Friedman build advice

[mad5066]

Looking to do a couple Friedman clone builds next. Any suggestions from people who've already built some?

Specifically, I'm looking at FET city drive, dirty sanchez, thermionic, and brown betty

Probably definitely getting the aurum drive for lower gain stuff, but I primarily like higher gain stuff so I'm wondering which off the above would be best. Probably can't go wrong with any of them.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Robert]

The Brown Betty can cover the ground of both the Thermionic and Dirty Sanchez, but it's a larger.

The upcoming Thermionic Deluxe (even bigger) would be the most versatile of that group since you'd basically have both.

 

[mad5066]

Thanks! I Decided on the Thermionic and Dirty Sanchez separately, I didn't want to combine them. I may look at doing the deluxe when it's available in the future.

 

[mywmyw]

I've built the thermionic and the brown betty. the betty is superior for me, no question. Very satisfying to play and can be set up for quite a few different sounds and "feels". It knocked my Bogner LaGrange off my board. The Thermionic sounds almost as good to me.

The new Deluxe is gonna be sick though. If that were the only distortion pedal you had I don't think youd be disappointed at all.

 

[Robert]

I've built the thermionic and the brown betty. the betty is superior for me, no question. Very satisfying to play and can be set up for quite a few different sounds and "feels". It knocked my Bogner LaGrange off my board. The Thermionic sounds almost as good to me.

The new Deluxe is gonna be sick though. If that were the only distortion pedal you had I don't think youd be disappointed at all.

Technically the Thermionic Deluxe is a dual Brown Betty since it has the Mid, Tight, and Presence controls.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

I do like my Betty, but she has been replaced in my rig by the Covert. Gotta love that JFET overdrive! Just so you know, there is no "clean" setting on Betty, and the same applies to the Dirty Sanchez (best named pedal on the site!), Thermionic and Deluxe. Betty, Sanchez & Thermionic are all basically the same design with minor tweaks. I built the Betty because she does everything the others do.

 

[mad5066]

I appreciate all the advice, I'm building the covert too! Currently awaiting the rest of the needed components.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

Something to watch out for with the Covert, the Presence trimpot has a huge influence on the tone. It gets very dark when you turn the presence down. Next one I build, the presence control is going on the front panel and it will be wired like the tone control in a guitar. Also, some people like to split the Lead / Bass 4PDT switch into four independent switches for more tonal possibilities. I'll be doing that too.

 

[Willybomb]

I've built a couple of Thermionics, a Brown Betty, and Madbean's one off BE-OD clone. I didn't really gel with any of them yet to be honest, but I've only really tried the Thermionic in a (cover) band situation. They seem a bit one trick to me, even though I did them with dual switchable gain pots.

Having said that, I do have the deluxe in my cart....

 

[evitative]

I've built the thermionic and the brown betty. the betty is superior for me, no question. Very satisfying to play and can be set up for quite a few different sounds and "feels". It knocked my Bogner LaGrange off my board. The Thermionic sounds almost as good to me.

The new Deluxe is gonna be sick though. If that were the only distortion pedal you had I don't think youd be disappointed at all.

How similar are the Brown Betty and Thermionic with respect to physical layout? I've just seen that Tayda has enclosures for a lot of PedalPCB builds and was planning on doing a Brown Betty, but only the Thermionic is listed as a compatible PCB for Tayda's 6 knob enclosure. I'm wondering if the omission is intentional or just an oversight.

 

[Robert]

How similar are the Brown Betty and Thermionic with respect to physical layout? I've just seen that Tayda has enclosures for a lot of PedalPCB builds and was planning on doing a Brown Betty, but only the Thermionic is listed as a compatible PCB for Tayda's 6 knob enclosure. I'm wondering if the omission is intentional or just an oversight.

They're completely different layouts, the Brown Betty fits a 1590BB and has 7 pots.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

To expand on pedalPCB's answer, the last page of the build docs has a 1:1 scale drill template. You can compare that to any vendor's pre-drilled box dimensions. Mammoth also sells pre-drilled enclosures. They will provide a dimentioned dwg on request. They have a pre-drilled box with holes for seven pots, but it looks like the pot spacing in not compatible with Betty. You can get a dimensioned dwg and confirm.

 

[Alphajellyfish]

Are both channels of the thermionic deluxe able to reach the same amount of gain?
Or is it that say channel 1 can’t have as much as ch2?

It’d be cool to have as much available for both. I thought i saw that the friedman’s ch1 has less gain than ch2.

Cheers ✌?

 

[Robert]

R13A (10K) and R13B (22K) set the maximum gain available from the internal trimpot. By default Channel A has more gain than Channel B, but using 10K for both resistors would make the gain equal.

You might also want to use B1M Gain pots on each channel as well. Channel B uses A1M (log) taper so the gain will increase more gradually than Channel A.

Using 10K for R13A/R13B and B1M for Gain A/GainB will make both sides identical.

 

[Willybomb]

It would seem fairly pointless to have them both with the same gain available.... but thinking about it you might just want to swap between eq settings...