owlexifry
Well-known member
this was supposed to be a build thread.
finished a build on the weekend (ST-9 clone)
initially tested the circuit through its intended use a couple weeks ago (goosing high gain amp), with the gain set low and level set high.
sounded great. (and still does, in this setting) so i boxed it up.
been A/B testing it against other similar TS circuits and seemed to behaving as it should.
BUT then i tried testing it last night, in front of a 5w class A tweed (speaker out into fryette reactive load, listening through DAW w/ IRs + headphones)
this was the first time i actually turned up the gain beyond 10-11 o’clock (i don’t normally do this).
WELL GUESS WHAT, when i turned up the gain past halfway, i noticed it was starting to fart out / over-saturate / sorta like a gating fuzz when the intermodulation distortion became too much.
‘blocking distortion’ i think it’s called?
not nice.
i guess it sounded like the opamp was clipping..?
wtf. TS circuits are not supposed to do this.
initially i thought maybe it was the level output being too much for the lil tweeds input:
- used a 2n5089 (instead of 2n5088) on the output buffer - maybe too spicy?
- looking at the audio interface's input meter - noticed the output of this circuit was way hotter than a TS9, had to turn the input level down a fair bit (vs. TS9)
so i turned the level (on the pedal) down to halfway.
this didn’t change anything, still the same crappy response with gain turned up.
to compare, i tried doing the same thing with other TS drives, and they didn’t cause this undesirable response in the same amp/rig.
so for now, I'm a bit lost.
i did previously measure the voltages and they looked fine. i mean, if there was an error, surely it wouldn't even work at all...
i wonder what would be causing this undesirable response at high gain settings? maybe the socketed clipping diodes are having intermittency? i'm stumped.
finished a build on the weekend (ST-9 clone)
initially tested the circuit through its intended use a couple weeks ago (goosing high gain amp), with the gain set low and level set high.
sounded great. (and still does, in this setting) so i boxed it up.
been A/B testing it against other similar TS circuits and seemed to behaving as it should.
BUT then i tried testing it last night, in front of a 5w class A tweed (speaker out into fryette reactive load, listening through DAW w/ IRs + headphones)
this was the first time i actually turned up the gain beyond 10-11 o’clock (i don’t normally do this).
WELL GUESS WHAT, when i turned up the gain past halfway, i noticed it was starting to fart out / over-saturate / sorta like a gating fuzz when the intermodulation distortion became too much.
‘blocking distortion’ i think it’s called?
not nice.
i guess it sounded like the opamp was clipping..?
wtf. TS circuits are not supposed to do this.
initially i thought maybe it was the level output being too much for the lil tweeds input:
- used a 2n5089 (instead of 2n5088) on the output buffer - maybe too spicy?
- looking at the audio interface's input meter - noticed the output of this circuit was way hotter than a TS9, had to turn the input level down a fair bit (vs. TS9)
so i turned the level (on the pedal) down to halfway.
this didn’t change anything, still the same crappy response with gain turned up.
to compare, i tried doing the same thing with other TS drives, and they didn’t cause this undesirable response in the same amp/rig.
so for now, I'm a bit lost.
i did previously measure the voltages and they looked fine. i mean, if there was an error, surely it wouldn't even work at all...
i wonder what would be causing this undesirable response at high gain settings? maybe the socketed clipping diodes are having intermittency? i'm stumped.
