JHS The Kilt
- Thread starter HamishR
- Start date
Nostradoomus
Well-known member
Yeah I think if you built the Pandora’s box and a boost with an effect order switcher you’d pretty much have it...well V1 anyway.
TL;DR - use a larger cap for C9 to get more bass.
Dirt circuits often cut bass right before the clipping to reduce muddiness. In the pandora, the combination of C9 and R7 cut frequencies below 1.5kHz (1/2piRC). This frequency is on the high side of what a lot of circuits do, so I’m not surprised you found it bass light. R6 and C8 do add a little bass back in, but it will be quite low gain because R6 is so much larger than R7.
There are a few ways to recover bass. One is to put an active bass eq after the clipping section (see wampler pantheon as and example). This has the advantage that the bass frequencies were reduced before clipping, so in theory you are adding clean bass. I think the tricky part is choosing the frequencies of the bass cut and bass boost to sound nice when the bass is turned up (no weird jumps or dips in the eq curve). Another way is to use a parallel clean blend (like the voodoo labs sparkle drive) but this significantly affects the clipping character.
By far the easiest and most common approach is to change the bass cut before the clipping. In this case, you’ll want to focus on C9. Larger values allow more bass through. You can put different values on a switch (check out eqd palisades), or a large cap with a pot (check out the Timmy). I have a hunch that the kilt is just switching in a different cap, idk for sure. But using a pot or a 3-way switch you could have even more versatility and tune it to what you want to hear. Personally, I’d probably experiment but go with a pot (with solder lugs), since you should be able to fit it between the two switches. Height wise, pots are shorter than toggle switches and can fit behind a pcb, whereas a switch is usually too tall (although there is a pandora build report here where a guy fit a short shaft switch there, but he used it as a diode clipping sw, not for bass).
Dirt circuits often cut bass right before the clipping to reduce muddiness. In the pandora, the combination of C9 and R7 cut frequencies below 1.5kHz (1/2piRC). This frequency is on the high side of what a lot of circuits do, so I’m not surprised you found it bass light. R6 and C8 do add a little bass back in, but it will be quite low gain because R6 is so much larger than R7.
There are a few ways to recover bass. One is to put an active bass eq after the clipping section (see wampler pantheon as and example). This has the advantage that the bass frequencies were reduced before clipping, so in theory you are adding clean bass. I think the tricky part is choosing the frequencies of the bass cut and bass boost to sound nice when the bass is turned up (no weird jumps or dips in the eq curve). Another way is to use a parallel clean blend (like the voodoo labs sparkle drive) but this significantly affects the clipping character.
By far the easiest and most common approach is to change the bass cut before the clipping. In this case, you’ll want to focus on C9. Larger values allow more bass through. You can put different values on a switch (check out eqd palisades), or a large cap with a pot (check out the Timmy). I have a hunch that the kilt is just switching in a different cap, idk for sure. But using a pot or a 3-way switch you could have even more versatility and tune it to what you want to hear. Personally, I’d probably experiment but go with a pot (with solder lugs), since you should be able to fit it between the two switches. Height wise, pots are shorter than toggle switches and can fit behind a pcb, whereas a switch is usually too tall (although there is a pandora build report here where a guy fit a short shaft switch there, but he used it as a diode clipping sw, not for bass).
What DGWVI said. That's what I did on my build and it brought the low end in after the advice from someone who traced an original.
I tried the mods in other areas of the circuit, but this is the one that worked for me. The 1k at the output was also changed to a 10k, so instead of 1uf/1k, make it 100n/10k (for the same corner frequency) with switchable 10uf to allow in ALL the lows..
I tried the mods in other areas of the circuit, but this is the one that worked for me. The 1k at the output was also changed to a 10k, so instead of 1uf/1k, make it 100n/10k (for the same corner frequency) with switchable 10uf to allow in ALL the lows..
