Do It Yourself: Carl Martin Plexitone Clone

June 25th, 2008 | by Isern Palaus |

I play guitar since I was 15 and these days I improved a lot on my playing and my equipment. I started with a low-cost guitar, a Squier Telecaster (a cheapest division of Fender)… a good guitar for someone who is starting playing. Three years later, now, I’ve a Fender, a Fender Telecaster Custom 62 American Vintage and a Marshall JCM 800 (one day I’ll write about this amplifier).

In this world of music we use stomp boxes, FX like distortions, overdrives, choruses, echoes, delays, tremolos, etcetera. Furthermore, we are not rich and everyday we try to get this items cheapest but with the full quality, there is a lot of brands some low-cost and others boutique and obviously, the latests sounds better. Then the people started buying the stomp boxes reproducing the schemas and ripping it equally with a cheapest price. I personally discuss on a forum called Guitarrista.org in Spanish and there is a DIY section, the last month we started cloning the Carl Martin Plexitone. The user Stratotrasto have reproduced the PCB using the schema that you can found here.

We have done the Bill of Materials for the Plexitone DIY project parting from the schema by GnognoFasciani and looks like this:

Resistors

R1 - 1k
R2 - 1M
R3 - 47k
R4 - 47k
R5 - 2k
R6 - 4,7k


R7 - 22k
R8 - 22k
R9 - 22k
R10 - 100k
R11 - 1k

Capacitors
C1 - 470u
C2 - 470u
C3 - 470u
C4 - 470u
C5 - 100u
C6 - 100u
C7 - 330p
C8 - 220n
C9 - 33n
C10 - 330p
C11 - 2,2u
C12 - 470n
C13 - 68n
C14 - 470n
C15 - 22p

Potentiometers
Hi-Gain - 1M Log
CRUNCH - 100k lin
TONE - 5k lin
LEVEL - 5k Log
BOOST - 500k lin

ICs
IC1 - LF347
IC2 - 7812
IC3 - 7912

Others
2×15v 70mA transfomer
4 5mm Red LEDs
3 DPDT

And now the most important thing… the PCB design by Stratotrasto. This PCB design fits with the transformer we had bought a month ago because we are 14 people on the discussion forum doing the same stomp box and we have decided to buy the materials together.

When I finish the project I’ll write another post showing how my stomp box look at outside and inside, with mp3s of how it sounds.

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  1. 6 Responses to “Do It Yourself: Carl Martin Plexitone Clone”

  2. By Erik de Groot on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply

    Hello,

    Great initiative!

    Is there a schematic of the PlexiTone, so I can understand better what is happening?

    Erik / The Netherlands

  3. By Ian on Aug 25, 2008 | Reply

    Plexitone project
    This is a really good project. I’m going to build it. I have a question about the value for R10. On this schematic this is shown as 100. I thought this meant 100 Ohms. In the parts list it is shown as 100K. What is the correct value please?

  4. By Isern Palaus on Aug 25, 2008 | Reply

    Helo Eirk de Groot,

    The schematic can be found here.

    Regards,
    – Isern Palaus

  5. By Isern Palaus on Aug 25, 2008 | Reply

    Hello Ian,

    Yes there is a little mistake. I remember that there is two values of resistors that they’re incorrect on the Bill of Materials list.

    I’ll check it.

    EDIT: R4 is 47ohm.

    Regards,
    – Isern Palaus

  6. By Alessio on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply

    Hello,

    someone can give me the project ( layout ) of the pcb to modify it ?

    In format of orcad or eagle, it’s the same.

    Thanks to everyone.

    My email is: sirenofhell77@gmail.com

    Best regards.

  7. By Alessio on Sep 10, 2008 | Reply

    Hello,

    can someone give me a project of the layout of the plexitone? In orcad or eagle software.

    Send to: sirenofhell77@gmail.com

    Thanks.

    Best regards.

    Alessio

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