Tym Fuzz, Distort and Overdrive

 

These were my "third generation" of seriously marketed pedals that I started around 2002 and went through to when I started making the current stainless steel enclosures a few years ago.

The Fuzz version of this is probably still one of my best selling pedals and although I don't know how many are out there I have seen them on boards and in pics from all over the world.


 


This was a fairly simple dual op amp fuzz that was designed by my friend who helped with all these early Tym, pedals. These were of course built on Veroboard using common components but still took lots of time to build and wire up compared to my current pedals, which are still very time intensive compared to most.

The Fuzz was the only one in the series to have an active tone control as I realized pretty quickly that fuzz really did need a tone control to get the best out of the sound. I wanted this to be a thicker fuzz than the Buzzrite and at this stage I hadn't even considered making Muffs or Shen-eis, which most of fuzzes are based on now.


The Distort was based on my favorite MXR Distortion + circuit but with some mods to let a little more bass end through with the gain up. It's a great little circuit and to this day is still one of my favorites.

This was the same circuit that I had used in my "dogs head" series and I have continued to use in slightly different forms since the beginning.

These "Hammond" style enclosures are of course cheap and easy but it always bugged me that they didn't stand out enough from the crowd as pretty much everyone has used or still uses this style of enclosure. It's one of the reasons I eventually went to my hand folded stainless steel enclosures. The dogs head enclosures were just way too time intensive and expensive to make.


The Overdrive is probably going to make a comeback in a slightly modified form in my new boxes as it really is a nice OD. I'll get a PCB done for it this time around and probably add a tone control. It's a simple circuit based on the classic 741 chip and I still get people tell me they own and use this pedal regularly, which is nice.

The artwork for all of these was hand drawn by a friend of mine who is a tattoo artist and I screen printed them straight onto the aluminium enclosure with two part black ink.

This one is dated Sep 2003 on the inside sticker.

 

 


 

These were fun to make and sold reasonably well for me. There were other pedals available in this series including the original version of the Big Bottom but eventually that draw to make my pedals stand out made me move the the new current look.

I still have a real soft spot for this series and I have a box full of printed, drilled enclosures at the workshop that I found with a bunch of dogs head and Tripletone (blog story soon) enclosures that might all get finished one day.

It makes me a little proud when I see these on boards still being used. I do see older versions of my pedals from time to time but apart from my current series these are probably the most common ones out there.

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