DEMO Lead Solder Overdrive

[owlexifry]

Build Rating

5.00 star(s)

ever since this appeared in the project wishlist (same day it was released i guess), i’ve been bugging to try this circuit.
boy howdy, we got there. and i guess it’s pretty good


its kinda hard to benchmark fairly cos i haven’t tried many circuits like this yet (still gotta do a brown betty board, aionfx tightmetal board..)

after hearing a couple complaints of oscillation/noise, i went over it pretty carefully, triple checked for cold joints, and soldered the TL072s to the board.



zero issues with noise and oscillation.
during this demo, to validate - i dimed every single control and it still didn’t oscillate. sounded pretty cool too haha

some observations/opinions:
- presence control is cool, useful, works well
- deep switch is a lot more dramatic than i anticipated, it's great, and it's just in the right spot.
- the TMB controls are a bit odd to me. for the first time ever with a device, it just seemed to sound it's best / most natural / balanced with them set at noon or close to noon..
- treble control seems especially odd. it's like a treble control below noon and a mid control above noon. i wonder if that unusually high value (1nF) treble cap has anything to do with that..
- mid control seems to be ok. sounds good with the mid cut when boosting the front of it with a mid forward drive (808)
- bass control, idk, a good nudge above noon sounds great, but gets too loose/woofy if turned too high, even with an 808 cutting the low end in front.

overall it’s an easy board to build, just gotta take the extra time for at least a shielded input.

 

[cooder]

Excellent inside out, thanks for the great demo! Rockin'....

 

[owlexifry]

Excellent inside out, thanks for the great demo! Rockin'....

ay cheers no worries, was stoked to finally play this thing

 

[jimilee]

Very nice. Is that an 80s or 80s reproduction explorer?

 

[owlexifry]

Very nice. Is that an 80s or 80s reproduction explorer?

‘06 Epiphone 58 spec

 

[Giorfida]

Has that been everyone’s experience that we need to direct solder the TL072 to aid in mitigating oscillation?

 

[owlexifry]

Has that been everyone’s experience that we need to direct solder the TL072 to aid in mitigating oscillation?

i have no idea. maybe? i just did it cos it felt like a sensible thing to do.
shielded input/output wiring would be way more important imo

 

[Robert]

after hearing all these complaints of oscillation/noise, i went over it pretty carefully, triple checked for cold joints, and soldered the TL072s to the board.

Have there been a lot of complaints?

Has that been everyone’s experience that we need to direct solder the TL072 to aid in mitigating oscillation?

I'm only aware of two cases of oscillation. One where the input wire was snaked in between components on the PCB, and one unboxed build.

As long as you keep the input wire away from the PCB there shouldn't be any issues.

I used sockets (only so I could salvage the opamps afterwards) and did not use shielded wire and had no issues. I was able to reproduce the oscillation issue by snaking the input wire between some of the electrolytic caps on the board, but you really should avoid doing this with any circuit, not just this one.

 

[steviejr92]

What a demo! I need one of these just off the demo alone

Fantastic build man!

 

[owlexifry]

Have there been a lot of complaints?

well, i guess it was just those two on that thread.. i didnt really pay much attention, but the amount of carry on from those two was enough to make me paranoid/cautious and give it some extra love.

What a demo! I need one of these just off the demo alone

Fantastic build man!

thanks man
the SLO100 behind it might be helping.. and almost everything sounds pretty sweet through that 4x12.
but nah yeah it does seem to be a pretty cool unit.
if high gain is your thing - you’ll be stoked. and it loves boosts too.

 

[Giorfida]

Have there been a lot of complaints?



I'm only aware of two cases of oscillation. One where the input wire was snaked in between components on the PCB, and one unboxed build.

As long as you keep the input wire away from the PCB there shouldn't be any issues.

I used sockets (only so I could salvage the opamps afterwards) and did not use shielded wire and had no issues. I was able to reproduce the oscillation issue by snaking the input wire between some of the electrolytic caps on the board, but you really should avoid doing this with any circuit, not just this one.

I only saw those 2 as well.

 

[Feral Feline]

Beautiful gutshot!
Good looking build;
Thanks for the Demo!

Good incentive to get goin' on mine.

 

[owlexifry]

Beautiful gutshot!
Good looking build;
Thanks for the Demo!

Good incentive to get goin' on mine.

i appreciate the kind words. i don’t have any graphic design skills, so gutshots are all i got.
no worries, glad to have shared some motivation

 

[Giorfida]

i appreciate the kind words. i don’t have any graphic design skills, so gutshots are all i got.
no worries, glad to have shared some motivation

Looks good! And I get the lack of graphic design skills. I suffer the same.
I want to get the word “Soldout” done for mine in Soldano font (as a nod to him selling to BAD lol… all tongue in cheek- can’t blame the man for setting up for a retirement!). But with no skills, it likely will get generic labelling like everything else lol

 

[owlexifry]

Looks good! And I get the lack of graphic design skills. I suffer the same.
I want to get the word “Soldout” done for mine in Soldano font (as a nod to him selling to BAD lol… all tongue in cheek- can’t blame the man for setting up for a retirement!). But with no skills, it likely will get generic labelling like everything else lol

yeah.. it’s a time commitment thing i guess. barely have enough to play guitar AND build as it is. learning design software from square one having no clue and no support just ain’t gonna happen for me. not with a 12 year old mac mini anyway.
so yep, nearly all of my builds have had dymo/emboss labels.
i tried to do something different recently, and attempted hand drawn labels with black pen & white paint pen with a Blue Shoe Gai Pan and Figment Preamp build.
it’s not very good (got them shaky hands).
so for this build i decided not to mar the enclosure with anything at all and just keep it clean.
and with those aluminium knobs, im glad i did.

i like your idea though!
SOLDOUT

maybe you could try it with waterslides like all the cool cats are doing lately?

 

[Giorfida]

yeah.. it’s a time commitment thing i guess. barely have enough to play guitar AND build as it is. learning design software from square one having no clue and no support just ain’t gonna happen for me. not with a 12 year old mac mini anyway.
so yep, nearly all of my builds have had dymo/emboss labels.
i tried to do something different recently, and attempted hand drawn labels with black pen & white paint pen with a Blue Shoe Gai Pan and Figment Preamp build.
it’s not very good (got them shaky hands).
so for this build i decided not to mar the enclosure with anything at all and just keep it clean.
and with those aluminium knobs, im glad i did.

i like your idea though!
SOLDOUT

maybe you could try it with waterslides like all the cool cats are doing lately?

I have the water slide as well as sticker vinyl paper. It’s just taking the time to learn the graphic design portion. That said, I’m sure I can do a lot of generic labels and have a mass label party some day. But for now I’m in the same boat as you, and if I have free time it’s going to either spent building or playing.

 

[manfesto]

To add my $0.02, I've built two Lead Solders at this point, both just my usual method of two 6" unshielded pre-cut pre-stripped pre-bond stranded 24awg from @StompBoxParts run along the sides of the enclosure, and neither have had noise or oscillation issues.

I think that first build report kinda got the issue blown out of proportion.

 

[Paradox916]

sounds good man! And the DC jack and ground wiring.

 

[owlexifry]

I think that first build report kinda got the issue blown out of proportion.

it sure did. and worse, i got sucked into believing shielded wire was necessary.
still, makes me feel a little more at ease knowing it’s there..

sounds good man! And the DC jack and ground wiring.

ayy yeah i was stoked how those came out

 

[micmac]

Thank you @owlexifry for the demo! Nicely played Made me want to try this pedal instantly. I had never heard of the pedal before.

Was this hard to solder for you? For me soldering all the grounds was hard. As if these holes were connected to one massive ground plane that sucked most of the heat away. Usually the solder flows to the other side of the board by itself, but not with the ground holes on this PCB. I ended up flipping the PCB around and adding solder on the other side whenever it hadn't flowed through.

It was really horrible. Like, I messed up the cables on the top side so I wanted to redo them. I tried for over an hour to get the solder out of the three ground holes. I couldn't do it, neither with a solder sucker nor with copper strand. In the end I used the needle trick, I mean heating up the hole, putting a needle trough and then pulling it out once it was cold again. I don't have a fancy soldering iron, though. But it usually works just fine and soldering with it is quite easy.

Anyway, despite all this I got it finished and I really like it. I don't like distortion pedals where you kind of need to put an extra boost up front. With this one I don't need one and it sounds surprisingly nice into a clean amp, makes it sound like a hot rodded Marshall I guess (never had one, so best guess). It's fun to play with.

My colors look a bit weird. Originally I had ordered a couple of creme painted enclosures, but they didn't arrive yet and I wanted to get this built, so I used a purple one. And I had already received creme knobs, hence the creme background, but they don't really match. Well, whatever

I couldn't get my hands on a C25k pot, so I used a C50k and put a 51k resistor from lug one to three. Works fine. When I move the Presence knob around it feels pretty gradual, there's no abrupt change anywhere.