Your favorite sushi box fx pedal to date?

[bluedmc777]

Just curious. Also if you’re a guitarist or bassist. Guitarist please list what amp your using as that can make a huge difference.

I’m using a Vox style amp with 2 selectable preamp tubes. A 12ax7 or EF86. Particle Accelerator is my favorite Hands down at the moment until I can swap a couple caps in the King Nothing. I using it at end of drive chain pretty much always on to add a little girth and grit.

The King Nothing is versatile but with my amp a tad too much bass. On the lower gain settings it’s has some great single note clarity and thickness. A sound I would associate with “Dumble” even though nobody they’re all different. That was a suprise. At higher gains it can rock.

The Diplomat is a tone enhancer for me. Doesn’t work as well with my box style amp as it does my deluxe reverb. Perhaps I haven’t spent enough time with its placement in the chain but I do see it driving the hell out of another pedal or end of chain sweetener. Has tons of volume on tap. A lot! The EF86 will always give you more girth. It’s just a thick sounding tube for me.

The Ambassador. Has a drive/distortion unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s amazing. The but is-the always on clean channel just doesn’t work with my brighter vox style amp. With a high headroom Marshall this thing would be perfect in getting those classic rock tones and more. Nathan suggested a couple mods for it to work better with my amp. Hopefully I’ll get to it one day.

Particle Accelerator it is for me so far even though they’re all great with different amps in mind. I believe the extended tone section is what realy works in the P.A.

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommending all of them depending on your amp and uses though.

I wonder if the Dr. Watson would pair well with a vox style amp? Or a tube driven compressor. I’ve also thought about putting the vampire slayer tube buffer in my effects loop as it’s passive! Would it be that much better than another good solid state buffer? It also has a digital reverb running in parallel with the passive loop. The amp was designed thah way.

Also, I’ve got in with Rat pedals but have been intrigue with the tube rat lol.

Many thanks to everyone involved in designing these!

 

[Smrtokvitek]

My experience so far:

I have built the Diplomat and BassDude for one specific reason. If you send Diplomat into BassDude you can achieve architecture quite similar to a Bell & Howell Filmosound 385 amp. The Diplomat has a lot of clean gain that overdrives whatever you put after it. I have tried this only once so far into the cleanish amp (Fender Blues Jr.). It sounds nice.

I have also recently tried to put the BassDude after the tube preamp I built some time ago. It resembles the Dumble ODS topology where you switch channels in the way, you send the clean preamp signal to another separate tube section (BassDude) instead of overdriving the clean from the front. I was surprised at how well it worked.

The King Nothing is the last thing I have to explore. I haven't yet found a way to use it reasonably in my pedal chain. In other words, I have too many drive/boost pedals.

 

[bluedmc777]

We all have too many drive pedals lol. My biggest concern is figuring out which ones to sell along with which power supply(s) to sell to buy a supply large enough for 5 tube pedals. Maybe more if I add the tube buffer and whatever else may come in the future.

 

[vigilante398]

Mine is and always will be (at least for another couple weeks, got something wild in the works) Black Eye. From the moment I first heard the Soldano GTO circuit I said "yup, that's my sound."

I obviously have access to a lot more Sushi Box circuits than most people and there are plenty of cool ones nobody has ever heard, but so far I haven't been able to top Black Eye.

 

[Tassieviking]

My biggest concern is figuring out which ones to sell along with which power supply(s) to sell to buy a supply large enough for 5 tube pedals

I am thinking about using a power supply out of an old HP rack server I bought a long time ago because I wanted the RAM from it.
I think it is 12v at 800 watts so I would never have a problem again.
I think the power supplies from computers can be very useful when converted, most laptops have supplies that can put out many amps and you just need a L7812 or L7809 to get 12v or 9v.

 

[bluedmc777]

I need to try a vampire slayer in my loop one of these days. My Cub 40r player series has an unbuffered effects loop in parallel with a digital reverb. Little suprised by that. Anyone compared the slayer to a good quality buffer or even a clean boost/buffer?

I had some some fun with the kind of the nothing last night. I like pushing other pedals with with it as well as pushing it. You do have dial it in though and each flip of the switch you’ll have to readjust. I’m liking it though. Hats off to @vigilante398 Suppose I’ll have to try the Black Eye very soon!

 

[DeadAirMD]

"The Ambassador. Has a drive/distortion unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s amazing. The but is-the always on clean channel just doesn’t work with my brighter vox style amp."

@vigilante398 is there a way to reconfigure this so that the Ambassador is bypasses when off, so that it's not always on?

 

[vigilante398]

"The Ambassador. Has a drive/distortion unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s amazing. The but is-the always on clean channel just doesn’t work with my brighter vox style amp."

@vigilante398 is there a way to reconfigure this so that the Ambassador is bypasses when off, so that it's not always on?

Sure, you mean like remove the clean channel and make it a true bypass single-channel pedal? I could probably figure out a way to make that work if so.

I know a couple people have kept it as a two-channel pedal and added a DPDT toggle switch as a bypass, it just comes down to whether you want to bypass it with a footswitch or not. The very first Ambassador units I built (SMD) had two footswitches, which is basically the difference between the original Matchless Hotbox and the Hotbox 3.

 

[DeadAirMD]

Yeah man definitely! If there was a way to make that 1 channel I can switch on/off, that would be stellar!

As a single pedal straight into an amp, it's absolutely stunning. But with 25+ pedals on my board, having access to only the distortion/overdrive channel would be ideal. Still need to build your version of the rat, I've got the board but my PCB backlog is insane.

 

[vigilante398]

Yeah man definitely! If there was a way to make that 1 channel I can switch on/off, that would be stellar!

As a single pedal straight into an amp, it's absolutely stunning. But with 25+ pedals on my board, having access to only the distortion/overdrive channel would be ideal. Still need to build your version of the rat, I've got the board but my PCB backlog is insane.

So I'm looking at the design files right now, and the good news is it's not impossible. The bad news is it's not easy. It will involve physically cutting traces on the PCB and jumping wires around.

 

[DeadAirMD]

 

[Tassieviking]

I think you can get away with just altering the pins going to the switch, or actually removing the links from the PCB to the switch PCB in the right places.
Start with removing the links on 1, 2, 3, 4 from the PCB to the switch PCB.
(Component side I call the left side 1 and right side 9)
Jumper 2-3 on the PCB, this connects the drive to always on and removes the circuit to the clean pot.
The Clean pot, 180pF, 560pF and 220k next to clean pot are no longer needed.( just ignore them)
Jumper 1-4 on the switch PCB
Remove the in wire from the PCB that comes from the in jack.
Run wire from in jack to 2 on the switch PCB
Run wire from 3 on the switch PCB to the in on the main PCB
That should make it a true bypass with only gain channel working
I think that should do it, but I do not have a PCB at hand to make sure it is absolutely correct.
If someone can check for me would be great.
Cheers
Mick

EDIT: I also think if you link 7 to 3 on the switch PCB it will earth the input to the main PCB when in bypass mode, this is common so you have 0V going into the in of the PCB when not used.

 

[Tassieviking]

I drew the Ambassador up in KiCad and made some pics of how I would wire it for a separate channel switch and use the foot switch for effect on / bypass. (True Bypass)
Last 2 pics is where I would place the channel switch, I would use a 2M switch as they take up less room.

https://www.taydaelectronics.com/sub-mini-toggle-switch-2m-series-spdt-on-on-short-lever.html

Mick
EDIT: use an on-on-on DPDT switch to make it a clean-both-drive setup so you can blend the clean and gain channels in the mid position.
See my Bass mod for the Ambassador that I intend to try in the future that is posted below in post 14.

 

[Tassieviking]

Here is a Bass mod I am thinking of doing to one of the Ambassador PCB's I have ordered, it also shows how I would change the separate channel switch to Clean/Both/Gain with a DPDT on-on-on switch when I make it fully bypassed like above.

 

[bluedmc777]

@Tassieviking Good work. Let us know how it goes. I sold my Ambassador to a friend regrettably but would by it back if I could get the boost voiced fit my amp and make it switchable. Nathan had told me a few mods to try on the voicing but I need the money at the time.

Have any of you guys tried different tubes in the Particle Accelerator? Maybe a 12ay7 or even a 12au7? Maybe a 12at7 but I’m always a little shy about using a 12at7 unless it’s called for. 12ax7 sounds fine in there but I’m a tube roller lol.

 

[Silver Blues]

My Particle Accelerator has a 5751 in it and I think it sounds nice, but does not approach distortion at all (and I'm thinking I might like it to). The sound is warm even with boosted treble/mids (which is OK by me).

 

[bluedmc777]

My Particle Accelerator has a 5751 in it and I think it sounds nice, but does not approach distortion at all (and I'm thinking I might like it to). The sound is warm even with boosted treble/mids (which is OK by me).

Man mine gets gritty around 1 on the gain. I have an old long blackplate Raytheon that was teetering on the edge of being micro a fine balance between the eq, mainly the mids, and the gain know. Does the 5751 break up at all?

 

[Tassieviking]

A rough guide to the gain of the valves

 

[Silver Blues]

Man mine gets gritty around 1 on the gain. I have an old long blackplate Raytheon that was teetering on the edge of being micro a fine balance between the eq, mainly the mids, and the gain know. Does the 5751 break up at all?

Wow really? Lol maybe I should try that. With my hottest bass (an Epiphone Embassy Special IV with some genuinely decent-sounding random ceramic P pickup that meters in the 8k range - yes I know) at maximum gain it just bareeeeeeely starts to break up, and none of my other basses get even close. I'm not in a panic to change it, I'd like to see what it sounds like when actually driven, but if you don't want the breakup I'd recommend the 5751 for sure.

 

[bluedmc777]

I’m running mine with Strat and vintage style single coils.