Tres Hombres

Eric Johnson, Billy Gibbons, and David Gilmour tones, all in one box?!?!

 

   

 

The Tres Hombres overdrive rack effect module compares to the Hermida/Love Pedal Dover Drive.  The guys at Hermida and Love Pedal got together to create a single pedal intended to capture the core tone of Eric Johnson, Billy Gibbons, and David Gilmour.  That's some Tone Royalty right there and a pretty lofty goal, but it turns out they did a pretty good job of it.

 

Description

The GT Tres Hombres compares to the Hermida/Love Pedal Dover Drive.  The Dover Drive was designed to capture that smooth, fuzzy, overdriven, cranked tone with forever sustain that is similar in the core tones of Eric Johnson, Billy Gibbons, and David Gilmour.  Three guys’ tones in a box – those three guys?  Maybe not for the particular tone-chasers, but probably good enough to convince 99% of the audience in a cover band situation!  Of course, you'll still need to add in your own modulation, delay, reverb, and other nice touches to get the full tone of some these guys, but the core drive tone is there to build upon.

The first thing to know about this circuit is that it is basically a mash-up of two circuits.  It is a silicon fuzz, essentially a Fuzz Face, fed into a Zendrive, with the controls tweaked a bit.  Yup, just what you might think it would take to get close to those guys' tones, a Fuzz Face kinda thing into a Dumble/Marshall Overdrive kinda thing. 

The standard Tres Hombres comes configured with the default Gain, Tone, and Volume controls like the Dover Drive.  Gain adjusts the fuzziness of the fuzz portion of the circuit.  The Tone control comes after the fuzz and drive just before the Volume at the end of the circuit.  There is an internal trim pot for setting the bias in the fuzz.  Between the fuzz and drive circuits are some resistors that set the fixed level of the fuzz going into the drive.  The Zendrive controls for gain and voice have been set to fixed values in that part of the circuit.  

This mashup was begging for the extra controls of the Fuzz Face and Zendrive portions of this circuit to be made available for you tweakers out there who may want more controls for dialing in specific tones within this space.  However, this circuit is meant for getting that one core tone.  Maybe a bit of a one-trick pony by design, but it's good trick.  If you want full control, you might be better off with one of our Woodstock (Fuzz Face) modules running into our Bodhi Drive (Zendrive) module.  Those modules offer lots of options that would give you better control and more stacking versatility.  The options are discussed below.  If you choose some of the additional controls such as Fuzz and Drive, you can easily wander into the zone of way too much gain, characterized by screeching, whining, massive feedback, and general chaos, just like diming a Fuzz Face into a dimed Overdrive.  The optional controls aren’t all meant to be cranked up together.  Any one of them can get you into overload.  The point is give you control of the gain at different places in the circuit, not to add more gain at every point.  We decided not to put random limits on any of these controls, as that defeats the purpose of having them.  Just don’t crank them all at the same time - you won't like that, and neither will anyone else in the area.  The physical appearance of the Dover Drive suggests a Tube Driver, a pedal all three of those guys use.  If you want to go that way, have a look at the GT Dirty Tube.  The Dirty Tube is our tube overdrive that compares to the Butler, Chandler, and Baja Tube Drivers, but with a load of extra options

 

Configurations

  • Tres Hombres - compares to the Hermida/Love Pedal Dover Drive.  Our standard configuration has controls for Gain, Tone, and Volume.

 

 

Options

  • Bias Control - The Bias control changes the internal bias trim pot to an external control, nothing more.  This is a popular mod for germanium fuzzes where inconsistent germanium transistor performance can be adjusted.  The bias allows the adjustment to be within the generally wide range of tones it can make available, providing a palette of options to work with.  Silicon transistors have consistent performance, not requiring adjustment to get back to your sweet spot.  The bias control still provides a range of tone choices, although perhaps more constrained than the range with germanium transistors.  The default transistors in this circuit are silicon, so the need for the external bias is somewhat limited.  However, you might choose to have germanium transistors instead, making the bias control more useful.  In either case, some of the effect of the bias control will be masked because the fuzz is stacked into an overdrive.  You won’t be hearing the fuzz with different bias settings alone.  Useful, yes, but less so than on a Fuzz Face alone.
  • Fuzz Control - We also make available a Fuzz control.  The Fuzz control adjusts the output level of the fuzz circuit going into the overdrive circuit, replacing the fixed-value resistors in the original circuit that perform the same function.  When you set the Fuzz control at about 2/3 of the way up, you get the original resistors setting.  Everything else is either a bit higher or lower amount of fuzzy signal going into the overdrive.  This is similar to a Volume control on a Fuzz Face.
  • Voice Control - The Voice control provides the original Zendrive Voice control.  Set it near the middle to get the fixed setting of the Dover Drive, or dial it up or down a bit.  There is a good range of tone control available and we like to use it to add some additional highs.
  • Wide Tone - The default Tone control has a range well-suited for the tones the circuit was intended to produce.  If you want to have a bit wider range of control to explore a bit outside the intended bounds, then select our Wide Tone option.  All the settings of the default Tone control are still there, with extensions both higher than the highest and lower than the lowest settings of the default Tone range.  The Wide Tone and Voice Control options should be considered, as the circuit seems to lose a bit of the high end otherwise.
  • Drive Control - The Drive control provides the missing Zendrive gain control.  Set the Drive near the middle to get the fixed value of the Dover Drive, or adjust it up or down to change the level of gain in the overdrive portion of the circuit.
  • Custom Transistors - The fuzz portion of this circuit can take silicon or germanium transistors, so if you want to put germanium in there, or one of each, no problem.  That will change the nature of the fuzz, like the difference between silicon and germanium Fuzz Faces.  You’ll be more subject to temperature changes with the germanium, so you’ll probably want that external Bias control.  Germaniums can be a little noisy, so we have an option to put in a small noise-reduction capacitor, a good option with germanium Fuzz Faces.  That capacitor depends on the exact transistors selected, so we’ll set that by ear, trading off the noise for a tiny touch of the very high frequencies.  The standard silicon transistors will both be medium-high gain, like in a silicon Fuzz Face.  Germanium ones will be lower gain, selected to have good HFE and leakage values for a Fuzz Face.  We can also put in lower gain silicon, also selected for good HFE values.  There are lots of options with Fuzz Faces, and we provide only a few of them in this circuit.  If you really want a highly-tweaked fuzz you might want to go with the Woodstock/Bodhi combination instead of the Tres Hombres.  But don’t get too bogged down in details.  This circuit does what it does very well without all those additional fuzz tweaking options.

     

Front Panel

  • On/Off indicator LED
  • Volume
  • Tone
  • Gain
  • (optional) Bias Control 
  • (optional) Fuzz Control
  • (optional) Drive Control

 

Rear Panel

  • Audio In
  • Audio Out
  • On/Off Footswitch
  • On/Off Override
  • DC Power
  • DC Power LED

 

Module Width

  • 1.5" standard
  • 1.5 or 2" with optional controls

 

Power Consumption (aprox)

20 mA

 

Base Configurations

Part # Description List Price
MOD-TRESHOMBRES GT Tres Hombres module $220

 

Options

Part # Description List Price
MOPT-TRESHOMBRES-BIAS Bias Control Option $19
MOPT-TRESHOMBRES-FUZZ Fuzz Control Option $19
MOPT-TRESHOMBRES-VOICE Voice Control Option $19 
MOPT-TRESHOMBRES-WTONE Wide Tone Option  $0
MOPT-TRESHOMBRES-DRIVE Drive Control Option  $19
MOPT-TRESHOMBRES-TRANS Custom Transistors Option  TBD