cdwillis
Well-known member
- Build Rating
A few months ago I built one of these not realizing the transistors were BCE pinout and put CBEs in (2n3904s I think). When it didn't work I thought it was the op amp, yada yada yada I fucked up the pads trying to fix it. Pay attention to the pinouts, lesson learned! 
A buddy of mine recently gave me his TS808 to fix thinking the switch was messed up. Turned out the pots had turned inside the enclosure somehow and were grounding the circuit out. I only messed around on the 808 for a few minutes to verify it worked, gave it back to him, then ordered a couple PCBs to build my own.
Turns out I had the 2SC1815 transistors the entire time. I also had the 510k resistors, kind of an odd value I think I must have ordered just for the screamer, but I didn't have 51k resistors. So the only sub I made was a 47k resistor for the 51k. Maybe it's a smidge cleaner or quieter at minimum drive. I can't tell any difference really. Sounds like a tube screamer to me!
The next one I build I might try red LEDs instead and tweak the gain structure for a lower minimum drive and higher maximum.
I noticed the LED uses a square pad for the cathode (like I would expect) and the electrolytic capacitors use a square pad for the annode. I vaguely remember Robert mentioning it in a post a long time ago, but it's something I gotta watch out for. It always confuses me when I go to wire up an LED. The LED on my Circulator is backwards and I've never made the effort to fix it lol.
A buddy of mine recently gave me his TS808 to fix thinking the switch was messed up. Turned out the pots had turned inside the enclosure somehow and were grounding the circuit out. I only messed around on the 808 for a few minutes to verify it worked, gave it back to him, then ordered a couple PCBs to build my own.
Turns out I had the 2SC1815 transistors the entire time. I also had the 510k resistors, kind of an odd value I think I must have ordered just for the screamer, but I didn't have 51k resistors. So the only sub I made was a 47k resistor for the 51k. Maybe it's a smidge cleaner or quieter at minimum drive. I can't tell any difference really. Sounds like a tube screamer to me!
The next one I build I might try red LEDs instead and tweak the gain structure for a lower minimum drive and higher maximum.
I noticed the LED uses a square pad for the cathode (like I would expect) and the electrolytic capacitors use a square pad for the annode. I vaguely remember Robert mentioning it in a post a long time ago, but it's something I gotta watch out for. It always confuses me when I go to wire up an LED. The LED on my Circulator is backwards and I've never made the effort to fix it lol.
