I have some CD4007UBE's at hand and I had no idea what to do with them, then after some research, I found that they can be used for an overdrive, even distortion circuit.
I've traced the following vero layout, made some changes, and made my first breadboard circuit.
https://www.parasitstudio.se/stripboard-layouts/nut-cruncher
It worked! It's a true beast, when entered a clean channel of the amp, it sounds much like a child of HM-2 & Muff, and when on the dirty channel, it becomes a true monster. I've also added a modified BMP tone circuit with a heavy mid-boost, and it also works great. Also, when the 4.7uf output cap's positive side is connected to the 13th lug instead of 12, the overall output gain drops and the circuit acts like an overdrive pedal, sort of a booster maybe. I plan to add a switch for that. I also want to play around with other parts more to see their capabilities and how they affect the sound. It's also quite silent... But;
There's this slight yet weird problem.
The gain pot works as it should be, but during its range movement, it hums a bit; it is more like a grounding issue, but everything is grounded, and when the gain is set to full, it's working quite normally, no hum or buzz or nothing at all, but when I move the pot, it's humming a bit during its travel. I tried several different tapered pots with different values, but no luck. Connecting a single resistor works indeed, but then I don't have any adjustable gain setting.
What would be the cause do you think? I tried directly grounding the 1st lug of the Drive pot, but still no go.
One rule I read yesterday -which I also violated here- is that no pins should be left floating on any CMOS chips, but in my case, pin 3 of the chip (Gate 2) became unused and I could not find it anywhere to connect. Any ideas are most welcome. This is my first experience for;
- Breadboarding a circuit,
- Modifying a circuit,
- Working with CD- chips,
- Drawing a schematic from a Veroboard,
So please don't go harsh on me
Attached is the schematic I've prepared according to the layout then modified.