Fuzzrocious Ram the Manparts

The Fuzzrocious Ram the Manparts is an overdrive pedal built around the LM386, a power amp chip rather than the op-amps most overdrives use. That chip choice is what gives the pedal its character: it is an overdrive at its core, but its Starve control lets the player drop the voltage to the chip and push the circuit from clean-ish breakup into fuzzy distortion and, at the lowest settings, a synthy fuzz.¹

What the Starve control does

The pedal's defining control is the Starve pot, which starves the LM386 of voltage. A builder who verified the layout, posting as Sevrien, described the range it covers: with the Starve control fully open the circuit gives a nice breakup, at around three quarters it gives a harder fuzzy distortion, and turning the voltage lower produces a synthy fuzz in which higher notes become inaudible or sound an octave lower.¹

Two things to know about the control in practice:

• At the end of its range, the Starve pot cuts the signal completely.
• On the original pedal, it really works in the first quarter or so of its travel, so most of the useful action sits early in the turn.¹

The circuit

The Ram the Manparts runs its gain stages off the LM386 power amp chip. The Guitar FX Layouts analysis notes that LM386 circuits are all more or less the same, and places the Ram the Manparts' gain arrangement alongside the Lovepedal Purple Plexi. The same analysis points out that a 1k resistor could be replaced with a B1k pot (with an optional 470R in parallel) to make that gain arrangement adjustable.¹

The circuit also includes a 390pF input capacitor, which the analysis describes as just a filter rolling off some high end, and which can be left out without danger.¹

Building it: the stripboard layout

Guitar FX Layouts published a stripboard (vero) layout for the Ram the Manparts on 21 June 2019, after the pedal had already been discontinued. The layout was corrected twice in the following days as commenters and the schematic supplier found errors¹:

1. A 100nF capacitor was moved to pin 3 of the LM386.
2. The layout was shrunk by one row.
3. A 1nF capacitor was corrected to 1uF, per the schematic supplier.¹

Builders have also reported useful modifications. Sevrien used a B5K pot for the Starve control and swapped a 220nF capacitor in place of the 1uF in the boost switch, reporting that it also acts as a great treble booster.¹

Where Fuzzrocious went from there

The Ram the Manparts remained a distinctive design in Fuzzrocious's lineup, built around an LM386 power amp chip used as an overdrive². Its Starve control, which starves the circuit of voltage, shapes the character as it turns: the builder's report describes a nice breakup at full open, a harder fuzzy distortion at 75%, and, turned lower, a synthy fuzz where higher notes drop out or fall an octave². The layout was also corrected after posting, with a 1nF cap corrected to 1uF per the schematic supplier². For the wider family of circuits like this one, see the site's pages on overdrive pedals, distortion pedals and fuzz pedals.

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