Update:
After chatting a bit with
@harmaes offline about the Ge diodes he used in his build and with the new Ge's that
@music6000 recently turned me onto, I decided to revisit the Jump Drive.
In my OP, you can tell I was a little underwhelmed by the pedal. So couple of things I probably should stop doing.....
1) Read marketing ad copy.....and buying into the superlatives heh. The LPD website mentioned that this pedal was inspired by a 68 Plexi so I was expecting a "Marshall-in-a-box" that sounds like a 68 plexi, which I still don't think this sounds anything like.
2) Because of #1 above, when I first fired it up after testing voltages at my bench, I pulled out all my MIAB builds and started immediately comparing them, instead of just spending some time with the pedal on its own before diving into that.
So lessons learned. I ordered an array of Ge Diodes during the SmallBear sale, as mentioned in my
Tellurian build report Ge diode taste testing.
Smallbear is usually not the quickest shipping for me, I was expecting at least a week to two before getting the order (I got them in 48 hours...
)
so I decided to take my Jump Drive build apart and repaint the enclosure. In my OP I also mentioned that I used a "hammered finish" paint that doesn't like to dry for some reason. It stays soft, a bit tacky and easy to scuff. So I decided to sand it all back off down to bare metal and start over while waiting for the diodes.
I painted this enclosure over 3 weeks ago, when I went to sand off the finish it was STILL soft and gooey. So it still hadn't completely cured.
I guess I'm not using that color paint anymore. I put a new coat of primer and used probably my favorite of the new batch of colors I got.
It's called "Burnished Amber". I love the color but more than that, I love that it dries completely in a couple of hours and leaves no fingerprints and seems pretty durable.
Here's the re-painted enclosure:
Ok, so for the Ge diode testing it was pretty much the same protocol as with the Tellurian. I started out with the ITT Red Band Ge Diodes. Actually the same set that I first tested in my Tellurian. They measured in the mid 300's in my tester. They sounded great! They sounded better than the Russian G223's I had initially tried in the pedal before swapping them out for first BA282's then settling on BAT41's.
I know I've been raving a bit about these ITT diodes but they really do sound better (to me) than any of the NOS Russian variety I've been using up to this point.
BUT.....like the Tellurian, they did not stay in the pedal. I tested a few other diodes and once again it was the Phillips/Mullard OA9's that sounded the best. Just something about these Mullard diodes, the OA9 and the CV7364's that sound sooooo good. I mentioned this in my Tellurian build but there's like a flute-like hollowness to them that I've never heard in a clipping diode before. Kinda like the difference between a Humbucker and a P90. Just a super cool sound. It's a little scary how much I'm liking these diodes. I looked around and they don't seem to be very commonly available. Smallbear is the only place I've seen them so far. And at $1.45/ea it's a steal. I've paid that much for crappy 1n34A's from a certain diode vender who shall remain un-named...(hack hack hack).
Anyway, I'm really enjoying this pedal a lot more now, still dialing some sounds and trying some different guitars. Right now I'm playing my PRS Vela through it and the big fat single coil has a beautiful vocal quality with the gain pushed around to 2 o-clock.
After a couple weeks, some fresh ears, and coming to it and treating it as a very nice overdrive pedal, which it is! makes all the difference
If you'd have asked me a couple weeks ago if I thought that the brand of the Ge diodes would that much difference I would have emphatically said "no, it's all about the forward voltage.....". Well, I'm wrong. Which kinda opens up a whole can of worms for me now...trying not to fall down the "mojo Ge diode rabbit hole".....hahahaha.
Edit: The new diodes, I need to figure out a better way to place them.....