# Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 401B



## dcole (Oct 8, 2008)

Here are some pictures of a couple old pedals I am working on. You can get some pretty wicked tones out of the Brassmaster. The tones are nice and complex and vary a great deal depending on how you play.

The Brassmaster needed the battery clip fixed up and the client wanted me to add one to the Phasor. Unfortunately the previous owner did a true bypass mod to the pedal so I was unable to fit a battery in. The new foot switch is to large to fit a battery in.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*

Neat.

Pretty different interiors. The Maestro has oodles of space for adding/changing whatever you want. The DOD is pretty much predicated on having _just _enough space for a particular Carling stompswitch.

I'm guessing that you had to fiddle with the positions of the two nuts on the stompswitch for a while, until you could seat the switch _and_ close the back cover.


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## dcole (Oct 8, 2008)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*

I never put that switch in but I could see that. When I took this apart to see what I could do with it, a couple pieces of cardboard fell out. I assume they were there to protect the components from touching the back of the case as the board is propped up a little due to the switch. To each their own but I would have left this thing original.


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## dcole (Oct 8, 2008)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*

Have you worked on one of these old Brassmaster's mhammer? I like how the companies of old would glue in the schematic for these pedals. I worked on an old DuoFuzz that had the schematic in it as well.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*

I was given a circuit-board for one of these Maestro fuzzes,








but that's as close as I've come to a Brassmaster. In the absence of chassis, there was no schematic. Several of us have found, however, that the Maestro "factory" schematics are not always accurate. They're not deliberately misleading, but it is quite possible that the folks tasked with drawing them, and/or providing quality control of the drawings did not always recognize when they had connected something to the wrong place, or shown circuits that could not possibly work. Not HUGE errors, mind you (check Dave Hunter's Guitar Effects book if you want to see those), but enough that if you tried to clone the circuit from the drawing it would not work.

One thing that working on things from before 1972 will cure you of, though, is any belief in the "magic" of capacitor composition. You can see that the Brassmaster uses crappy ceramic caps with huge tolerances, and it still sounds wonderful.

Mark (that's what the M is for)


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## dcole (Oct 8, 2008)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*

Thanks for the info Mark. I have seen that people are cloning these so hopefully there is some corrected schematics out there if a fellow does need them. Otherwise I know enough that it would be a headache to go through one otherwise. I never did like solid state devices, even when I was studying them in school.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*

In those few cases I'm aware of, it was generally something simple, like a connection that ought to have gone to V+ and was drawn as going to a transistor collector. Simple enough that even a doofus like me can spot them.


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## Luke (Jul 31, 2014)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*



mhammer said:


> I was given a circuit-board for one of these Maestro fuzzes, but that's as close as I've come to a Brassmaster. In the absence of chassis, there was no schematic. Several of us have found, however, that the Maestro "factory" schematics are not always accurate. They're not deliberately misleading, but it is quite possible that the folks tasked with drawing them, and/or providing quality control of the drawings did not always recognize when they had connected something to the wrong place, or shown circuits that could not possibly work. Not HUGE errors, mind you (check Dave Hunter's Guitar Effects book if you want to see those), but enough that if you tried to clone the circuit from the drawing it would not work.


They may have done that on purpose. 

Similarly, just like on topographic maps (the author/designer will add a non-existing village) or on a city map will add a street to make it obvious that someone copied it and/or infringed the copyright. 

^ Similar but for different reason.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*

In Hunter's case it was deliberate. Not a single schematic drawing in the entire book is a working/workable circuit, and many have numbered chips that simply don't exist (a delay chip labelled the NE577?). In the Maestro case, I am more inclined to assume poor quality control, since most of the drawings are fine, and only some have errors. Keep in mind that the person assigned to make a nice professional-looking drawing is not necessarily the person who came up with the circuit. They could have been some graphics contractor who knew very little about electronics and was unable to spot errors when they were made.


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## Luke (Jul 31, 2014)

*Re: Here is a couple pedals I am working on - Maestro Bass Brassmaster & DOD Phasor 4*



mhammer said:


> In Hunter's case it was deliberate. Not a single schematic drawing in the entire book is a working/workable circuit, and many have numbered chips that simply don't exist (a delay chip labelled the NE577?). In the Maestro case, I am more inclined to assume poor quality control, since most of the drawings are fine, and only some have errors. Keep in mind that the person assigned to make a nice professional-looking drawing is not necessarily the person who came up with the circuit. They could have been some graphics contractor who knew very little about electronics and was unable to spot errors when they were made.


human error, absolutely.


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