Catalinbread Formula No. 5

Time for another build and I fancy the formula five or something along those lines, I've seen you tube vids of clones and even one for sale locally but can't find much info on them, any help would be most appreciated.
Stax

Great circuit! It's a pretty easy build to follow and gives you a ton of useable tones. It does not, however get you into " low gain" territory like the SFT or the BJFE Honey Bee.

Here's a pic of my ( slightly tweaked) build. Second in from the right.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6156/6186249115_309d6e8179_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/28036248@N03/6186249115/)
9/26/11 pedalboard (http://www.flickr.com/photos/28036248@N03/6186249115/) by jimmyrocket02 (http://www.flickr.com/people/28036248@N03/), on Flickr

are there schematic for the cbread formula 5?
parts list and instructions? or a kit?

There are schematics flying around. I don't know that they're completely accurate.

I sometimes like to build up random schematics just to see what is going on in them, and what makes them different from the crowd.

One of the members here has a blog page La Révolution Deux with the Formula Five layout on it and a link to tons of info about thet particular pedal on freestompboxes.org

One of the members here has a blog page La Révolution Deux with the Formula Five layout on it and a link to tons of info about thet particular pedal on freestompboxes.org

Yeah, I have a toner transfer pcb thingie for the F#5 and don't even remember where I got it. I keep meaning to build one just for kicks (nice low parts count makes it hard to say no), but other more pressing stuff pops up.

I think I'm not very fond of the pcb layout that I have, either. I'd like some time to go in and clean it up. IDK when (if ever) that might happen.

I also built a SFT some while back, and was ultimately disappointed (nine friggin' transistors in that one, IIRC). I'm afraid that it probably takes jFET's in a class A config with a proper trimmer to really get me jumping up and down. Such was the case with the runoffgroove.com Thor that I built.

That said, lotsa DIY'ers who are all into the jFET amp sim thingies seem to favor the F#5, even if (they think) it doesn't sound accurate, because the consensus is that it generally just sounds good!

I might be able to track down my toner transfer file, but you could probably easily do better by poking around on other sites that would have either a clean vero project, or a nicer TT.

Good luck!

I have a Formula No 5 and I don't see how it is supposed to sound like a Tweed amp.

I concur. Unless the gain is dialed almost all the way back it has far more gain on tap than a tweed.

Really pushes a tweed nicely though ;)

I have a Formula No 5 and I don't see how it is supposed to sound like a Tweed amp.

It sells pedals.

I don't think that 80% of these "Marshall-in-a-box" things would have any of the popularity that they do if it weren't for the marketing angle.

2 things I know about C'bread - they seem to have amp sims for all the popular amps (including something like a HiWatt, which many folks will never get to try), and the pedals tend to sound good (even if not like any particular amp), so they stay popular.

I mean, c'mon - some people think the Red Llama sounds like a tweed amp. That was clever (and partially accidental) marketing. The original design by Craig Anderton was just a DIY project called the Tube Sound Fuzz. Craig probably laughed the first time he hear someone call that basic design a tweed sound...

...The Les Lius, Speaker Cranker, and who knows how many others are based off the very simple and crude Electra Distortion circuit from the 70's. IMO, no sort of amp-like sound at all to be found there, but the things sell because they have a nice (or nasty if you want it) OD sound.

I have 2 modeling amps and a Tech 21 SansAmp pedal, and none of them sound even remotely close to the amps they are supposed to emulate. I'm guessing that I've had a chance to play the real thing, so everything else is saccharin or aspartame, or whatever. Not bad, but as they say, "no cigar."

The runoffgroove.com amp derivations are pretty good in many aspects, but they should be since each gain stage is basically configured verbatim to the actual amp. It requires biasing each transistor. Anyone that purchases 99% of pedals that are built in numbers will never experience that. The Subdecay Liquid Sunshine has a triplet of jFET's that are internally biased with trimpots, but then again it isn't touted as being an amp in a box. Daggone good sounding, though.

The closest I've heard to some other type of amp sound coming out of something like my Deluxe Reverb was with the runoffgroove.com Thor - has some really cool "hotrodded plexi" sounds. But it also doesn't have any tone controls (doesn't need them), and that would scare a lot of users away from trying it (let alone even building it).

As long as it has a cool OD/distortion/fuzz sound, it's not an issue IMO. I actually built the C'bread SFT because it has a nice fuzz sound when you crank it up (again, too much gain as mentioned) - I wasn't expecting it to sound like an old Ampeg bass amp.