cdwillis
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is a circuit I was curious about for a long time. I wasn't about to pay the exorbitant costs for an old Hermida one and I definitely wasn't about to pay for a Lovepedal one either. I bought this board and a Timmy to compare since they have a slightly similar bass and voice control. The Timmy isn't done yet because I forgot to order 39nf caps. I'll have to scrounge around in one of my random parts containers to see if I have a couple floating around. I did wrap this one up tonight at least.
I couldn't remember what the original op amp in the Zen drive was supposed to be. I thought they were all sanded over or gooped, but people thought they figured it out. Anyway, I used an LM1458 op amp and it sounds awesome. It's socketed so I might try some other ones later on. I wasn't expecting a whole lot for whatever reason. I think what I'm most impressed with is that the entire sweep of each knob is useable. If you have the voice control set for a thicker sound you can turn the tone control up to sort of even out the tone and vice versa, but it really sounds good in most every position on the dials. Sometimes you build a pedal or buy one and it's only got a couple sweet spots if you're lucky. I started using it with my Les Paul through the clean channel on my Marshall and it was like blues guitar heaven. I switched over to the drive channel and it pushed the front end of the amp into really sweet singing sustain.
I used the stock 500k linear pot for drive and I read that the Lovepedal Black Magic versions used a 1m drive pot for even more dirt. I'm kind of curious what that would sound like since the voice pot interacts with the drive pot. The lower the frequency knee the lower the gain and the higher the frequency knee the more gain. It helps it from sounding overly flubby so the 1m might be too much with the lower frequency knee. If you want a quick low parts count build with some flexible tone shaping I'd recommend it.
I couldn't remember what the original op amp in the Zen drive was supposed to be. I thought they were all sanded over or gooped, but people thought they figured it out. Anyway, I used an LM1458 op amp and it sounds awesome. It's socketed so I might try some other ones later on. I wasn't expecting a whole lot for whatever reason. I think what I'm most impressed with is that the entire sweep of each knob is useable. If you have the voice control set for a thicker sound you can turn the tone control up to sort of even out the tone and vice versa, but it really sounds good in most every position on the dials. Sometimes you build a pedal or buy one and it's only got a couple sweet spots if you're lucky. I started using it with my Les Paul through the clean channel on my Marshall and it was like blues guitar heaven. I switched over to the drive channel and it pushed the front end of the amp into really sweet singing sustain.
I used the stock 500k linear pot for drive and I read that the Lovepedal Black Magic versions used a 1m drive pot for even more dirt. I'm kind of curious what that would sound like since the voice pot interacts with the drive pot. The lower the frequency knee the lower the gain and the higher the frequency knee the more gain. It helps it from sounding overly flubby so the 1m might be too much with the lower frequency knee. If you want a quick low parts count build with some flexible tone shaping I'd recommend it.
