MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Update: Kindly Remember that the negative and underwhelming comments made in this first post are entirely of my own making and idiocy. I'm leaving it here as a record of my faux pas and would like to add that as you read on this lengthy thread that I've done a complete 180 on this pedal and have really started to fall in love with it all over again, like I did when I was 16 and bought my first one.
It's not often I build a pedal that I'm just completely underwhelmed with. Only a handful since I started this pedal building journey.
I might build something (often actually) that may not be a sound I will ever use but I can usually appreciate what a pedal is designed to do.
This pedal was not any of that, I'm just "meh" about it because it sounds "meh".
Might be my expectations simmered a little too much and I'd forgotten what a Dist+ actually sounded like and how many bazillions of much better overdrives have come along since then.
I really built this for the sake of nostalgia. The orange MXR Distortion+ was my first and only dirt pedal during my most active years of playing in a band in my High school years. I mowed a lot of lawns to buy it and I used the snot out of it.
When I started building pedals and saw that PPCB had this board I snagged it. This was many many months ago.
When I started looking into the build I discovered there's about a bazillion variants of this pedal. And I went into analysis paralysis so the project kept getting pushed back.
Then I guess around that time was when JHS came out with their DOD250 with all the hoopla and the whole thing kinda left a sour taste in my mouth for some reason. So I lost interest. Well, recently @steviejr92 built his Dist+ and talking with him about got me interested again.
Again with the analysis paralysis, which version to build? I think I may have gotten a bit too clever for myself and tried in incorporate too many things. Essentially, this is a DOD250 built to Gray Box spec's (not sure which year, I got the mod values from a post @Robert made in some thread and saved them off). But it's housed in a classic MXR Orange Dist+ enclosure, this is one of those Small Bear $3.75 crappy enclosures but for some reason the orange ones are pretty nice. And I think it nails the old MXR orange.
Anyway, aside from building to Gray Box spec's I also wanted to still make it a Hybrid Dist+ but having a toggle-able Ge clippers.
For the DOD setting I started out with the prescribed 4148's, didn't like how they sounded, tried some 914's, didn't like those either, tried BAT41's and finally landed on BAT46's. Still don't like it much but I'm really not sure which way to go next. The Bat46's compress and clip the fastest of any of the diodes I have, yet it still doesn't sound quite right, the saturation just isn't very smooth.
On the GE side, I started with the ITT Red Band Ge's one of my new faves. It was "meh". Way too much volume loss too, I mean I have to dime both the volume and gain to get it usable. Or put a boost after it.
I went through a bunch of other Ge's including my fancy schmancy NOS Mullards and Phillips....slightly better than "meh", but not gonna waste a set of those premium Ge diodes for "meh". Finally ended up the night with a pair of 1N192's that measured right at 400 Vf on my Tester. They sound the best, definitely what I remember with the creamy saturated Dist+ thing going on. But just not enough volume without running a clean boost after it.
In retrospect I probably should have just built a Distortion+ and forget about all the variants. Which I may yet do. I don't relish the notion of pulling resistors and caps out of this one to revert it back to stock values but on the other hand, it's not got a lot of components. I may wind up doing that.
I used a UA741, did not try an LM741 but I don't anticipate much difference, I might, just for giggles throw an LF351N in there tomorrow and see how it sounds.
I used an A100k pot for the volume instead of an A10, as one of the mods.
I used a C500k Pot for the gain as per the mods. But I started with a B1M. Not a lot of difference either, still need to dime the gain on both settings.
Here are the values I used for the Gray Box, I can't remember who's build report I copied this from but I pasted it into my build docs version.
Whoever it was THANK YOU!
These came from @Robert originally.
****************************
Add 25pF cap across R2 (Didn't have a 25pf so I used a 22pf)
R3 47K
R5 470K
R6 20K
R7 20K
C1 2n2
C4 22u (positive lead in left pad)
C5 2n2
C6 10u
D1 1N4148
D2 1N4148
Gain C500K
Volume A10K *I used an A100k here*
**********************************
I used a GuitarPCB mod board for a DPDT toggle. Cool little boards, this is my last one, I need to order a few more from Barry, but there's some other stuff I want that seems to be permanently out of stock. (In particular, the Silent Tuner Send Buffer board).
This board is so tiny and everything fit in there, but not so tiny that did have to resort to using a set of Lumberg jacks to avoid grounding out.
Having said all the above, I love the way the pedal looks, definitely brings back some memories and for the sake of nostalgia, I'm happy.
Although it's probably going to wind up on the shelf. There are so many much better pedals in the same vein that are much more nuanced and sophisticated sounding, didn't help that in my pedal chain at the moment are the Tellurian and Chauffer, they both smoke this pedal in terms how good they sound, yet they share some distant common ancestry with the Dist+.
I may try this build again, but go the other direction, meaning build it to stock Distortion+ specs then add an Si clipping option.
Anyway, it was a fun build and since I had a pretty busy day of meetings yesterday and getting some deliverables out ahead of today's storm, (Hurricane Nicole) it was nice to chill for a couple hours in the afternoon at my bench with a quick build.
It's not often I build a pedal that I'm just completely underwhelmed with. Only a handful since I started this pedal building journey.
I might build something (often actually) that may not be a sound I will ever use but I can usually appreciate what a pedal is designed to do.
This pedal was not any of that, I'm just "meh" about it because it sounds "meh".
Might be my expectations simmered a little too much and I'd forgotten what a Dist+ actually sounded like and how many bazillions of much better overdrives have come along since then.
I really built this for the sake of nostalgia. The orange MXR Distortion+ was my first and only dirt pedal during my most active years of playing in a band in my High school years. I mowed a lot of lawns to buy it and I used the snot out of it.
When I started building pedals and saw that PPCB had this board I snagged it. This was many many months ago.
When I started looking into the build I discovered there's about a bazillion variants of this pedal. And I went into analysis paralysis so the project kept getting pushed back.
Then I guess around that time was when JHS came out with their DOD250 with all the hoopla and the whole thing kinda left a sour taste in my mouth for some reason. So I lost interest. Well, recently @steviejr92 built his Dist+ and talking with him about got me interested again.
Again with the analysis paralysis, which version to build? I think I may have gotten a bit too clever for myself and tried in incorporate too many things. Essentially, this is a DOD250 built to Gray Box spec's (not sure which year, I got the mod values from a post @Robert made in some thread and saved them off). But it's housed in a classic MXR Orange Dist+ enclosure, this is one of those Small Bear $3.75 crappy enclosures but for some reason the orange ones are pretty nice. And I think it nails the old MXR orange.
Anyway, aside from building to Gray Box spec's I also wanted to still make it a Hybrid Dist+ but having a toggle-able Ge clippers.
For the DOD setting I started out with the prescribed 4148's, didn't like how they sounded, tried some 914's, didn't like those either, tried BAT41's and finally landed on BAT46's. Still don't like it much but I'm really not sure which way to go next. The Bat46's compress and clip the fastest of any of the diodes I have, yet it still doesn't sound quite right, the saturation just isn't very smooth.
On the GE side, I started with the ITT Red Band Ge's one of my new faves. It was "meh". Way too much volume loss too, I mean I have to dime both the volume and gain to get it usable. Or put a boost after it.
I went through a bunch of other Ge's including my fancy schmancy NOS Mullards and Phillips....slightly better than "meh", but not gonna waste a set of those premium Ge diodes for "meh". Finally ended up the night with a pair of 1N192's that measured right at 400 Vf on my Tester. They sound the best, definitely what I remember with the creamy saturated Dist+ thing going on. But just not enough volume without running a clean boost after it.
In retrospect I probably should have just built a Distortion+ and forget about all the variants. Which I may yet do. I don't relish the notion of pulling resistors and caps out of this one to revert it back to stock values but on the other hand, it's not got a lot of components. I may wind up doing that.
I used a UA741, did not try an LM741 but I don't anticipate much difference, I might, just for giggles throw an LF351N in there tomorrow and see how it sounds.
I used an A100k pot for the volume instead of an A10, as one of the mods.
I used a C500k Pot for the gain as per the mods. But I started with a B1M. Not a lot of difference either, still need to dime the gain on both settings.
Here are the values I used for the Gray Box, I can't remember who's build report I copied this from but I pasted it into my build docs version.
Whoever it was THANK YOU!
These came from @Robert originally.****************************
Add 25pF cap across R2 (Didn't have a 25pf so I used a 22pf)
R3 47K
R5 470K
R6 20K
R7 20K
C1 2n2
C4 22u (positive lead in left pad)
C5 2n2
C6 10u
D1 1N4148
D2 1N4148
Gain C500K
Volume A10K *I used an A100k here*
**********************************
I used a GuitarPCB mod board for a DPDT toggle. Cool little boards, this is my last one, I need to order a few more from Barry, but there's some other stuff I want that seems to be permanently out of stock. (In particular, the Silent Tuner Send Buffer board).
This board is so tiny and everything fit in there, but not so tiny that did have to resort to using a set of Lumberg jacks to avoid grounding out.
Having said all the above, I love the way the pedal looks, definitely brings back some memories and for the sake of nostalgia, I'm happy.
Although it's probably going to wind up on the shelf. There are so many much better pedals in the same vein that are much more nuanced and sophisticated sounding, didn't help that in my pedal chain at the moment are the Tellurian and Chauffer, they both smoke this pedal in terms how good they sound, yet they share some distant common ancestry with the Dist+.
I may try this build again, but go the other direction, meaning build it to stock Distortion+ specs then add an Si clipping option.
Anyway, it was a fun build and since I had a pretty busy day of meetings yesterday and getting some deliverables out ahead of today's storm, (Hurricane Nicole) it was nice to chill for a couple hours in the afternoon at my bench with a quick build.
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