MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
- 5.00 star(s)
And the beat goes on.....latest in my Bjorn Juhl deep dive.
This is Bjorn's take on a Tube Screamer. I was really curious what he would do to this circuit.
Well, let me start by saying.......it's still a YATS..... . I'm not sure if the Mad Professor version (Green Wonder) made it less "YATSY"
but there's no doubt this version has the familiar mid range hump and "closed-ness" of a TS808.
Having said that, there's also some hallmark BJFE elements, first of all, as an opamp drive, his choice of an LF353 makes a pretty big difference in how the gain structure sounds. There's the unmistakable "chewy" aggressive "angular" gain. (As opposed to smooth and symmetrical) Also the tone control is called "Body" and it's pretty wierd how it works. It's like from CCW to noon it acts like a Timmy-Zen bass control then from Noon to CW it acts more like a treble control.
It's made even wierder because I did not have an A100k dual gang and substituted a C100k Dual. But it works fine, all the tones are in there albeit the taper is a bit off. Actually, I rather like the C100k here as opposed to the A100k. (The original pedal uses a B20k Dual Gang but these are hard to source so Aion made provisions to use the easier to source 100k dual pots).
My initial impressions when I plugged it in was a little bit of a let down. Not sure what I was expecting, but the more I play with it, the more I'm starting to dig it.
It does all the usual TS stuff, like rolling off the gain and rolling up the volume it can push an amp or other gain pedal well.
But turn up the gain and it "sounds" like you're kicking in some clippers but there's no toggle. Just a pair of green leds in the circuit. It can get pretty aggressively gainy all on its own.
I'd love to see @Robert do a project on the Mad Prof version of the Green Wonder.
So a couple of misadventures in this build, I didn't have a green enclosure so I used a bare enclosure and painted it with my duck boat camo green paint.
It came out perfect and felt dry. By the time I had finished assembling, I realized the paint was still soft and I had scuffed it up....sigh.....I'm down to two more bare enclosures then I'm swearing off home paint jobs. I just don't have the patience to let them dry overnight like I should.
Second misadventure, I put it all together, tested voltages at my bench, all looked good, so I buttoned it up and put the screws in.
I went an plugged it into my chain, bypass sound works great woohoo, first hurdle. I turned it on.....no sound. I was like wtf?
I can understand borking a complicated modulation pedal but borking a YATS? How the F could I mess up something so simple?
Anyway, back to bench, screws taken out. I could hear @Chuck D. Bones voice....."Have you done a thorough inspection?" heh.
Well first thing I checked was to make sure the opamp was oriented correctly. When I looked at it........it was an LF351, not an LF353.
Somehow my baggies of 351's and 353's got mixed up. I had some of each in both bags. I can't remember when I bought these but obviously I was spacing out when I was putting them away.
So easy fix, popped in a 353 and all is well. According to Aion, some of the later run of these used TLC272's. Apparently Juhl wasn't happy with how the 353 sounded on battery as the voltage dropped below 8v. The TLC272 sounds more consistent across the life of the battery, however, he likes the 353 sound better, so if you're never going to use a battery (like me) then the 353 is the opamp he would choose. Early editions of this pedal came with both opamps for users to swap as they needed.
Next couple of BJFe projects I have queued up is the "Simble" (PPCB Symbolic Drive), which is Bjorn's take on the Zen drive. It seems to me that the Zen is all about the smoothness and almost diametrically opposed philosophically from his own designs. I'm super curious how that's going to sound. I'm missing the opamps for that (TLC272 ironically and my Mouser order was uncharacteristically slow in getting fulfilled. But it should be here next week sometime.
And also the Graphite Drive (Mad Prof Stone Grey Distortion).
I also sent my demo video of the BJuhls pedals to my buddy who immediately responded "I would like one each of the last two on the left please..." heh.
So I'm building him a Mojito Deluxe and an ADHD Ge.
After that, I'm planning to build some of the Juhl's fuzzes, the Apple Fritter and Fuschia, and I think there's one more BearfootFX distortion that's in the PPCB catalog.
***Note I took the gut shot with the wrong opamp in it......
This is Bjorn's take on a Tube Screamer. I was really curious what he would do to this circuit.
Well, let me start by saying.......it's still a YATS..... . I'm not sure if the Mad Professor version (Green Wonder) made it less "YATSY"
but there's no doubt this version has the familiar mid range hump and "closed-ness" of a TS808.
Having said that, there's also some hallmark BJFE elements, first of all, as an opamp drive, his choice of an LF353 makes a pretty big difference in how the gain structure sounds. There's the unmistakable "chewy" aggressive "angular" gain. (As opposed to smooth and symmetrical) Also the tone control is called "Body" and it's pretty wierd how it works. It's like from CCW to noon it acts like a Timmy-Zen bass control then from Noon to CW it acts more like a treble control.
It's made even wierder because I did not have an A100k dual gang and substituted a C100k Dual. But it works fine, all the tones are in there albeit the taper is a bit off. Actually, I rather like the C100k here as opposed to the A100k. (The original pedal uses a B20k Dual Gang but these are hard to source so Aion made provisions to use the easier to source 100k dual pots).
My initial impressions when I plugged it in was a little bit of a let down. Not sure what I was expecting, but the more I play with it, the more I'm starting to dig it.
It does all the usual TS stuff, like rolling off the gain and rolling up the volume it can push an amp or other gain pedal well.
But turn up the gain and it "sounds" like you're kicking in some clippers but there's no toggle. Just a pair of green leds in the circuit. It can get pretty aggressively gainy all on its own.
I'd love to see @Robert do a project on the Mad Prof version of the Green Wonder.
So a couple of misadventures in this build, I didn't have a green enclosure so I used a bare enclosure and painted it with my duck boat camo green paint.
It came out perfect and felt dry. By the time I had finished assembling, I realized the paint was still soft and I had scuffed it up....sigh.....I'm down to two more bare enclosures then I'm swearing off home paint jobs. I just don't have the patience to let them dry overnight like I should.
Second misadventure, I put it all together, tested voltages at my bench, all looked good, so I buttoned it up and put the screws in.
I went an plugged it into my chain, bypass sound works great woohoo, first hurdle. I turned it on.....no sound. I was like wtf?
I can understand borking a complicated modulation pedal but borking a YATS? How the F could I mess up something so simple?
Anyway, back to bench, screws taken out. I could hear @Chuck D. Bones voice....."Have you done a thorough inspection?" heh.
Well first thing I checked was to make sure the opamp was oriented correctly. When I looked at it........it was an LF351, not an LF353.
Somehow my baggies of 351's and 353's got mixed up. I had some of each in both bags. I can't remember when I bought these but obviously I was spacing out when I was putting them away.
So easy fix, popped in a 353 and all is well. According to Aion, some of the later run of these used TLC272's. Apparently Juhl wasn't happy with how the 353 sounded on battery as the voltage dropped below 8v. The TLC272 sounds more consistent across the life of the battery, however, he likes the 353 sound better, so if you're never going to use a battery (like me) then the 353 is the opamp he would choose. Early editions of this pedal came with both opamps for users to swap as they needed.
Next couple of BJFe projects I have queued up is the "Simble" (PPCB Symbolic Drive), which is Bjorn's take on the Zen drive. It seems to me that the Zen is all about the smoothness and almost diametrically opposed philosophically from his own designs. I'm super curious how that's going to sound. I'm missing the opamps for that (TLC272 ironically and my Mouser order was uncharacteristically slow in getting fulfilled. But it should be here next week sometime.
And also the Graphite Drive (Mad Prof Stone Grey Distortion).
I also sent my demo video of the BJuhls pedals to my buddy who immediately responded "I would like one each of the last two on the left please..." heh.
So I'm building him a Mojito Deluxe and an ADHD Ge.
After that, I'm planning to build some of the Juhl's fuzzes, the Apple Fritter and Fuschia, and I think there's one more BearfootFX distortion that's in the PPCB catalog.
***Note I took the gut shot with the wrong opamp in it......