Buddy's Breadboard and Circuit Design Notes

[BuddytheReow]

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...

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

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.

 

[BuddytheReow]

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...

 

[jwin615]

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...

View attachment 77666

A hint of muff?
Like a tinge of minge?
Now that's a pedal name!

 

[BuddytheReow]

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.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Layout updated above. Looks ok to my eyes. I'll try it out shortly and report back.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

You're still overdriving the last stage.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Chuck, how can I fix this? Increase the value of R12?

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

Yeah, try 100K. The 2nd stage output is around 1Vp-p max. 100K will give you almost 5Vp-p at the Muff output, which should be more than enough.