Frost Drive - with a few mods

Chuck D. Bones

Chuck D. Bones

Circuit Wizard
Just finished my Frost Drive. Love the range of tones. I moved the SYM/ASYM switch to the front panel, replaced 2 of the diodes with LEDs (green, of course) and added an HCC (Harmonic Content & Compression) control. The stomp switch lights up green, in keeping with the color scheme. Stomp switch from Tayda, enclosure from Small Bear, knobs from Mammoth. The gold anodized knobs are pretty, but the index marks should be black for more contrast. With the toggle switch down and the HCC knob full CW, it has the standard TS symmetrical Si diode clipping. With the toggle switch in the middle position, the clipping is one Si diode and one LED. The HCC pot varies how much clipping occurs with the Si diode. With the toggle switch up, the clipping is a pair of LEDs. Very fat tone in this position. Clean drive is attainable with the toggle switch down, HCC full CCW and the DRIVE backed off. The MID control was rewired as described in this thread. The Frost is a great OD in it's own right, the added switch and pot provide another layer of tones.

I'll post a detailed description of the mods in the Modifications forum.

Ice Scream Sammich front 01a.jpg

Ice Scream Sammich innards 03a.jpg
 
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Chuck D. Bones said:
Just finished my Frost Drive. Love the range of tones. I moved the SYM/ASYM switch to the front panel, replaced 2 of the diodes with LEDs (green, of course) and added a COMPRESSION control. The stomp switch lights up green, in keeping with the color scheme. Stomp switch from Tayda, enclosure from Small Bear, knobs from Mammoth. The gold anodized knobs are pretty, but the index marks should be black for more contrast. With the toggle switch down and the COMPRESSION knob full CW, it has the standard TS symmetrical Si diode clipping. With the toggle switch in the middle position, the clipping is one Si diode and one LED. The COMPRESSION pot varies how much clipping occurs with the Si diode. With the toggle switch up, the clipping is a pair of LEDs. Very fat tone in this position. Clean drive is attainable with the toggle switch down, COMPRESSION full CCW and the DRIVE backed off. MID control was rewired as described in this thread. The Frost is a great OD in it's own right, the added switch and pot provide another layer of tones.

I'll post a detailed description of the mods in the Modifications forum.

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My M800 is the same type knob in Copper & had White Index.
Stuck the Staedtler knife in the groove and the white just flicks out.
Use a Good quality Black marker pen & Fill in the Groove a couple of times.
Wipe of excess with a Q-tip with a little Thinners on it.

M800 Overdrive

Awesome JCM800 Emulation !!! All the Trimmers were adjusted to 4.5v & it was meh, 4.75, 5v, 5.25v & 5.5v, Louder with no Gain! Old School, Strummed a Chord & tuned each Trimmer by ear. Critical Trimmer is the Tone trimmer, This effects overall EQ & gives it the Power of The JCM800 sizzle! The...
forum.pedalpcb.com forum.pedalpcb.com
 
I'm planning on building this and when I was looking at the gutshot picture posted above I noticed that C2 was jumpered and R3 and R10 are missing. This is probably something you want to have if you're adding the diode clipping network mod and the mid control mod?
 
C2 was jumpered and R3 and R10 were deleted because they are unnecessary in the original circuit. Leave them in, take them out, the circuit will work and sound the same.

when you say "I'm planning on building this..." what exactly do you mean? A stock Frost Drive? A Frost Drive with some of the mods I described? A Frost Drive with all of the mods I described?

The MID control mod was a solution to not having a dual C10K available. I have found by playing thru this that increasing the mid boost is not to my liking. If anything, I'd decrease it a bit from stock.
The clipping mod was an experiment that quite honestly is not for everybody. I'm not even sure that I like it. Unless you're going to breadboard it and see if you like it, I'd skip the clipping mod.

In case the build docs don't make it clear, Vanilla is the low-gain version, Mint is medium gain and Sherbet is high-gain. Mint is the closest to a stock TS. Unless you plan on diming DRIVE, don't bother with Sherbet.
 
Thanks for the info! I'm planning on building the one based on Vanilla version with at least the MID control mod. Do you have any suggestions on decreasing the stock mid boost?
 
If you use a dual C100K pot, Make C3 & C4 both 12nF. You'll get the stock 3.5dB mid boost which should be fine. If you don't have 12nF, 10nF is close enough.

I had bumped it up to over 7dB and that was a bit much.
 
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