Hunting a new distortion

ErickPulido

ErickPulido

Active member
Hi Guys I have been building several pedals over the years, but somehow evey pedal has something missing,
I have tried all friedman variantas aka Brown betty (was good in low gain settings to much noise ) etc.., Tyrian and Sanguine (one has to much compression and mids the other one lack of mids lol), crunch captain deluxe (good for old school rock and metal), disarray distortion (old school too) and others from scratch from other forums (5150 style and soldano to much gain no definition ), just tried the Cetus (sounds bit familliar kinda marshally sounds, close to the crunch captain) but I feel needs more flexibility.

I mainly like many bands but my main goeal is to get closer to Stephan Forté and when he had a band (Adagio), will be a plus to sound like Michael Romeo / Symphony X and Jeff Loomis/ Nevermore.

so what other pedals should I try that you think could work for me?

TIA
 
How about a revived Kasha Overdrive-Guitar pedal circuit?
It uses no clipping elements and uses only two JFETs to render a sweet, controllable distortion.

This is the original that I traced . . .
Kasha_Overdrive_As_Arrived.jpg Kasha_Overdrive_PCB_01.jpg Kasha_Trace_Rendition_3.jpg

And here is the schematic and perfboard layout . . .
(A pair of J201s work nicely in this build.)

WOS_Perfboard_Schematic-for-Layout.jpg WOS_Perfboard_Layout_Final.png
 
It might be useful for people to know what amp you play through @ErickPulido . or whether this is more for recording and a headphone setup etc. I will be interested as to what suggestions you get. I don't have any suggestions that you haven't tried unfortunately.
 
Cybercow said:
How about a revived Kasha Overdrive-Guitar pedal circuit?
It uses no clipping elements and uses only two JFETs to render a sweet, controllable distortion.

This is the original that I traced . . .
View attachment 61234 View attachment 61235 View attachment 61239

And here is the schematic and perfboard layout . . .
(A pair of J201s work nicely in this build.)

View attachment 61237 View attachment 61236
Click to expand...
Looks pretty good gotta try it on a bread board and check, thank you so much
 
Let me say here that I know nothing.... But running my pedals into a single 12 inch speaker produces a very different sound than a 2x12 or 4x12. And to get some tones in a room I do think moving a lot of air is necessary. i admit another pedal may do what you want moreso, but I suggest exploring even just a katana 100 2x12. Or almost any 2x12 amplifier as It seems you have a good ear though to pick out the differences in these circuits. But my suggestion is to try pushing the sounds you like into a bigger amp and see if that somehow changes things. It definitely makes the difference to me in sounding more 3D in a room.
 
GizzWizzKing said:
Let me say here that I know nothing.... But running my pedals into a single 12 inch speaker produces a very different sound than a 2x12 or 4x12. And to get some tones in a room I do think moving a lot of air is necessary. i admit another pedal may do what you want moreso, but I suggest exploring even just a katana 100 2x12. Or almost any 2x12 amplifier as It seems you have a good ear though to pick out the differences in these circuits. But my suggestion is to try pushing the sounds you like into a bigger amp and see if that somehow changes things. It definitely makes the difference to me in sounding more 3D in a room.
Click to expand...
I feel you are completely right and I'll do my best to get a bigger katana amp with a 2x12 if possible thank you so much
 
I think Loomis used a Engl savage for a little bit
You could try the powerball pedal but I don’t think that one got much love. There is the VH4 that’s one of my favorites but might be a little scooped for you I think, there is the amp tweaker tight metal/rock (haven’t tried this one yet myself) but honestly pedals will never “feel” like a real amp to me, but sometimes close is good enough for me.
 
interesting to hear comments about speakers/cabs.

as much as i agree with the sentiments about speakers/cabs being very important (i use a mesa 4x12 over 1x12 for good reason) i wonder if the oem katana speaker/cabinet is intended to have a flat response to go with all the modeling stuff?

having said that, what’s the bet a V30 or a greenback G12H30 would sound better anyway?

EDIT: just realized you already mentioned the friedmans.

have you tried boosting any of your amp sim / distortion pedals with a tubescreamer or something similar that cuts low end / boosts mids?
 
Last edited:
Isosceles or Revel into a tight metal.
Sound like you want tight low end, with focused mids.
Going to need to taylor that low-end.
Focused mids in high gain, IME, comes from stacking drives. 2nd order into 2nd order harmonics.
Now, a lot of metal isn't as dirty as you think in the recording process. It's waaaaayyy easier to add some grit then it is to take it away. This is especially true for double tracked guitars. The harmonics are up when layering, but so does the fizz if you overdo it.
Honestly, the two Adagio tracks I flipped though sound like PODs to me.
 
jwin615 said:
Isosceles or Revel into a tight metal.
Sound like you want tight low end, with focused mids.
Going to need to taylor that low-end.
Focused mids in high gain, IME, comes from stacking drives. 2nd order into 2nd order harmonics.
Click to expand...
totally agree on the whole cutting low end thing.
pretty much every TS does this pretty well most of the time.
but it’s always nice to have a bit more control.
i find the isosceles is a bit lacking. there’s something really special about the soft compression you get with diodes in opamp NFB, even if you have the gain all the way down.

what’s the revel like? (just ordered one this week in the BF haul) keen to get behind this one soon 🤟🏻

and boy howdy if you wanna get serious about mids, look no further than an ST-9 / STL. the mid control on that is just perfect.
there’s a similar ST-9 based circuit on here - frost drive. super keen to try this out
www.pedalpcb.com

Frost Drive - PedalPCB.com

Compare to VFE Ice Scream
www.pedalpcb.com www.pedalpcb.com
 
owlexifry said:
totally agree on the whole cutting low end thing.
pretty much every TS does this pretty well most of the time.
but it’s always nice to have a bit more control.
i find the isosceles is a bit lacking. there’s something really special about the soft compression you get with diodes in opamp NFB, even if you have the gain all the way down.

what’s the revel like? (just ordered one this week in the BF haul) keen to get behind this one soon 🤟🏻

and boy howdy if you wanna get serious about mids, look no further than an ST-9 / STL. the mid control on that is just perfect.
there’s a similar ST-9 based circuit on here - frost drive. super keen to try this out
www.pedalpcb.com

Frost Drive - PedalPCB.com

Compare to VFE Ice Scream
www.pedalpcb.com www.pedalpcb.com
Click to expand...
Supposedly the revel(LCFR) is a modded bluesbreaker. I really like it as a sweetener/boost/shaper indrom of other drives or a dirty amp.
In front on my modded Randall rm50 with modded recto module, it *really* tightens up the flub, allowing me to actually turn the density control up some for once.
On another note, a parametric eq (or 2)does wonders for sculpting metal tones. I'm hoping to see that ellusice 6 band hit the store one day.

Soft clipping in a first drive pedal is definitely beneficial so you can dial in just a bit of even order harmonics going into the next gain stage.
 
I'll add, for some tones, having some clean blend in the first of two drive pedals can really help.
You can get more note clarity and articulation but still have *big* gain sounds.
 
jwin615 said:
Supposedly the revel(LCFR) is a modded bluesbreaker.
Click to expand...
Not to derail too much, but I was curious about this so I looked at the shcematic, and it turns out it's tweaked xotic BB preamp, which is a tube screamer with a fixed tone control and then a two band EQ after. I can totally see how someone saying its a BB preamp would lead to it being confused with a bluesbreaker. There are a million versions of the BB Preamp from Xotic, there is a cool Aion article about a few versions. The mesa flux drive also took a lot of inspiration from this pedal.
 
ErickPulido said:
Looks pretty good gotta try it on a bread board and check, thank you so much
Click to expand...
Breadboard was going to be my suggestion,
ie take the circuits you liked best and make your own circuit that combines what you liked and weeds out what you didn't like.
lt'd be a deep dive (for me) into what makes things tick and gaining a better understanding of how to make things do what I want.
 
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