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Torus Lo-Fi Fuzz

Based On
Demo Tape Fuzz
Effect Type
Distortion / Fuzz
Build Difficulty
Beginner
Project Summary
A thick fuzz/distortion circuit designed to replicate the low-budget garage tones of an overloaded cassette recorder.
Torus Lo-Fi Fuzz printed circuit board

Printed Circuit Board

What's included?
PCB only. Build instructions and parts list can be viewed or downloaded from this page.

$12.50

In stock

Complete Kit

Not yet available.
Kits are developed based on interest, so if you’d like to see one for this project, let us know.
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Project overview

The Torus Lo-Fi Fuzz is based on the Demo Tape Fuzz by Mid-Fi Electronics. The Demo Tape Fuzz is a throwback to the days of running a guitar into a cassette recorder and cranking the gain to overload it and create distortion.

The circuit consists of two simple building blocks. It starts out with an op-amp gain stage. This is similar to a Distortion+, so the low-pass frequency changes with the gain. (This is in contrast to most drive circuits after the 1970s where the potentiometer instead controls the feedback resistor, so the low-pass frequency remains constant.) Next, a basic Baxandall tone section allows adjustment of treble & bass.

The interesting thing about this circuit is that, like a cassette recorder, there are no clipping diodes, so all of the distortion/fuzz sound is generated “unintentionally” by op-amp clipping. It can get pretty thick, but retains its rough-around-the-edges character at all settings.

The Torus is a direct clone of the Demo Tape Fuzz with no modifications. The project is very low parts count and great for beginners.