Fingolfen
Well-known member
I was looking for a unique and fun overdrive project when I came across the PedalPCB Bloodshot overdrive. It's a clone of the Heavy Electronics Red Eyes - which is a very cool pedal. Not only is it a really responsive dirty overdrive pedal, but on the originals the red LED clipping diodes are mounted to the front of the enclosure, so you can see them as the pedal is used. I didn't go that route with my build, but it looks like it might be possible with a little creative wiring.
The first thing that struck me was how simple the overall circuit was. It has one of the lowest parts count of any overdrive I've built - especially one with a tone control - albeit a fairly simple one. The clipping is done by a pair of red LEDs. I'm using all new components for this build - 1% metal film resistors. The film capacitors (there's only five of them) are 5% tolerance. There are a couple of Nichicon electrolytic capacitors, and then two transistors. (both new). The trimmers are there to bias the transistors, which was actually the most challenging part of the build.
The compact PCB leaves a lot of room in a standard 125B enclosure, so this is likely a board that could fit in a smaller enclosure. Once I got everything initially tested, I did quick bias and then boxed up the pedal so I could do a final biasing on it. Q1 is a lot more sensitive than Q2, I'd seen a couple of different numbers for the correct bias, but ultimately went with about 4.5V on the collector. Too much outside that range and you lose all sound. For Q2 I started with ~5V on the drain and then went by ear.
Since this pedal involves a red eye, I decided to have a little bit of fun with the enclosure and the dinosaur mascot. As it turns out there is an actual dinosaur named after one of the most famous red eyes out there - at least in the cinematic version of The Lord of the Rings - Sauron! As it turns out there is a dinosaur named after the titular Lord of the Rings - the Sauroniops.
The enclosure itself came out a bit darker than I was hoping, though not quite as dark as the photo above would imply. If I ever do any more of these, I'm going to find a way to lighten them up a bit to see if I can get better contrast.
The pedal itself is pretty cool. As advertised, it is a good dirty overdrive that is very responsive to pick attack. It's also fairly quiet with a very low noise floor. Having the two trimmers also makes it possible to dial the tone in - even going gated if that's your thing.
Tiny bit more at the blog (mostly reference for the dino): https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/11/seeing-red-cloning-unique-overdrive.html
The first thing that struck me was how simple the overall circuit was. It has one of the lowest parts count of any overdrive I've built - especially one with a tone control - albeit a fairly simple one. The clipping is done by a pair of red LEDs. I'm using all new components for this build - 1% metal film resistors. The film capacitors (there's only five of them) are 5% tolerance. There are a couple of Nichicon electrolytic capacitors, and then two transistors. (both new). The trimmers are there to bias the transistors, which was actually the most challenging part of the build.
The compact PCB leaves a lot of room in a standard 125B enclosure, so this is likely a board that could fit in a smaller enclosure. Once I got everything initially tested, I did quick bias and then boxed up the pedal so I could do a final biasing on it. Q1 is a lot more sensitive than Q2, I'd seen a couple of different numbers for the correct bias, but ultimately went with about 4.5V on the collector. Too much outside that range and you lose all sound. For Q2 I started with ~5V on the drain and then went by ear.
Since this pedal involves a red eye, I decided to have a little bit of fun with the enclosure and the dinosaur mascot. As it turns out there is an actual dinosaur named after one of the most famous red eyes out there - at least in the cinematic version of The Lord of the Rings - Sauron! As it turns out there is a dinosaur named after the titular Lord of the Rings - the Sauroniops.
The enclosure itself came out a bit darker than I was hoping, though not quite as dark as the photo above would imply. If I ever do any more of these, I'm going to find a way to lighten them up a bit to see if I can get better contrast.
The pedal itself is pretty cool. As advertised, it is a good dirty overdrive that is very responsive to pick attack. It's also fairly quiet with a very low noise floor. Having the two trimmers also makes it possible to dial the tone in - even going gated if that's your thing.
Tiny bit more at the blog (mostly reference for the dino): https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/11/seeing-red-cloning-unique-overdrive.html
