Skylight Overdrive

falco_femoralis

Well-known member
Hi all, here's a Skylight OD build. I made a Resinite OD and liked it a lot so I tried another Mad Professor style creation. It's interesting in that it has an external impedance control, which loads the pickups like a fuzz face and allows the guitar's vol control to clean up the distortion. There's also a texture control, which is like a tone control that mixes in two transistors setup as clipping diodes. I'm not really sure how this works, and I'd love to learn more about it.

The pedal has a lot of gain and the impedance control is very interactive. The texture control is somewhat meh though. I built two of these, one as it is in the schematic, and the other I used a 10k pot for the texture control. I read about people using 5k instead of the spec 1k to allow for more spread in the control. I didn't have a 5k so I used a 10k. While it does allow for more travel, it also emphasizes the lower freqs and makes the pedal sound very "boxy." Like a lot of tube screamers do for my setup, unless they are used as a boost before the main gain pedal.

Anyway, here's some pics. Going with the theme of the pedal's name, I went with a blue and white paint job with white knobs.
IMG_6170.jpg

I tried something new with the labels this time. I made margins before assembling the pedal so I'd be able to write the labels without the pot shafts interfering, and without taking the pedal apart. I like how it came out, though I wouldn't recommend this tape. For some reason this has never worked as well for me as regular blue painter's tape.
rai7C8J.jpeg


Here's the gut shot. I'm trying something new and I put an LED brightness control in. I shunted the LED and CLR solder pads on the board and used a 470R and a 25k trim pot on the daughter board. I had some 25ks leftover from another build - a 20k would have been fine too.
Ct5Krcz.jpeg


And here's the other one I built - in horizontal format. I built this one first, it's the one with the 10k texture control, which I will redo at some point
0lquJQG.jpeg


Overall it's a fun little drive, esp for crazy wanky solos, but I still like my Luxury 763
 
I’m about to finish one of these hopefully. Ran out of 3mm red LEDs and tried using 1n4148s instead but output was really low. Hoping there isn’t a problem with the build! Have you compared the super luxury 763 and the super Stevie?
 
I’m about to finish one of these hopefully. Ran out of 3mm red LEDs and tried using 1n4148s instead but output was really low. Hoping there isn’t a problem with the build! Have you compared the super luxury 763 and the super Stevie?
Yeah, you need the higher voltage cutoff of the LED's to maintain volume. I've built both the 763 and the Super 6. I was expecting them to be similar but they are completely different. The Super 6 relies on diodes for its clipping so the sound is very "squishy" like a Lightspeed would be, while the 763 is fuller with a less saturated overdrive sound. I have a DRRI to compare them to, and the Super 6 does not sound like a Deluxe Reverb being overdriven, contrary to the marketing blurb of the original design. The 763 doesn't either, but the EQ of the circuit is great for my setup. It's one of my favorite pedals, while the Super 6 was kinda meh for me.
 
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