Grover Drive (LovePedal Dover) - Update

MichaelW

Well-known member
Build Rating
5.00 star(s)
So you know you have a problem when your wife is visiting her family for a few days and the first thought that pops in your head is
"Sweeeeeet! Uninterrupted bench time!!" :p

Well, I think this is my last "Summer Fridays" 1/2 day Friday at work, nice little perk from my company. After wrapping up my last meeting around noon I got my tackle together and got the boat ready to go fishing with my buddy tomorrow before he has to have some major surgery.
With that out of the way, I set aside the rest of the afternoon to do some soldering.

I actually have 3 other pedals ready to go and I was planning to build one of them but the Blue and White truck of happiness dropped of the mail, which included my latest PedalPCB order.

I've been noodling on the Cattle Driver all day and absolutely loving it. In my latest order was the Grover Drive, I guess @PedalPCB has an overabundance of stock since he's blowing them out for $4. I had never heard of this pedal (as usual) but when I started researching it, it too is a Butler Tuber Driver inspired pedal and associated with both the Eric Johnson and David Gilmour "sound". So I couldn't pass it up and decided to build it instead of the other projects I had lined up.

It's an easy, medium-ish parts count build. Holy moly I LOVE this thing! Sounds really really cool.
Essentially it's a Zen Drive with a fixed "Voice" and fixed gain setting but it's got a transistor based fuzz in the front of it.
I was expecting it to sound pretty much like a Zen drive, and it kinda does, but with the fuzz running into the front of it really makes it more than the sum of its parts.

The stock build is a 3 knob pedal with an internal trimmer that adjusts the bias of the fuzz. You can dial it more towards a starved fuzzy kind of drive or dial the other way for a smoother distortion, singing lead type of sound. I think that it's kind of silly of have to choose where you want this, so I turned it into a 4 knob pedal by exposing the trimmer on a pot.

REALLY useful little mod to be able to dial the bias on the fly. Significantly changes the character of the pedal depending on where you set this.

Compared to the Cattle Driver, it definitely sounds more like a "pedal" than an amp. I'm still so impressed by how the Cattle Driver sounds. But the Grover has it's thing going on and is a KILLER sounding pedal. I definitely like it more than my stock Zen drive.
I ran it with a couple of different boosts in front of it but sounded the best with the GOTA LPB-1.

While both inspired to emulate the Tube Driver, they are different sounding pedals and come at it from different angles but both really great sounding.
The Dover can nail that "Cliffs of Dover" sound, the pedal's namesake.

I liked it so much that I ordered another of each of the Cattle Driver and Grover to build for my buddy who LOVES the Zen drive I built for him. I'm betting these will knock his socks off.

If you like the whole "warm, singing lead, sustain for days" kind of thing, I'd highly recommend this build. Really looking forward for the Mosfet Drive to come back in stock. Yet another Butler Tube Driver type circuit from Robert.

I used a Russian NOS HG5003 for the Ge diode. It measured ~.423 on my GM328 tester. Couple of tant's and low profile electrolytic caps to make it an easier fit into a 1590B.

Still working through my "odds and ends" knobs. The cream knob is the bias.....so there IS a reason for the two tone hahah. Love these new Tayda Sand texture enclosures.

I didn't have a C1k pot, so I had to hack a C5k. Seems to work fine, although I will say that there's not a lot of adjustment in the gain knob. Even with it all the way off it's pretty gainy, it's pretty much "in your face" as soon as you turn it on. As you turn the gain knob up you get more of the fuzz but the Zen Drive part of the circuit is "always on". This is not a "subtle" pedal by any means. Having said that you CAN get into low-medium gain territory with the guitar volume knob. Some nice tones in that range as well.

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I used a B10k pot for the Bias trimmer. Note. If you're doing this mod, the trim pad silkscreen is flipped opposite from what's in the build docs. This must be a revised layout.

Just something to keep in mind as you wire up the pot and are trying to locate the ground lug pad. (I'm actually extremely proud of myself for using the schematic and examining the traces on the PCB to figure that out all by myself! Hahaha....)
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wow you build so fast ,and such nice work. my Dover drive is still on a breadboard this morning im trying to tune it a bit more to work better with the changes ive made before i solder anything. awesome job with your build .
 
You might also like the Madbean Cliffhanger (PDF link). It's also based on the Dover Drive, but with more tweaks and and switch to toggle between two different front-ends (one being stock, one being a Madbean custom). I haven't actually built this, but it looks interesting to me.

And if you really want to get your Butler Tube Driver game on, Madbean also has the Archibald (PDF link), which should be pretty close to a real Tube Driver (with the added convenience of running on 9VDC). I also have not built this, but it's on my "maybe someday" list!
 
You might also like the Madbean Cliffhanger (PDF link). It's also based on the Dover Drive, but with more tweaks and and switch to toggle between two different front-ends (one being stock, one being a Madbean custom). I haven't actually built this, but it looks interesting to me.

And if you really want to get your Butler Tube Driver game on, Madbean also has the Archibald (PDF link), which should be pretty close to a real Tube Driver (with the added convenience of running on 9VDC). I also have not built this, but it's on my "maybe someday" list!
These both look pretty interesting, not sure the mod's on the DD are enough to make me want to build it but interesting nonetheless. I did notice he put the fuzz bias on an external pot as well.

Yah, I've looked at the Archibald before. Not too hot on how the tube daughterboard is attached but it's also on my "someday" list as well!
I'd like to get a working Space Heater (without burning my house down.... 😄) first though. Waiting for some A1M straight leg pots from Tayda before attempting it again.
 
You might also like the Madbean Cliffhanger (PDF link). It's also based on the Dover Drive, but with more tweaks and and switch to toggle between two different front-ends (one being stock, one being a Madbean custom). I haven't actually built this, but it looks interesting to me.

And if you really want to get your Butler Tube Driver game on, Madbean also has the Archibald (PDF link), which should be pretty close to a real Tube Driver (with the added convenience of running on 9VDC). I also have not built this, but it's on my "maybe someday" list!
thanks for the link of the Dover drive schematic that helps with my project, also that BK Butler Tube Driver circuit looks just like the kind of thing id love to build. ive seen a few schematics for that circuit but have been intimidated a bit by the higher power and Tube . the lower power with the charge pump makes me think i may be able to pull it off.
 
Great looking build, as per normal for you, and excellent associated build report.

Lotsa love for making the trimmer external, and again yet more for forging ahead with the C5k mod, but most of all thanks for the tip on the Grover sale. 🙏 Mm Goi Sai !

Fishing, noodling, experimenting with diodes and other circuit tweaks, building pedals, holding down a job... I've finally figured out how you do it all and now I want to have 36-hours in a day, too.
 
So I was experiencing some noise on this pedal that I thought was just the nature of the beast of a fuzz running into a high gain circuit.
I was definitely getting some squealing with the gain knob dimed. I was playing through my headphones today and noticed that the "noisiness" of the circuit was just the same oscillation as with the gain at max but at a lower level and I could hear it slowly ramp up as I turned the gain knob up until it squealed.

After reading the comments from @PedalPCB and @Chuck D. Bones this thread I decided to remove the 100nf input cap (C2).
Completely fixed the noise, it's quiet as all my other pedals now.

Highly recommend if you're building this to omit C2.
 
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