Bedrock Overdrive (Jetter BR 1200)

[MichaelW]

Well, every once in a while you gotta build something that underwhelms you…..right @Dirty_Boogie?

This is another drive that was totally not on my radar, never even heard of it until I saw it on the website then watched Mike Herman’s video review. Not really a good gauge as much as I enjoy his reviews. He makes anything sound freaking awesome.

Billed as a low gain, edge of break up, kind of overdrive. I decided to build it this afternoon after a fairly busy work day for a Friday, I needed some bench time, solder therapy. I looked like a quick build and it certainly was.

It calls for 2 C150k pots which is a bit of an usual value but I knew I had a few so I went for it,.

Build went smooth and it came together pretty quickly. The only issue I had was the 470n output cap is silkscreened as an electrolytic. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a 470n electrolytic cap and certainly didn’t have one. So I put a film cap in its place. I really don’t think that could be contributing to what I’m hearing.

It‘s not a bad sounding drive, but nothing remarkable either. Definitely has a mid hump thing going on and sounds a bit TS-ish but I‘m not seeing the resemblence in the circuit schematic. Clipping provided by 4x 4148’s and a TL072.

There‘s a toggle called “Shift” which adds a 100n cap to fatten up the bass response, so it can definitely be tailored to a variety of guitars. The tone control is called “contour” and I was expecting it to be a bit more active than it really is. It sounds like a pretty pedestrian treble cut to me in actual use.

I dunno, I only spent about 20 minutes with it. Maybe it will grow on me a bit with some fresh ears tomorrow.

Doesn‘t help that i built a bunch of drive pedals this week and I’m reaching that point where they’re all starting to sound the same to me hahaha.

This is one of the $3.75 (plus 20% Black Friday discount) enclosure from SmallBear. Now i remember why I didn’t like the “red” enclosures……because it’s not red. Looks a bit fuschia to me.

I located the status LED according to the drill template and also remembered why I don’t like doing that. When I play sitting down at my desk with my pedals on the desk the knob completely hides the LED. This is the main reason you see in most of my builds I tend to wire my LEDs to the side of the foot switch, so I have a good view of it from a seated position. Obviously not an issue if you play standing up.

It sounded the best to me with my P90 guitars but I’ll mess with it some more tomorrow.

 

[swyse]

I skipped ahead to the pictures before I read and I thought this was a tayda viola pink at first. Your writeup made me curious about the schematic. I looked at it and it's almost like they were trying to make a zendrive/timmy in a different way. The tone control looks weird, but is as you noticed just a simple treble cut like a rat or zendrive, the gain control is extra goofy with the parallel resistor for some reason, maybe for the taper? The switch sort of does a similar thing as the zendrive's voice control affecting the bass content, but without affecting the gain like the zendrive.

 

[Guardians of the analog]

I find a lot of pedals underwhelming. Everything sounds good online, especially with a guy like Herman, he could make farting on a snare drum sound angelic. You've built more than enough drive pedals at this point to see they all sound alike and it's just picking what camp you're in and going with those. But those electros if you look on tayda can go well below 1uf. Keep like 10 or so of odd values, they are only like 2 cents each. You could have had 5 of those for the cost of that film cap Mr. Money bags I dig the color though in your underwhelming build!

 

[MichaelW]

Update:

Ok, after a good nights sleep, some fresh ears, I played it some more this morning and I'm starting to really warm up to this pedal.
(Before shooting it out with the 6 other drives in my chain at the moment)

Couple things I discovered.

1) Definitely seems to like to push an amp with a little bit of grit as opposed to a pristine clean amp. I tried it today with my Friedman Dirty Shirly model (JTM45 based amp) with some hair on the new red Strat and it sounded really good.

2) Sitting and playing it alone just noodling, I couldn't ever see needing the "fat" shift mode, but with the Bass mode toggle on it sits in a "mix" really well. I had a demo mix sitting in my DAW actually for a demo of a different pedal and man, this thing sounded great in the context of a song mix.

 

[Guardians of the analog]

Update:

Ok, after a good nights sleep, some fresh ears, I played it some more this morning and I'm starting to really warm up to this pedal.
(Before shooting it out with the 6 other drives in my chain at the moment)

Couple things I discovered.

1) Definitely seems to like to push an amp with a little bit of grit as opposed to a pristine clean amp. I tried it today with my Friedman Dirty Shirly model (JTM45 based amp) with some hair on the new red Strat and it sounded really good.

2) Sitting and playing it alone just noodling, I couldn't ever see needing the "fat" shift mode, but with the Bass mode toggle on it sits in a "mix" really well. I had a demo mix sitting in my DAW actually for a demo of a different pedal and man, this thing sounded great in the context of a song mix.

I looked it up, I wouldn't say it's a great sound, just a sound

 

[Guilherme Collateral]

Well, every once in a while you gotta build something that underwhelms you…..right @Dirty_Boogie?

This is another drive that was totally not on my radar, never even heard of it until I saw it on the website then watched Mike Herman’s video review. Not really a good gauge as much as I enjoy his reviews. He makes anything sound freaking awesome.

Billed as a low gain, edge of break up, kind of overdrive. I decided to build it this afternoon after a fairly busy work day for a Friday, I needed some bench time, solder therapy. I looked like a quick build and it certainly was.

It calls for 2 C150k pots which is a bit of an usual value but I knew I had a few so I went for it,.

Build went smooth and it came together pretty quickly. The only issue I had was the 470n output cap is silkscreened as an electrolytic. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a 470n electrolytic cap and certainly didn’t have one. So I put a film cap in its place. I really don’t think that could be contributing to what I’m hearing.

It‘s not a bad sounding drive, but nothing remarkable either. Definitely has a mid hump thing going on and sounds a bit TS-ish but I‘m not seeing the resemblence in the circuit schematic. Clipping provided by 4x 4148’s and a TL072.

There‘s a toggle called “Shift” which adds a 100n cap to fatten up the bass response, so it can definitely be tailored to a variety of guitars. The tone control is called “contour” and I was expecting it to be a bit more active than it really is. It sounds like a pretty pedestrian treble cut to me in actual use.

I dunno, I only spent about 20 minutes with it. Maybe it will grow on me a bit with some fresh ears tomorrow.

Doesn‘t help that i built a bunch of drive pedals this week and I’m reaching that point where they’re all starting to sound the same to me hahaha.

This is one of the $3.75 (plus 20% Black Friday discount) enclosure from SmallBear. Now i remember why I didn’t like the “red” enclosures……because it’s not red. Looks a bit fuschia to me.

I located the status LED according to the drill template and also remembered why I don’t like doing that. When I play sitting down at my desk with my pedals on the desk the knob completely hides the LED. This is the main reason you see in most of my builds I tend to wire my LEDs to the side of the foot switch, so I have a good view of it from a seated position. Obviously not an issue if you play standing up.

It sounded the best to me with my P90 guitars but I’ll mess with it some more tomorrow.

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Looks pretty clean and great looking as aways! Just a heads up, 470nf capacitors are pretty common, Boss uses it a lot, but they are really prone to making that loud pop in true bypass pedals (as are any polarized capacitors)

 

[MichaelW]

Looks pretty clean and great looking as aways! Just a heads up, 470nf capacitors are pretty common, Boss uses it a lot, but they are really prone to making that loud pop in true bypass pedals (as are any polarized capacitors)

Well in that case, "I totally PLANNED to use a film cap there because of my vast electronics knowledge....."

I all seriousness, I don't think I (or anyone else) would hear any difference between a E-cap or film in that spot. I'm not planning to change it.

 

[Guilherme Collateral]

Well in that case, "I totally PLANNED to use a film cap there because of my vast electronics knowledge....."

I all seriousness, I don't think I (or anyone else) would hear any difference between a E-cap or film in that spot. I'm not planning to change it.

The timbre per se isn't really different, but as the capacitor holds a load, some e-caps in the input or output pop sometimes (and that's the very reason some pedals stop popping after a few clicks on the 3pdt. The KOT comes to mind

 

[MattG]

I’ve always operated under the notion that, as long as space and budget allow, film caps should be the first choice. Next might be silver mica, then C0G, and beyond that, I’ve found there generally isn’t too much practical choice (except perhaps tant vs electro). These are only rules of thumb I’ve picked up from internet hearsay, not from legit engineering experience.

I also relax these rules a bit when the cap lies out of the signal path. For example, high frequency power supply filters (like 1nF-1uF caps to ground you often see in parallel to big electrolytics in a power supply) - cheap X7R mlcc are generally sufficient here.

Just $0.02 from an armchair electronics hobbyist.

 

[Feral Feline]

L V E that OTT retina-searing FUSCHIA!

If the pedal sonically pokes a hole in the mix as well as that colour pokes at my eye-cones...
OUCH!
That'll be great!

 

[MichaelW]

Another Update:

Been working on a pedal demo track and trying to see what pedals work best for a part. I've been comparing the Horsemeat, Bedrock and Tellurian drives. They all kind of occupy the same sonic space.

One thing I've found with the Bedrock is that it "cuts" a lot better in a mix. Soloing the track I think I prefer the Horsey but in the mix the Bedrock sits in the mix better.