Son Of Ben Preamp

[FormulaFourteen]

Although it looks like one of my neater builds, I found this build hard work and quite stressful. My tweezers broke, getting the LED to sit right took an age, I forgot which way DC jacks work, i spent ages stressing about the SMD adaptors, and worst of all I felt like I was battling the manufacturing tolerance of everything at every stage - getting the pots to line up was an absolute ballache. I'm also going to have to get some superglue to ensure that the dc Jack doesn't rotate - just go for safety sake. That said everything worked first time when I plugged it in so pretty pleased with that.

As for the pedal itself, I think I expected more. It's a very versatile drive pedal but for some reason I was expecting some of that starved voltage fuzzy thing to appear at somepoint so I'm left a little underwhelmed. Need to spend more time with it I guess and maybe tweak the trimmers.

 

[FormulaFourteen]

Oh, and for future reference this is a Tayda 125B enclosure in candy metallic purple.

Here is the Drill Template

 

[FormulaFourteen]

Hey guys -

Think i spoke a bit too soon yesterday. This might "just" be an overdrive but it's a very, very good one. It's almost impossible to make it sound bad.

That said, I definitely don't get the fuzzy, almost velcro, amp-about-to-blow tones that Andy gets at the end of this video. I get a lot of gain, but it's not fuzzy.

Any idea on whether tweaking the trims will get there (in which case which and how?) thanks!

 

[p_wats]

Nice job persevering through the build! For what it's worth, I was a bit underwhelmed by this circuit too (so much so that I've yet to box it up). Maybe it's all the hype this pedal got that means expectations are too high?

 

[FormulaFourteen]

Nice job persevering through the build! For what it's worth, I was a bit underwhelmed by this circuit too (so much so that I've yet to box it up). Maybe it's all the hype this pedal got that means expectations are too high?

Maybe...

I have to say that I lost an hour playing through it this afternoon. It's really a very nice pedal, even if i did expect something slightly different.

 

[zgrav]

First thing, you might want to try putting a higher level signal into the pedal to see if you like the additional distortion you could get, but you still have plenty of ways to tweak the pedal to suit your ears.

No reason not to dial down the trim on one or more of the pots if you are looking for more sounds from the pedal. Start at either end and give it a try. I would probably start by setting Trim1 to 3.5 volts and see if you like it Then put Trim1 back where you had it and try Trim3 at 3.5v. Then Trim2. If Trim1 or Trim3 sounded good. try it with Trim2 turned down a bit as well. Treat those three adjustments like a sandbox and let us know what you discover.