshall-y. The modulation FX and delay are less import than having an amp that can gain stage that stuff well.

I was my impression when I saw Hendrix (both with the original Experience and with his last line-ip) that most, if not all, of the echo work was handled from FOH. It's really the only way to get the distorted amp sound into a (relatively) clean echo. If the echo is before the amp it gets muddied up.