Skip to content

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.
Request Kit
37 people are interested.

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.