SOLVED Aphrodite Overdrive... Anyone built yet?

Locrian99

Locrian99

Well-known member
Good evening all,

I built a strip board layout of the aphrodite that followed the schematic from the PCB. It's working great other than two things. One I feel it sounds a little fizzy, not terrible by any means but theres a little fizz in there I'm hoping this goes away after being boxed. The 2nd thing is when the gain pot is maxed it feedsback, depending on the location of the drive pot it can get pretty bad. Drive pot fully CCW its still annoying and unusable at max gain setting. I thought this might go away after boxing, but another person where I got the layout is reporting the same issue and says his is still doing it after boxing. I'm curious if anyone has built the PCB yet and if they are encountering this same issue. I doubt both he and I made the same error, I haven't traced out the schematic vs. the layout yet. Likely will, but figured I might save myself some time if the issue is the same with the PCB version. The one change I did make from both the schematic and layout is I used a 1044 max and changed c101 to a 10u. But all my voltages appear to be spot on to me.

Thanks!
 
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szukalski said:
I have one, love it. No issues with noise, I used a 7660S and have some russian Ge diodes in there.
Click to expand...
Sounds like I’ll be staring at a schematic here in a bit. Other thought is that it being fairly high gain the wiring are picking up something from each other inside the box. Might have to decide if I like it enough to buy the pcb and give that a go. Thank you
 
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Only difference I’m seeing between the layout and the schematic is a 2m2 pull down resistor on the input of the signal in the layout which is not there on the schematic. I’ll pop that off and try without when I get back to the bench tonight to see if it makes any difference, guessing it won’t
 
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Further researching this thing and I think the problem lies in my charge pump ic. Was using a 1044cpa. The whine I am getting is described in another forum thread for the kliche mini. I had a 7662 I got off eBay at one point tried that (the legs are the thinnest I’ve ever seen on an ic by far) same result, I don’t trust that ic… I have a 7662 arriving from stomp box parts today will see if it removed the whine (which does go away if I have the treble all the way down and drive/gain at lower levels). I suspect the whine at high gain/drive levels becomes the awful feedback at max gain. Hoping this also removes the fizz, i just can’t imagine is correct. If it doesn’t remove the fizz I’ll get out the audio probe I did a few weird things with series caps, resistors for some values I didn’t have. 1.8k resistor and 390p cap.
 
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Locrian99 said:
Further researching this thing and I think the problem lies in my charge pump ic. Was using a 1044cpa. The whine I am getting is described in another forum thread for the kliche mini. I had a 7662 I got off eBay at one point tried that (the legs are the thinnest I’ve ever seen on an ic by far) same result, I don’t trust that ic… I have a 7662 arriving from stomp box parts today will see if it removed the whine (which does go away if I have the treble all the way down and drive/gain at lower levels). I suspect the whine at high gain/drive levels becomes the awful feedback at max gain. Hoping this also removes the fizz, i just can’t imagine is correct. If it doesn’t remove the fizz I’ll get out the audio probe I did a few weird things with series caps, resistors for some values I didn’t have. 1.8k resistor and 390p cap.
Click to expand...
To the best of my recall from previous experience with a similar problem, the plain 1044 is prone to exactly the oscillation you mention. The 1044 with an S doesn’t do this. So, a 1044SCPA will work silently, a 1044CPA will produce an annoying whine at around 10kHz. Hope this helps.
 
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mybud said:
To the best of my recall from previous experience with a similar problem, the plain 1044 is prone to exactly the oscillation you mention. The 1044 with an S doesn’t do this. So, a 1044SCPA will work silently, a 1044CPA will produce an annoying whine at around 10kHz. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Yes that is what is stated in the other thread. This particular pedal is calling for the 7662 so I decided to just purchase one of those from a reputable source. Hoping this solves it.
 
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Well the whine is gone now with the new chip. I still get the feedback with the gain pot maxed out. It’s like the last maybe 5%. I’m still not convinced this thing is right as it still sounds excessively fizzy to me. I might just have to breakdown and buy the pcb. Love every demo of this thing and just not loving this like I thought I would. Maybe it’s just my hands and ears that are the difference.
 
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Mine doesn’t have any issues with a 7660S.
It’s a great sounding pedal, but I need to look into the Merman and see if it can modded to sound the same as per Chucks comments in my build thread.
 
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I don’t think the chip is causing the fizz I’m hearing. I was getting a whine with the other chip. I’ve probably got a mistake in there I’m just missing or this circuit doesn’t like being on stripboard. I’m just going to order the pcb.
 
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szukalski said:
Mine doesn’t have any issues with a 7660S.
It’s a great sounding pedal, but I need to look into the Merman and see if it can modded to sound the same as per Chucks comments in my build thread.
Click to expand...
Tried finding your build report without any luck find several of your build reports just not one for the Aphrodite. However I did make a change to 1n4001 diodes both of which were right around 600 for the forward voltage loss and it sounds better to me. I’m tempted to try some 1n34a’s I have in there at some point. But I’ve got a muff clone to get boxed up at the moment. It sounded good before it just wasn’t quite there. Still got that feedback though. But it’s not a non starter because of it. It’s probably past on the gain pot I’d be likely to use anyways. Thanks for the responses she’s all boxed up Ready to annoy my wife and kids :)
 
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So the feedback thing at max gain kept bugging me because it just didn’t make sense to me. The layout on dirtbox layouts suggested 1n400x diodes. Szulaski mentioned using germanium’s. I have some 1n34a’s around. So I pulled it out of its enclosure ran some wires to a breadboard and tried them. No feedback at max gain! Tried some 1n4148’s no feed back. So then I thought welol maybe it was my soldering. Put the 4001’s back in. Hello feedback.
 
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And the fizz you were hearing?? By fizz , you mean an excess of treble??. seeing The demos of this pedal, I fell that there certain crispness in the tone of the pedal, I dont know if this is what you are hearing...
What diodes you were using the first time?? 0,62 vf is the goal, reading the bom. So,1n4148 is in the ballpark....
 
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sopapo said:
And the fizz you were hearing?? By fizz , you mean an excess of treble??. seeing The demos of this pedal, I fell that there certain crispness in the tone of the pedal, I dont know if this is what you are hearing...
What diodes you were using the first time?? 0,62 vf is the goal, reading the bom. So,1n4148 is in the ballpark....
Click to expand...
Yea I was reading on another place where they suggested the 1n4001 so I tried it... Anyways fizz probably isn't the right word. After listening to more and more demos (which I noticed the one I had originally listened to never turned the drive up at all). Probably more of a sizzle, or slight fuzz like sound, anyways further demos I can hear it in the demos with the drive up a bit with the gain... Anyways, it wasn't quite what I was expecting from the first demo I listened to. But I think it's correct, friend of mine played with it and thought it was awesome, I like it just was a bit different than what I thought. And I should've listened to more demos apparently...
 
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With veroboard layouts I always notice that there are strips that are longer than necesary and this can bring feedback-squealing-impedance issues. A good practice is to do cuts where applicable to isolate parts of the circuit.. ex. a strip with a input signal that goes all the way the board putting the input signal next to other parts of the circuit with differents impedances, etcetc.. sometimes the typical issue of squealing in the end of the gain-level pot is because of things like that...
In the vero layout on dirtybox of this manticore pedal I see that the strip below the input strip, the strip that goes to savage control 3, its all along the board, I would do a cut to the left of the 1 uf cap to prevent troubles..from this to the left, this strip is doing absolutely nothing, so why the risk?
And if I keep on looking on this layout, there are other traces like that that could be optimized, give it a try, the squealing on the gain pot could be for this....
The position of the wires inside the box is important too, sometimes reolocating the wires, assuring that the input-output-pots wires are far each other is a good thing...

The thing with the vero layouts is the noise, they are prone to noise because the strips are very close and the layouts..ejem.. no offense intended, I have made a lot of this layouts, but sometimes are a little fuzzy in the design....
 
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sopapo said:
With veroboard layouts I always notice that there are strips that are longer than necesary and this can bring feedback-squealing-impedance issues. A good practice is to do cuts where applicable to isolate parts of the circuit.. ex. a strip with a input signal that goes all the way the board putting the input signal next to other parts of the circuit with differents impedances, etcetc.. sometimes the typical issue of squealing in the end of the gain-level pot is because of things like that...
In the vero layout on dirtybox of this manticore pedal I see that the strip below the input strip, the strip that goes to savage control 3, its all along the board, I would do a cut to the left of the 1 uf cap to prevent troubles..from this to the left, this strip is doing absolutely nothing, so why the risk?
And if I keep on looking on this layout, there are other traces like that that could be optimized, give it a try, the squealing on the gain pot could be for this....
The position of the wires inside the box is important too, sometimes reolocating the wires, assuring that the input-output-pots wires are far each other is a good thing...

The thing with the vero layouts is the noise, they are prone to noise because the strips are very close and the layouts..ejem.. no offense intended, I have made a lot of this layouts, but sometimes are a little fuzzy in the design....
Click to expand...
I haven’t really ran into this problem on vero in the past but nearly all of my builds on vero so far have been modulation or delay effects when I think about it. I suppose it makes sense that a higher gain pedal could have some more bleed over. I’ll try those changes you mentioned.
 
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I think it’s the wiring. And I don’t really see a great way to improve it with that layout. Stuff crosses all over the place in my enclosure. Maybe if I had it in a 1590b or 125bb I could get it better.

Took it out of the enclosure, made the cut tou recommended. Got my tayda order in today with a couple values I ran a few series resistors and a series cap to achieve so I swapped those out. It was sounding pretty good, that sizzle/fizz/fuzzy sound seemed fine. I still couldn’t max out the savage pot with the gain turned up. But the thing that was really annoying was solved. Got it back in the enclosure all the wires going, quite the challenge actually. And it sounded worse than when I took it out…. I may give this circuit a shot on pcb down the line but I’m done with this vero, hopefully I can find a 5 pot build to use this enclosure for down the line. Only thing I can see possibly making it worse is the wires but 5 pots in there and it’s going to be impossible to seperate that stuff well without making the box huge. Anyways
 
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