Removing Q3 and the circuit is much too quiet compared to the others in my project. Removing Q2 and there's not as much compression/clipping as I'd like. Would it be worth throwing a resistor before Q3, say, 10k? It doesn't sound bad to my ears...
Try the resistor and see if you like it better. Do the same thing between Q1 & Q2. Without the series resistor, Q2 interferes with Q1's soft clipping. Same goes for Q2 & Q3. The way you have it wired now, the clipping is very asymmetric. But whatever sounds good, that's what matters.
Here's the second iteration. It's much more standard Muff than I realized. I threw back in the 4148s instead of the LEDs. Having only 1 clipping stage only give me a hint of muff, so I really needed the second stage. This reminds me of the creamy, classic Muff sound. With the tone shaper in front of it there's really no need to tweak more cap values (although maaaaybe C1 to tame some of the low end a bit). I guess the real challenge now would be to put this on as compact of a stripboard build as possible...
Here's the second iteration. It's much more standard Muff than I realized. I threw back in the 4148s instead of the LEDs. Having only 1 clipping stage only give me a hint of muff, so I really needed the second stage. This reminds me of the creamy, classic Muff sound. With the tone shaper in front of it there's really no need to tweak more cap values (although maaaaybe C1 to tame some of the low end a bit). I guess the real challenge now would be to put this on as compact of a stripboard build as possible...
Here's the stripboard layout. I want to look at this with fresh eyes tomorrow to visually verify before committing to solder. If anyone sees anything wonky let me know. I tried to make this as thin and dense as possible. I do have a slight real estate constraint in the enclosure. Some free standing resistors, but I can live with it.
Thanks. I was worried about some of those standing resistors. Turns out you can just bend them down. I’ll wire it up tomorrow and hopefully it works the first time.
Ya know Tayda sells 1/8W 1% resistors. Those are my preference because they easily fit even the tightest boards. I like the bigger 1/4W resistors for breadboards.
Wired up and works just fine. Had to troubleshoot it for a moment since I didn't solder the input wire very well and the signal sounded "starved". But she works! Here's my completed build. It's a 5-in-1 (geez...)
This build was started with a shower thought about 3 months ago and I asked you guys about it here. https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/eq-before-and-after-a-circuit.21689/ Then I set out to build a "Dial-a-dirt" + Booster/Tone Shaper. TL/DR this is a 5-in-1 combo build for all kinds of dirt in...
Hey Chuck, I took your advice on the integral preamp to convert to 9V. I think I may have botched it. Now it’s just a very dirty boost with little too tone control. I may put this back on the breadboard for a stripped down version. Shouldn’t be too difficult. I can always put it on vero.
Here's a nice one I cooked up recently. First, a little backstory.
Months ago, I was interested in playing around with some EQ notch controls/snippets. To do that, I needed a working circuit block beforehand and chose the Mini Muffin Fuzz due to the parts counts. The notch controls got a 'meh' reaction out of me and set my board aside. That was back in July I think.
Anyways, I got the itch to try out a tone control and used the existing board for this project.
I modified the Mini-Muffin with a gain control, diode substitution, and a HARMONICS control for some interesting top end/fuzz sounds. I used a red LED/4148 combo for this and it is a very "open" drive circuit that I quite like. Very good dynamic responsive.
The tone control is an active muff tone stack that's been modified to take out the 'ice pick' highs it can notoriously produce. Because the tone stack is active (hooked up to an opamp) there is no volume loss and no need for a recovery stage. I toyed around with a Mid control, such as the Framus Mid Control via TSC, but wasn't thrilled with it, so I nixed it.
Sonically, we're in OD/slight fuzz territory depending on the control mix. As a bedroom player, I wanted some low end in the sound without all the boom/flub and this works out really nicely.
Using 3 opamps, I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to utilize a quad opamp chip. I took this into account and tied one opamp into a buffer through the power section. Or just tie the inputs/outputs to ground. Or don't
I call this one the NEBULA DRIVE. Controls on my breadboard left-right are GAIN, HARMONICS, TONE, and VOLUME. I would highly recommend trying this one out and may commit to stripboard in the near future. Unless somebody can get a PCB going for this. My skills aren't that good yet.
