Mammoth Kits: Coming Soon!

[blakemoth]

In the next two/three months, we'll be releasing our first official Mammoth Kit! ... ... The Mammoth Classic Fuzz Kit (we'll probably change that name)!!!

Basically, we're taking on 2012 with a lot of ambitious additions to the shop, and we've had the incredible privilege of working with Forrest (aka culturejam) to design a specialized line of kits. This kit is going to sound great (of course.. CJ designed it!!), but our end goal has been to design it for the DIYer-to-be, who has never tried their hand at pedal building before, by using PCB mount pots, on-board Current Limiting Resistor, a PCB for the 3PDT switch, a 7-Conductor Ribbon cable from the switch to the main board, and some other newbie-friendly amenities. We see it as an opportunity to go out and grow the community from completely new crowds of people. Our aim with this is not to just 'shuffle the deck' with the kit-buying population, but rather create a new entry-point into that addiction. See it as DIY evangelism, I suppose. We're planning on hitting up some larger forms of promotion, such as in popular audio magazines and websites and whatnot, so look forward to lots of new faces/avatars around the forums!

Forrest has better details and vocabulary for what this first kit is, but I just wanted to let you know we're super pumped about this, and can't wait to show off all the fun build documentation, instructional video(s?), promo, and other stuff involved with this endeavor.

I'll let him chime in and fill in the gaps I left

[skullservant]

Cool Blake! Looking forward to seeing the kits!

[culturejam]

Forrest has better details and vocabulary for what this first kit is,

To put a very fine point on it: the circuit is a modern replica of the tried-and-true Fuzz Face circuit, with a few minor changes. Those changes best being summed up as an added bias trimmer and also a RF filter cap added at the input (to help filter out AM radio station reception that sometimes plagues fuzz builds). These were not present in the original, but are great add-ons that you'll see in most any DIY kit or boutique build these days.

The kit is spec'd for silicon transistors, which are far more forgiving than germanium. It is negative-ground, which means it will play nice with your pedal board power supply.

The real benefits for the pedal builder newcomer, however, are all in the details of construction. As Blake mentioned, as much of the off-board wiring as possible as been consolidated into the 7-pin ribbon cable. No wiring up the LED off-board, and the stomp switch wiring is all handled with the little switch-mount PCB. Should be a relatively easy build and a simple wiring diagram.

Anyway, there is still a small bit of tweaking to do, but we're 95% of the way there. I built a test unit to see if everything fit, and most things worked out just as expected.

Here's the inside of that test build. What I forgot was extra ground pads for the input/output jacks. So the production kits will be neater and easier.

The final kits will ship with cool metal-can transistors for extra mojo.

[oohbeetoo]

Great...that sounds exactly like what I am looking for... a good first build kit.

[blakemoth]

Great...that sounds exactly like what I am looking for... a good first build kit.

Great to hear! I will say, there are many kits out there that are great for a first build, especially over at GuitarPCB.com (we stock their kits), and BYOC (buildyourownclone.com). I would encourage you to go ahead and jump in! There's so much support and wisdom on both of those sites' forums, you'll be very well taken care of. This Mammoth Fuzz kit will be super easy and will sound great, but if you're chompin at the bit and want to get started before the next few months roll by, I'd encourage you to go for it with one of those aforementioned guys. Just super-incredible circuits!

[CounterfeitGentleman]

Not much to add, but +1 love for the community and encouraging newbies to pick up the soldering iron!

[Eric!]

I just got my first kit! Let the adventure begin