OD is Glorious
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- Build Rating
The Slammer/Jail Guitar Doors Drive + (I call it plus because I added a few extras). This pedal/s original design has two gain stages and one potentiometer. When I first turned the knob on the PPCB platform it opened a portal into another dimension of wide-open-sound. I decided to add a tone knob at that time. I followed the build documents but two modifications were done in this build which were minor.
I put board this in a classy matte white Gorva enclosure with vinyl labels and matte clear coat over the top. I would describe this circuit as raw and fantastic. A very surprising pedal that is extremely overpowered. I have the same reaction from the PPCB Aphrodite – the gain is significant. This circuit can get wide-open and filthy like an aggressive fuzz or you can dial it back for something less.
Background
MXR was producing these pedals. The pedal is named for the organization “Jail Guitar Doors” . The organization helps prisoners using music – to support prisoner reentry into society. MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer co-founded the US branch of Jail Guitar Doors. The organization is named after a 1978 Clash song inspired by Kramer’s incarceration. I had to look into it because the name does not exactly roll off the tongue easily. I was not willing to attempt the decal which was designed by Shepard Fairey (founder of OBEY) – he was the designed of the Jail Guitar Doors Overdrive’s exclusive artwork seen here. Wish I could do something similar. Instead I just went with a industrial/hospital-clean black and white look.
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I was longing for a tone knob to add color to this sound explosion so I added a Muffin Crumb Tone Crumb. I was going to follow the tone stage with the micro clean boost – so I populated a board with ridiculously tiny SMDs – it is a great boost! When I added it to the circuit it was not what the circuit needed. When I tried the Slammer circuit with the tone stage added and no tone recovery stage following it… the volume decreased significantly when turning the tone knob. So I followed the Muffin Crumb Tone Stage with the Muffin Crumb Tone Recovery. Adding the tone recovery stage solved the problem of too much signal loss. I like the addition of the tone pot to get more useable tones. You can just skip it and go full MC5 “Kick Out The Jams” and let your inner-punk-rocker shine.
I also added the clipping LED. The build docs have the red LED as an inside the pedal diode but I drilled a hole and allowed it to be visible. Because well… I like lights. I used a Love My Switches breakout board because their board has extra ground and power terminals. Without this LMS BO board I would have had to send wires to the D.C. jack with perhaps the PPCB DC Jack Breakout Board Additionally I wanted the LED to be low on the enclosure to be far from the clipping LED near the top and the LMS BO board has that option. I did use a small black wire to cancel out the Slammer board’s LED option.
If you like overdrive and aggressive fuzz - or a wall of sound with dual gain stages… this might be your pedal! It is definitely a unique type of overdrive and there is useable sound even with the one knob in the original design.
The values I used for the Muffin Crumb Tone Stage here are:
R1 20K C2 10n
R2 22K C1 3n9
TONE pot B100K – I used an off board 9mm
The values I used for the Muffin Crumb Tone Recovery Stage are:
R1 8.2k R6 430K
R3 100k C1 100N
R4 15k C4 100N
R5 3K3 Q1 BC549C
I put board this in a classy matte white Gorva enclosure with vinyl labels and matte clear coat over the top. I would describe this circuit as raw and fantastic. A very surprising pedal that is extremely overpowered. I have the same reaction from the PPCB Aphrodite – the gain is significant. This circuit can get wide-open and filthy like an aggressive fuzz or you can dial it back for something less.
Background
MXR was producing these pedals. The pedal is named for the organization “Jail Guitar Doors” . The organization helps prisoners using music – to support prisoner reentry into society. MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer co-founded the US branch of Jail Guitar Doors. The organization is named after a 1978 Clash song inspired by Kramer’s incarceration. I had to look into it because the name does not exactly roll off the tongue easily. I was not willing to attempt the decal which was designed by Shepard Fairey (founder of OBEY) – he was the designed of the Jail Guitar Doors Overdrive’s exclusive artwork seen here. Wish I could do something similar. Instead I just went with a industrial/hospital-clean black and white look.
Report
I was longing for a tone knob to add color to this sound explosion so I added a Muffin Crumb Tone Crumb. I was going to follow the tone stage with the micro clean boost – so I populated a board with ridiculously tiny SMDs – it is a great boost! When I added it to the circuit it was not what the circuit needed. When I tried the Slammer circuit with the tone stage added and no tone recovery stage following it… the volume decreased significantly when turning the tone knob. So I followed the Muffin Crumb Tone Stage with the Muffin Crumb Tone Recovery. Adding the tone recovery stage solved the problem of too much signal loss. I like the addition of the tone pot to get more useable tones. You can just skip it and go full MC5 “Kick Out The Jams” and let your inner-punk-rocker shine.
I also added the clipping LED. The build docs have the red LED as an inside the pedal diode but I drilled a hole and allowed it to be visible. Because well… I like lights. I used a Love My Switches breakout board because their board has extra ground and power terminals. Without this LMS BO board I would have had to send wires to the D.C. jack with perhaps the PPCB DC Jack Breakout Board Additionally I wanted the LED to be low on the enclosure to be far from the clipping LED near the top and the LMS BO board has that option. I did use a small black wire to cancel out the Slammer board’s LED option.
If you like overdrive and aggressive fuzz - or a wall of sound with dual gain stages… this might be your pedal! It is definitely a unique type of overdrive and there is useable sound even with the one knob in the original design.
The values I used for the Muffin Crumb Tone Stage here are:
R1 20K C2 10n
R2 22K C1 3n9
TONE pot B100K – I used an off board 9mm
The values I used for the Muffin Crumb Tone Recovery Stage are:
R1 8.2k R6 430K
R3 100k C1 100N
R4 15k C4 100N
R5 3K3 Q1 BC549C
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