I have been very impressed with the Fordoble and player friends of mine have been too. I'm glad I bought a couple of boards of this because I had a feeling it might be popular. Yes, It's a Timmy variant but one of the better variants I have played, and it had a great midrange for Fender guitars.
With some consultation with the venerable Mr Bones I have also built a booster based on the boost side of the Dane. I was curious about the diodes, so built one without any diodes except the 1N5817 at the voltage input. And it sounds exactly the same as the stock booster! As I understand it, the 1N4148 diodes are there to prevent meltdown in the event of a nuclear disaster. Where I live we have very few nuclear disasters so I left all of them out. Then I left out the 3.6V zeners placed back-to-back. No difference in sound that I can discern - why are they there? And while we're leaving parts out: that 1M resistor after the 220nF input cap that goes to two resistors and a cap? Just send it the Vref and leave out the rest.
That left the minor detail that I felt the boost sounded a little bright. So the advice from Chuck was to swap the 220R resistor at the output to a 2K2 and use a cap to ground at the output as a treble snubber. I used 22nF and it sounds perfect to me. The 22nF is connected in parallel with the 51K to ground at the output.
So that has much simplified the boost and (for me) improved the sound. The only other thing I could possible want is a bass pot for the OD. I like bass pots. All OD pedals should have a bass pot. With some expert consultation with Mr Bones I replaced the 2k7 resistor from pin 2 of the IC with a 1K and swapped the 2µ2 for a 4µ7. The 1K now goes to pin 2 of a C10K pot and the 4µ7 goes positive side to pin 3 of that pot and the negative side goes to ground. Now I have a circuit which sounds pretty identical to stock with the bass pot at around noon but I can lower bass for a loud HB guitar or raise it to fatten up a Strat. And it sounds absolutely wonderful with a Strat!
With some consultation with the venerable Mr Bones I have also built a booster based on the boost side of the Dane. I was curious about the diodes, so built one without any diodes except the 1N5817 at the voltage input. And it sounds exactly the same as the stock booster! As I understand it, the 1N4148 diodes are there to prevent meltdown in the event of a nuclear disaster. Where I live we have very few nuclear disasters so I left all of them out. Then I left out the 3.6V zeners placed back-to-back. No difference in sound that I can discern - why are they there? And while we're leaving parts out: that 1M resistor after the 220nF input cap that goes to two resistors and a cap? Just send it the Vref and leave out the rest.
That left the minor detail that I felt the boost sounded a little bright. So the advice from Chuck was to swap the 220R resistor at the output to a 2K2 and use a cap to ground at the output as a treble snubber. I used 22nF and it sounds perfect to me. The 22nF is connected in parallel with the 51K to ground at the output.
So that has much simplified the boost and (for me) improved the sound. The only other thing I could possible want is a bass pot for the OD. I like bass pots. All OD pedals should have a bass pot. With some expert consultation with Mr Bones I replaced the 2k7 resistor from pin 2 of the IC with a 1K and swapped the 2µ2 for a 4µ7. The 1K now goes to pin 2 of a C10K pot and the 4µ7 goes positive side to pin 3 of that pot and the negative side goes to ground. Now I have a circuit which sounds pretty identical to stock with the bass pot at around noon but I can lower bass for a loud HB guitar or raise it to fatten up a Strat. And it sounds absolutely wonderful with a Strat!
