MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Wrapping up my little foray into the world of the PedalPCB Red Herring, I built another Clark Gainster on this board but used "mojo" parts like the original Clark pedal.
That said, it was not without issues. Getting all the parts to fit in a 1590B was a bit of a challenge, especially the Russian PIO caps.
When I got it all together and fired it up the first time it sounded like a Metal Zone.....seriously, super high distortion and the gain knob didn't do anything.
So obviously I figured there was a short somewhere with all the wierd parts crammed in there. I took it apart, couldn't find anything wrong.
I hooked it up to my PPCB Auditorium and noticed that the IC, and a couple of the resistors got REALLY hot! Like just about to smoke off hot.
I was like What the ever.....?
Long story short, for some reason there are 3 spots of 10k resistors and I really don't know why but they did NOT like Carbon Composition resistors.
I tried two sets of 3, measured each one to make sure they were right (all were spot on 10k).
Both sets had the strange full blast distortion and got so hot I was afraid to power it up for more than a few seconds at a time.
Just for sh*ts and giggles, I tacked in some film resistors and voila, problem gone. I mean WHAT THE H-E-Double Hockey Sticks??
Anyone have a clue why this was happening? I'll post a schematic below of which resistors got hot using Carbon Comp.
I ended up using Carbon Film resistors and the pedal works perfectly fine now.
The next question is, was it worth the effort to build it with mojo parts? Heh, I'll let you be the judge in the demo below. For me, it's pretty much.."meh".
Still glad I did it, was a fun little project.
So one thing I discovered that I hadn't earlier when I built the first Gainster with normal parts and the Red Snapper, these are really nice clean boosts!
With the gain turned down there's plenty of output to boost an amp or another drive. I'm digging the slight coloration they add as a boost.
I'm really liking the pedals both as a Gainster and as a Red Snapper. I can't remember which came first, but they're all obviously YATS based.
Cool pedals and highly recommended! Many thanks again to @innerlight for sending me the first board. It was completely not on my radar.
And thanks to @manfesto for providing the mods to turn it into a Gainster. And also thanks to @psb962 for the idea to do it!
Red Herring build report
Gainster #1 build report
Not my cleanest work, but I literally had this thing apart like 4 times........ugh.
These are the 3 resistors that got SUPER hot......and once I replaced them with Carbon Film they were fine.
Here's the BOM to convert the Red Herring to a Gainster.
I'm really liking both the Gainster and the Red Snapper versions. The Gainster has perhaps a bit more of a lo-fi vibe to it which I'm digging.
Which is why I thought going with mojo parts would enhance. But to me the difference is really nothing more than can be attributed to component value variances. Oh well, fun experiment!
So the demo is actually a 4 for 1
The 3 variants of the Red Herring board and my recently acquired Squier Paranormal Stratosonic.
That said, it was not without issues. Getting all the parts to fit in a 1590B was a bit of a challenge, especially the Russian PIO caps.
When I got it all together and fired it up the first time it sounded like a Metal Zone.....seriously, super high distortion and the gain knob didn't do anything.
So obviously I figured there was a short somewhere with all the wierd parts crammed in there. I took it apart, couldn't find anything wrong.
I hooked it up to my PPCB Auditorium and noticed that the IC, and a couple of the resistors got REALLY hot! Like just about to smoke off hot.
I was like What the ever.....?
Long story short, for some reason there are 3 spots of 10k resistors and I really don't know why but they did NOT like Carbon Composition resistors.
I tried two sets of 3, measured each one to make sure they were right (all were spot on 10k).
Both sets had the strange full blast distortion and got so hot I was afraid to power it up for more than a few seconds at a time.
Just for sh*ts and giggles, I tacked in some film resistors and voila, problem gone. I mean WHAT THE H-E-Double Hockey Sticks??
Anyone have a clue why this was happening? I'll post a schematic below of which resistors got hot using Carbon Comp.
I ended up using Carbon Film resistors and the pedal works perfectly fine now.
The next question is, was it worth the effort to build it with mojo parts? Heh, I'll let you be the judge in the demo below. For me, it's pretty much.."meh".
Still glad I did it, was a fun little project.
So one thing I discovered that I hadn't earlier when I built the first Gainster with normal parts and the Red Snapper, these are really nice clean boosts!
With the gain turned down there's plenty of output to boost an amp or another drive. I'm digging the slight coloration they add as a boost.
I'm really liking the pedals both as a Gainster and as a Red Snapper. I can't remember which came first, but they're all obviously YATS based.
Cool pedals and highly recommended! Many thanks again to @innerlight for sending me the first board. It was completely not on my radar.
And thanks to @manfesto for providing the mods to turn it into a Gainster. And also thanks to @psb962 for the idea to do it!
Red Herring build report
Gainster #1 build report
Not my cleanest work, but I literally had this thing apart like 4 times........ugh.
These are the 3 resistors that got SUPER hot......and once I replaced them with Carbon Film they were fine.
Here's the BOM to convert the Red Herring to a Gainster.
I'm really liking both the Gainster and the Red Snapper versions. The Gainster has perhaps a bit more of a lo-fi vibe to it which I'm digging.
Which is why I thought going with mojo parts would enhance. But to me the difference is really nothing more than can be attributed to component value variances. Oh well, fun experiment!
So the demo is actually a 4 for 1
The 3 variants of the Red Herring board and my recently acquired Squier Paranormal Stratosonic.
