Catalinbread Formula No. 5 User manual

FORMULA NO. 5 USER GUIDE
INTRODUCTION
The Catalinbread Formula No. 5 was inspired by the old tweed amps from the 1950’s, most notably
the 5E3 circuit. The character of the 5E3 is very unique. It has very minimal power filtering, low plate
voltages, elemental tone stack, and does next to nothing to control the low end between gain
stages, not to mention the under-rated output transformer and speaker. The entire system runs
inefficiently resulting in a loose bass, greasy mids, cutting treble, and incredible grit – none of these
qualities were ideal or intentional back in the day. In spite of this, over the past five decades the amp
inspired some of the coolest, most sought after guitar tones ever recorded. It’s practically a fuzz
pedal with a built-in speaker!"
We’ve captured the unique qualities of these amps in the Formula No. 5. For this circuit we felt
cascaded JFET gain stages yielded the most authentic sounding result. They have a softer sound
than MOSFETs. JFETs also have much more natural attack/decay behavior than diode clipped rigs
which are pingy on the attack and fizzy on the decay. We chose capacitor types that enhanced the
midrange and burnished the treble. And perhaps most importantly, we paid specific attention to the
input sensitivity of circuit so that it feels and behaves just like the amp it is seeking to emulate. The
attack characteristic at the pick, the clean up at your guitar’s volume knob - all of these things are
absolutely crucial to capturing the 5E3 vibe and when combined make for a very dynamically
sensitive playing experience.

FEATURES
Volume: Controls overall output, and is capable of delivering a healthy boost to your amp’s input."
Tone: Governs overall treble content, becomes less and less effective as you wind up the Gain
control just like the old 5E3. It also helps voice the aggressiveness of the Gain characteristic."
Gain: Increases grit and saturation of the overdriven sound. If you are familiar with the 5E3, our
Gain control starts offwhere the amp would normally be set around 3 on the Volume - just starting
to open up and breathe a little. If you need it cleaner, just roll back your guitar Volume to about 7 or
so - we’ll touch upon this further on in the manual."
All three controls are somewhat interactive, again just like the original 5E3. Now you might think
that an amp or pedal this simplistic is a one-trick pony, but what many modern players don’t
always understand was that back in the day these amps were used in a variety of genres and
playing situations as there simply weren’t a lot of other options out there to be had - from Western
Swing bands to Jazz cats to Rock N’ Rollers; on stages and in the studio. How is this possible - the
tones are so varied? The answer is that those players used the Volume and Tone controls on their
instruments to get that wide variety of sounds. The amp was set up and forgotten about - you did
everything at the guitar. That is also the best approach for using the Formula No. 5 - set and forget
and work your guitar controls. Simple is better!

QUICK START
We always suggest that when you get a new pedal that you try it all on it’s own first so that you
can get an appreciation for it’s inherent tone, what it’s capable of on it’s own, and to learn how
those controls work while interacting with just your guitar and amp.!
Oh and a quick word about powering your Formula No. 5 - it will behave differently depending on
the power source, this is intentional and we feel a very cool benefit! With a 9v battery, you will
experience the most ‘sag’ and compression during heavy picking attack. 9vDC adapter will be
somewhat tighter. Increasing the voltages will give you more output volume and again a stiffer/
tighter picking response - so if you have the means to try it up to the max voltage rating of 18vDC
do give it a try to see what you prefer. No better or worse - but definitely a different feel to it that
some may prefer to battery or lower voltage DC supplies.
Okay - so you’ve strapped on your favorite guitar.
Now set your amp up clean with some volume to it
and with as neutral an EQing as possible.!
Set the Formula No. 5 as follows:
VOL: equal to or a little above your amp’s volume
TONE: maximum
GAIN: minimum
Depending on the output strength of your pickups
you will either have some slight grit all the way up
to some decent crunch. Now roll back your guitar
volume to say, 7 - you should be getting a nice,
chimey, clean sound. Nice, right? Now depending
on your pickup type and how high you run that
Gain control on the FN5 you may have to dial your
guitar volume back some more to get to your
cleans but they are there, trust us!!
Okay - same settings, but this time while you are playing bend over and roll the FN5’s Tone control
back to 12:00. A little less bright, but did you also notice how it softened the attack characteristic
of the Gain at your pick as well? So you can actually use those two controls (Tone and Gain) to
tailor the pedal’s picking response - from tight and crisp to a nice pillowy sag. It pays to do a little
woodshedding with these two controls along with your guitar Volume to learn how to achieve a
nice attack characteristic and to find where the sweet spots are for your saturated lead, crunch
rhythm, and clean sounds on your guitar’s Volume knob. It’s all there at your wrist! Is it a little too
bright for your taste when rolled back for cleans? Adjust your guitar’s Tone control accordingly.
That’s what your grandpa would have done. ;^p"

Okay so you’ve sussed the Formula No.5’s Tone control and it’s kinda cool right? Now crank that
Gain control (you’ve been wanting to do that since you unboxed it, haven’t you? We admire your
self-restraint!) - OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TONE CONTROL IT DOESNT WORK
ANYMORE?!?!? Relax! It’s supposed to work that way - same as on the amps! At the max Gain
setting there is so much saturation happening no Tone control is gonna bail you out of that pickle -
so again use your guitar’s tone control if you feel the need to soften things a bit.!
GUITARS
Like the actual amp, the Formula No. 5 is responsive to the type of guitar you’re playing into it. If
you’re playing vintage style Fender guitars, you’ll get the classic Fender into Fender tone and the
tone will stay cleaner longer as you turn up the Gain knob. If you’re playing a humbucker or other
higher-output style of pickup, the FN5 will break up sooner on the Gain knob. But you’ll always be
able to get cleans by turning your guitar’s volume down!"
AMPLIFIERS
Generally speaking, the Formula No. 5 works best into a tube guitar amp set relatively clean and
neutral. However, it can work great to further overdrive an amp that is already overdriven as well,
although this was not its design intention. If you are running a Fender style amp, try setting the
tone controls as follows:"
Treble 6, Middle (if your amp has it) 6, Bass 3, and Volume between 2-4"
This is generally the best response from a Fender amp and in fact are the basic settings used in
the development lab when voicing our pedals. A note about tubes in your amp. For the best tone
and response from your FN5 (and your whole pedal chain, really) make sure you have good
sounding tubes in your amp. In particular, the first tube in the preamp stage of your amp is
critically important as your FN5 will be driving this tube. A cheap or faulty tube can make your
FN5 sound weak, too gritty, farty, or just plain uninspiring. Do some research on tubes for your
amp and experiment with different first stage preamp tubes in conjunction with the FN5 to really
fine-tune your tone.

INCORPORATING THE FORMULA NO. 5 INTO YOUR
PEDALBOARD
The Formula No. 5, like other the other pedals in our Foundation Overdrive Series, was
designed to be the foundation of your pedalboard $- our philosophy being that if you are a
5E3 player, you should be able to get your sound from just about any amp if set up properly
using the FN5."
Here’s the role of the foundation pedal:
* Can get clean to crunch from your guitar’s volume knob so you can leave it on all night
and use it as your base tone.$"
* Can be stacked with other overdrive, boost, and fuzz pedals in front of it to enhance
those, just like a real cranked up amp would.$"
* Can give you control over your stage volume without compromising your dynamics or
touch-sensitivity.$"
* Can give you a much better base crunch tone than most overdrive channels on amps."
So, as far as where to place the Formula No.5 in your signal chain, treat it as if it were an
actual amp and you’ll have the right approach. A cranked tube amp loves to be pummeled
with fuzzes, boosts, and overdrives, so place these types of pedals before the Formula No.
5 (between your guitar and it). Reverb pedals tend to work best after it. Delay and
modulation pedals can go either way. You should try both ways to see what works better
for you. But in general, placing the delay or modulation pedal in front of the FN5 will
compress and saturate them slightly. Placing them afterwards is much like running them in
an effects loop of an amp - you aren’t adding more distortion to them."
The Formula No. 5 LOVES being hit by fuzzes and boosts! Just like the amp that inspired it!
With some good fuzzes and boosts, you’ll be able to take the FN5 from vintage roots
sounds all the way to OMG MY AMP IS MELTING!!! - at any volume!

DESIGNER’S NOTES
The 5E3 is a very raw, elemental circuit where just about every stage is under-engineered.
The tone control only really works when the volume is turned down (but why would you
ever do that?!). When you crank it up everything just about gives up, the power supply
doesn’t keep up when you thwack chords resulting in the signature “sag”. The output
transformer and speaker saturates too… It is a system on verge of failure, but it sounds and
feels so good to play through!$"
We felt the best way to approach this sonic experience short of building an actual amp was
to employ hard-to-find JFETs to cascade gain stages in a way that more or less literally
reflects the actual 5E3 topology. JFETs have a soft, tube-like clipping quality that when
used correctly can be driven into compression while remaining touch sensitive to picking
dynamics and cleaning up with the instrument volume control. This is a quality that can’t be
achieved using the old “diode-clamp” trick, such circuits nearly always sound fizzy and
severely limit dynamic response. We also find that JFETs respond well to a wide range of
voltages. You can run it under 9 volts which “browns out” the circuit more making it more
compressed feeling. Running it up to 18 volts opens up the circuit resulting in a much wider
dynamic response.$"
We further honored the original 5E3 circuit by taking the tone control circuit directly from the
amp, this control is not so much an “EQ” as it is integral contributor to the behavior of the
real amp. It is more effective when your GAIN knob is down, cranking the TONE knob
passes less bass resulting in a less wooly feel. Rolling it back shaves offhigher frequencies
before they get clipped in the subsequent gain stage. We recognize that there is a paradigm
amongst players about tone controls on pedals, thinking of them more as “EQ” controls
rather than circuit elements that change the behavior of amp. But we figured we’d invite
you to experience it for yourself."
POWER SUPPLY
You can power your Formula No. 5 with any quality power supply designed for use with
effects pedals. The output should be a negative tip DC from 9 to 18 volts. If you want more
volume, headroom, and percussive attack, try running an 18 volt power supply. A 9 volt
power supply will have a slightly softer sound that saturates more easily - it's sort of like the
difference between a 50 watt and 100 watt amp! Definitely try it on 18 volts though - there's
quite a difference! 18 volts is great for playing with the band. You'll get great attack and
clarity with power to cut through the mix. You can also try a battery that is drained down to
as little as 3-4 volts to get an even softer sound that is great for late night jam sessions
when you don't want to wake anyone up! Or use a power supply that is capable of
providing "starved" voltage. It's sort of like running a Variac and you get the same benefits -
a "browner" sound and less volume! We encourage to to try these different powering
options to see what you like the best!