MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Buttoned this one up last night.
Yet another Dover variant. I bought this board during the big MBP sale before I realized that the 5lb Bag of Gold Fuzz was not really a fuzz but another Dover Drive variant.
The Grover Drive has been a mainstay in my pedal line up and is one of my favorite dirt pedals. It was designed to emulate the BK Butler Tube driver but really has nothing to do with the Butler from a circuitry perspective. It's basically an SI fuzz running into a fixed Zen drive circuit. But it sounds really good!
The 5lb Bag of Gold is essentially the same circuit but turned upside down, hahah. I have both pedals in my current "tasting chain" on my desk and find that the 5lb has a bit more fuzz emphasis where the Grover has a bit more of the Zen mid-hump emphasis. I just can't decide which one to keep in the chain, so both are there.
The Cliffhanger is Mad Bean's take on this circuit and has some mods and tweaks. Firstly, the fuzz circuit bias is already exposed as a pot. (as opposed to the Grover and 5lb where I had to mount an off board pot to expose the trimmer). I think this is probably the most useful mod as biasing the fuzz can yield some very useful different sounds.
Then there's a mod on a toggle switch where he added an extra gain stage for brighter more mid-focus emphasis. This can be defeated with the toggle to the left for the stock Dover circuit. It's a subtle mod and more noticeable on the neck pickup on my Les Paul than the bridge.
Overall, this variant seems to be a bit brighter sounding than the other two pedals. But I have yet to mess with the internal trimmers yet, so I'll be mucking about with those today.
Also for the Ge diode in the Zen part of the circuit I used one of my Mojo Mullard CV7364's for a bit of variation. It measured right around .360mv on my CCT which translates to a pretty low Vf. There's definitely a distinct sound to these diodes and there's a bit more saturation than the Grover and 5lb.
I would say that if you've already built either the Grover or 5lb bag of Fuzz, then it's not worth building this variation of the theme. (Unless you're a drive freak like me
).
Very smooth build, went pretty quickly with no issues.
I used a hammered finish rattle can for the enclosure and stayed with the "3 + 1" knob theme as with my Grover and 5lb with the odd color being the fuzz bias.
You can see one boo-boo where I center punched the LED hole in the wrong place. Initially when I painted this enclosure the paint filled it in nicely. But alas when it dried it made the extra punch hole stand out even more. So I just think of it as having an "innie" belly button.......
Yet another Dover variant. I bought this board during the big MBP sale before I realized that the 5lb Bag of Gold Fuzz was not really a fuzz but another Dover Drive variant.
The Grover Drive has been a mainstay in my pedal line up and is one of my favorite dirt pedals. It was designed to emulate the BK Butler Tube driver but really has nothing to do with the Butler from a circuitry perspective. It's basically an SI fuzz running into a fixed Zen drive circuit. But it sounds really good!
The 5lb Bag of Gold is essentially the same circuit but turned upside down, hahah. I have both pedals in my current "tasting chain" on my desk and find that the 5lb has a bit more fuzz emphasis where the Grover has a bit more of the Zen mid-hump emphasis. I just can't decide which one to keep in the chain, so both are there.
The Cliffhanger is Mad Bean's take on this circuit and has some mods and tweaks. Firstly, the fuzz circuit bias is already exposed as a pot. (as opposed to the Grover and 5lb where I had to mount an off board pot to expose the trimmer). I think this is probably the most useful mod as biasing the fuzz can yield some very useful different sounds.
Then there's a mod on a toggle switch where he added an extra gain stage for brighter more mid-focus emphasis. This can be defeated with the toggle to the left for the stock Dover circuit. It's a subtle mod and more noticeable on the neck pickup on my Les Paul than the bridge.
Overall, this variant seems to be a bit brighter sounding than the other two pedals. But I have yet to mess with the internal trimmers yet, so I'll be mucking about with those today.
Also for the Ge diode in the Zen part of the circuit I used one of my Mojo Mullard CV7364's for a bit of variation. It measured right around .360mv on my CCT which translates to a pretty low Vf. There's definitely a distinct sound to these diodes and there's a bit more saturation than the Grover and 5lb.
I would say that if you've already built either the Grover or 5lb bag of Fuzz, then it's not worth building this variation of the theme. (Unless you're a drive freak like me
).Very smooth build, went pretty quickly with no issues.
I used a hammered finish rattle can for the enclosure and stayed with the "3 + 1" knob theme as with my Grover and 5lb with the odd color being the fuzz bias.
You can see one boo-boo where I center punched the LED hole in the wrong place. Initially when I painted this enclosure the paint filled it in nicely. But alas when it dried it made the extra punch hole stand out even more. So I just think of it as having an "innie" belly button.......
