Joined a new band so I'm back to building! Help me choose a distortion circuit.

MBFX

MBFX

Well-known member
Prepare for the usual litany of posts, working out in public and in real time my various troubleshooting woes. Thanks in advance for your patience.

My bandleader/rhythm guitarist uses a big Gretsch semihollow with 3 Filtertrons for ska punk, and it's way too dark. He doesn't know much about effects, and he asked me to help him build a pedalboard. He liked my Ge FF, but it's not bright enough. He loved my Ge Rangemaster, and that's going to be an always-on pedal. The pedal order will be Fuzz/Dist, RM, Delay, Reverb. Delay and Reverb are covered.

I'm thinking the best option to get tight, clear distortion without driving the RM more than we want is to run something like a Distortion + or some Electra-derived design before it. What do you think?
 
A DOD Metal X (FX70) clone perhaps? It has a lovely wide range of drive, and is quite fresh / bright sounding to my ears.
 
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- Face Melter
- Disarray Distortion

both excellent distortions. no fancy parts needed, super easy to build. highly recommend.
also they both take an overdrive in front really well (gets real nice n’ tight, thick and saturated)
 
JHS Haunting Mids (Maleficent Mids here) will give you some drive but enable you to focus the mids to get above the dark pickups. Then figure out if you need more drive. I'd also be remiss in not recommending the 6 band EQ here to preform the front end into a drive.
 
In a similar vein of the haunting mids, there’s also the Mercurial Boost (Catalinbread Varioboost). Either way, a semi-parametric mid-focused eq band with boost is super handy for tone sculpting.

The BE-OD was mentioned, that would be a great choice.

But there is also a whole family of those Friedman aiab pedals:

You searched for Friedman - PedalPCB.com

www.pedalpcb.com www.pedalpcb.com

After it seemed like my be-od was never coming home, I made a brown betty. It’s a hybrid of the be-od and dirty shirley. There is a smaller version that fits in a 125B (little debbie) that I really want to get my hands on when/if it comes back in stock.

It seems like lots of people like the smallbox (ppcb complex) too.
 
Man, I fell in love with the Skreddy Screwdriver. Does/has everything I need/want. Light OD, to distortion, when cranked turns into fuzz. Responds awesome to picking dynamics and the volume knob. PPCB and Mad Bean both have pcbs.

Also agree with the EQD Plumes, Mercurial Boost, and the Informant. I think the Informant (or any Rat circuit) will probably be the best option.
 
jcpst said:
There is a smaller version that fits in a 125B (little debbie) that I really want to get my hands on when/if it comes back in stock.
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Just get a Dirty Sanchez, it's the same circuit with the exception that the tight control is on a toggle instead of a trimpot. Also the DS board uses 1/4 resistors.
 
spi said:
Just get a Dirty Sanchez, it's the same circuit with the exception that the tight control is on a toggle instead of a trimpot. Also the DS board uses 1/4 resistors.
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Yeah I think I’m with you on that one. Part of me imagines it’s nice to have the tight knob, but if I’m being honest I always keep tight full CW.

Looking forward to building the plumes, just got the pcb for it last week.

I’ll 2nd the rat. Classic, simple, versatile. Not everyone’s cup o’ tea though. Every time someone mentions the informant, I feel compelled to give it another chance. (and just did that again) But every time I A/B it with a stock rat I never prefer it. I should probably just give it to a friend that would use it.
 
I'm using a Timmy, recently, and like it. Maybe changing out the bridge PU might be easier than trying to add pedals to make it brighter??
 
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