cdwillis
Well-known member
I built a clone of the Emanating Fist Electronics Dope Priest last week. Compared it to my Ram's Head reissue the Dope Priest is a more mid focused muff. I would say the Ram's Head has a tighter low end, but also somehow more bass plus at the same time more high end presence in the distortion/fuzz. The Dope Priest is smooth and yet somehow still pretty ragged sounding. The tone knob isn't as extreme on the Dope Priest and I think all the settings in the rotation might be a little more usable than the Ram's Head. The Ram's Head cleans up a little better in that it retains the high end as you turn the volume on the guitar down, whereas the Dope Priest smooths out the high end quite a bit. I could see keeping both on the same board for different tones.
After I got the Dope Priest finished, I decided to make some experimental adjustments to the muff values. I used 1uf caps for all the input/output caps as well as the blocking caps in the clipping sections, 470pf on q1, 220pf on q2 and q3. 10k resistors on the collectors and 100 ohm resistors on the emitters. It's a very saturated high gain sound with a tight low end and plenty of highs. I modified the tone controls with values for a slight mid boost I came up with experimenting with on the online version of Duncan's tone stack calculator.
https://www.guitarscience.net/tsc/b...k&RM=100k&RL=1M&C1=6.8n&C2=4.7n&RM_pot=Linear
I think I'm goin to switch the tone stack over to green russian specs and maybe change those 220pf caps to 470pf just to smooth things out a bit. The mid boosted tone stack doesn't sound bad exactly, but it eliminates the characteristic muff tone.
A couple days ago I stared building a Green Russian clone on vero board while I was waiting on more pedalpcb pcbs. It wasn't until I started populating the board that I realized I didn't have any 12k resistors for the collectors or a 20k for one half of the tone control. I substituted 15k resistors for the 12ks, kept the emitter resistors on q2/q3 to 390 ohms, and changed the emitter resistor on q1 to 150 ohm for increased gain. I used 22k on both halves of the tone control (close enough IMO). I don't have a Russian muff to compare this to, but it is really thick. It definitely sounds fuzzier than the clips I've heard of the Russians on youtube. It's hard to tell since youtube compression screws with the actual sound of the pedal. I've found that turning the tone control up all the way with the sustain up all the way gives a nice well rounded fuzz tone. As the tone control goes down the low end takes over. If the sustain is half or below the tone control seems a bit more useable on the guitar. I haven't used it on a bass yet, but I bet it sounds really good. The Dope Priest is too midrangey for bass. I found the Rams Head had enough low end for bass without being overbearing.
I have some more muff pcbs that just came in today to experiment with further. For the next one I'm thinking 10k/150ohm on the first three transistors, 470pf/0.1uf in the clipping sections, with the Russian tone stack. It seems like the first stage mainly controls the overal gain, but the compression and saturation are controlled by the amount of gain in q2/q3. The more gain in q2/q3 the more you need to cut the bass there to keep it from getting overpowering. So the 0.047uf caps in the Russian clipping sections gets pretty overbearing with more gain. Maybe somebody will find this useful for the muff modding. The Kit Rae page is cool, but the mods section didn't really scratch that itch for me.
After I got the Dope Priest finished, I decided to make some experimental adjustments to the muff values. I used 1uf caps for all the input/output caps as well as the blocking caps in the clipping sections, 470pf on q1, 220pf on q2 and q3. 10k resistors on the collectors and 100 ohm resistors on the emitters. It's a very saturated high gain sound with a tight low end and plenty of highs. I modified the tone controls with values for a slight mid boost I came up with experimenting with on the online version of Duncan's tone stack calculator.
https://www.guitarscience.net/tsc/b...k&RM=100k&RL=1M&C1=6.8n&C2=4.7n&RM_pot=Linear
I think I'm goin to switch the tone stack over to green russian specs and maybe change those 220pf caps to 470pf just to smooth things out a bit. The mid boosted tone stack doesn't sound bad exactly, but it eliminates the characteristic muff tone.
A couple days ago I stared building a Green Russian clone on vero board while I was waiting on more pedalpcb pcbs. It wasn't until I started populating the board that I realized I didn't have any 12k resistors for the collectors or a 20k for one half of the tone control. I substituted 15k resistors for the 12ks, kept the emitter resistors on q2/q3 to 390 ohms, and changed the emitter resistor on q1 to 150 ohm for increased gain. I used 22k on both halves of the tone control (close enough IMO). I don't have a Russian muff to compare this to, but it is really thick. It definitely sounds fuzzier than the clips I've heard of the Russians on youtube. It's hard to tell since youtube compression screws with the actual sound of the pedal. I've found that turning the tone control up all the way with the sustain up all the way gives a nice well rounded fuzz tone. As the tone control goes down the low end takes over. If the sustain is half or below the tone control seems a bit more useable on the guitar. I haven't used it on a bass yet, but I bet it sounds really good. The Dope Priest is too midrangey for bass. I found the Rams Head had enough low end for bass without being overbearing.
I have some more muff pcbs that just came in today to experiment with further. For the next one I'm thinking 10k/150ohm on the first three transistors, 470pf/0.1uf in the clipping sections, with the Russian tone stack. It seems like the first stage mainly controls the overal gain, but the compression and saturation are controlled by the amount of gain in q2/q3. The more gain in q2/q3 the more you need to cut the bass there to keep it from getting overpowering. So the 0.047uf caps in the Russian clipping sections gets pretty overbearing with more gain. Maybe somebody will find this useful for the muff modding. The Kit Rae page is cool, but the mods section didn't really scratch that itch for me.
