Minidrive - Which version is it?

Joben Magooch

Well-known member
So, let me head this off by saying...I've never taken much of a look at the schematics myself so I'm not entirely sure what the differences are/would be.

But I'm curious: Is the Minidrive based on the Fulldrive 1 (which itself is claimed by Mike/Fulltone to be built off of the late 90s/early 2000s "pre-Mosfet" Fulldrive 2), or is it closer to the "modern" Fulldrive 2 Mosfet?

Fulltone's Full-Drive 1 does not have a toggle for Mosfet/Standard clipping. The early Full-Drive 2's did not have a Mosfet/Standard toggle either (and for that matter, did not have switchable "Comp Cut" / "Flat Mids" / "Vintage" modes, either), early ones just had the "Pull for Comp-Cut" volume knob.

The toggle for CC/FM/Vintage was added in version 2.4, and it wasn't until v2.5 that the Mosfet/Standard toggle was added with the Fulldrive 2 MOSFET.... I believe this was around 2006 or 2007?

ANYWAYS, like I said, I don't know what exactly the differences between the various revisions are...I owned a couple of Pre-Mosfet FD2s over the years, both "toggle" version as well as an earlier "Pull for comp cut" one, and I've had a newer Mosfet version as well. To my ears they sound quite different - the pre-Mosfets are both much warmer and fuller sounding, while the Mosfet versions are almost unusably bright to my ears (with my rig, of course). Off the top of my head I remember reading a while back that there was at least one capacitor that had a fairly big value change which would presumably impact that, but I'm just speaking from vague memory...Anecdotally, I can say that with the Pre-Mosfet models I would have to nearly crank the tone control for it to be bright enough, while with the "Mosfet" models I find it too bright even with the tone nearly all the way off. Of course, I suppose that could also be a matter of pot value/taper but I suspect there's more to it than that. Then they went and made the FD3 which I find to be FAR too dark. So it goes...

So...all that to say: Which one is the "Minidrive" based off of?

If it's based off of the more modern FD2 Mosfet, sans-boost...Any leads on how one could mod it to a more "vintage" spec and/or any possibility of getting a pre-Mosfet circuit made up? I suspect with the recent news regarding Fulltone, such a pedal may be getting more and more popular...
 
The Minidrive is closest to the MOSFET version. It was actually released before the FullDrive 1 (the mini pedal), so the FD1 is referenced just for comparative purposes.

I'd have to look at the schematics, but it should be fairly easy to substitute the older FullDrive component values.

I agree, the older Fulltone circuits will be getting a good bit of attention from this point forward (I just bought a couple myself), so I'm definitely interested in looking into the various versions, including the larger two footswitch models.
 
The Fulldrive has always been a bit of an interesting pedal to me...

I love, love, LOVE the old FD2 - one of my favorite TS-style sounds ever. But I almost never used the boost on it, as from what I can tell it's pretty much just a toggle for more gain (or at least that's how it ends up sounding to me...) and of course can't be used when the drive itself isn't engaged, and can't change the order (Boost>OD or OD>Boost) which really limits the usefulness of it for me. So I basically ended up having this big old pedal box that was only being used for one TS-sound and it felt like a bit of a waste of space in some ways.

The FD3 "fixed" a lot of that: boost can be used independently, you can change the order, and has the added "dynamics" control. BUT the main tone of the overdrive itself is (IMO) way too dark. It's like Fulltone heard the complaints that the FD2 Mosfet was too bright and tried to make it closer to the pre-Mosfet FD2s and ended up swinging way too far that way.

Anyways all that to say is that they've had a lot of interesting pedals out there and a million different versions but none have ever quite hit that "just right" spot for me. If I could have the pre-Mosfet FD2 drive with the boost (2B / "FDIC") from the FD3 in one package, that'd be just about perfect....
 
  • Like
Reactions: fig
Found this from Mike Fuller a few years back on the matter, for whatever it's worth...

"Why are there such differing opinions on the FD2?"

"Because it's been around for 20 years, and there were slight changes made over the years that affected the sound, and people have their favorites. The changes have NOTHING to do with mosfet versus non-mosfet myths, contrary to what the master-typists claim. The mosfet feature is simply an additional switchable clipping choice, which is completely out of the circuit when not chosen, so just how could that have any effect on the Normal clipping? Or the Comp-Cut, for that matter?"

"What were these slight changes you made?"

"Back in the 90's, I always used very large value capacitors (in the power section) because it was my opinion that they added a warmth and feel to the pedal.
Somewhere in the 2000's, as I was re-laying out the PCB, an Electronic Engineer convinced me to drop those large caps down to 10uf and he added a tiny 100nf bypass cap, a trick used in many hi-end audio power supplies. Life moved on and I never directly compared an old FD2-Mos to a new one again UNTIL I pulled a bunch of old FD2's out while researching for the Custom shop FullDrive3.
I noticed right away how the older ones were browner sounding and had a slight sag to the feel, irrespective of whether they were Mosfet or non-Mosfet.
The only difference was in these power supply caps, and after a quick substitute of these for the larger value and a snip-snip of that little bypass cap and BINGO! There was that old FD2 sound back again!
BTW, said Engineer now admits that the larger cap values will "limit the ultra-hi-end frequency response of the JRC4558 chip (Browner) and cause it to react slower (sag)."

"When did you change the FD2 back?"

"In October of 2012 all FD2-Mos pedals (serial#30683 and higher) started getting the larger caps are nice and warm sounding. It's safe to say, all FD2-Mos's presently in stores are "new ones" and have this warm, saggy vintage FD2 sound, so there's no excuse not to revisit one at your favorite dealer."

Come to think of it this actually does track with what I have experienced - that the early "Mosfet" models were much brighter - and what I've heard, too - that there was allegedly a revision somewhere along the way that made the more recent Mosfet FD2s a bit darker again. I haven't played one of the newer Mosfet FD2s, though, the only ones I played were shortly after they came out originally and was basically unusuable IMO.

So in addition to all the various pre-Mosfet tweaks over the years, it seems like now they can be broadly divided into a few "eras":
1. "Vintage" or Pre-Mosfet FD2
2. "Middle" or "Early Modern" FD2 Mosfet
3. "Modern" or "Current" (well, as of a few weeks ago... :p ) FD2 Mosfet
(and then of course there is the FD3, but as before I think it's more or less a different beast entirely...)

Trying to see if I can track down a schematic(s). There's a handful of FD2 Mosfet ones floating around, but I can't tell for sure if it's the "Middle" FD2 Mosfet or the "Modern"/most recent revision, and I'm having a hard time finding a pre-Mosfet schematic.

Don't take my word on this - I am just recalling a foggy memory from YEARS ago - but for some reason I feel like I once read that C6 was the biggest cap value change and that increasing it to a larger value would bring it back to closer to "vintage" spec. But I don't know what the current value is nor do I know what the old spec is... The search continues...
 
Reviving this… have you managed to find out the differences between fd-1, nonmosfet and minidrive?
From what I can tell the fd-1 is a nonmosfet fulldrive 2 with no boost in a smaller case.
The minidrive is a fulldrive 2 mosfet with no boost in smaller case. We just have to hope it comes in stock soon lol.
 
Back
Top