GenoBluzGtr
Active member
I built a Blue Breaker a few weeks back. Sounds fantastic... sounds very close to the original Marshall pedal... I plan to build more.
I had bought a BYOC kit several months before, forgot I had it. But I found it, and decided to build it this weekend. However, it sounds nothing like the Blue Breaker or the original pedal. More gain, but not in a good way. Sounds "cheaper" and less hi-fi. The Range of the Tone and Drive control seems off, and at some setting below halfway on either of those, the volume takes a big hit (won't get above unity.
I thought I had made some errors, but I re-examined it and the build docs and it is all correct. I compared the schematics and here's what I found.... (see attached .pdf). The biggest thing I can find is that the input / output impedances are WAY off. The Blue Breaker uses 2.2M on the input and 1M on the output, where the "L'il Breaker uses 470K and 100K respectively. A couple of capacitor differences but I don't think those have much of an impact on gain/clipping etc. Also the 1n914s / 1n4148s are pretty identical.
Any thoughts on why the two pedals would sound SO different? All other values are identical (pots are 9mm on the smaller version, but same tapers/values). What impact does input/output impedance have on the gain/clipping/etc??
I had bought a BYOC kit several months before, forgot I had it. But I found it, and decided to build it this weekend. However, it sounds nothing like the Blue Breaker or the original pedal. More gain, but not in a good way. Sounds "cheaper" and less hi-fi. The Range of the Tone and Drive control seems off, and at some setting below halfway on either of those, the volume takes a big hit (won't get above unity.
I thought I had made some errors, but I re-examined it and the build docs and it is all correct. I compared the schematics and here's what I found.... (see attached .pdf). The biggest thing I can find is that the input / output impedances are WAY off. The Blue Breaker uses 2.2M on the input and 1M on the output, where the "L'il Breaker uses 470K and 100K respectively. A couple of capacitor differences but I don't think those have much of an impact on gain/clipping etc. Also the 1n914s / 1n4148s are pretty identical.
Any thoughts on why the two pedals would sound SO different? All other values are identical (pots are 9mm on the smaller version, but same tapers/values). What impact does input/output impedance have on the gain/clipping/etc??
