Splendiferous (Aka Mad Professor Royal Blue Overdrive)

P

psb962

Active member
Here is the second of my current series of (5) builds. I was attracted to this as its allegedly a Bjorn design and I have none of his. It also uses red LEDs for clipping, which I don't have anywhere else. I had no challenges with this build and even managed to use a few of my pile of gifted vintage axial caps. If they are indeed polarized, I hope I got them the right away around (taper = positive, right?).

I took a risk and boxed it up before testing it but it worked right away.

Early days on how it sounds but my first impression is that it has a distinct Vox vibe to it: scooped, chimey.

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dcfvgb said:
I'm thinking of building one of these, wonder how it compares to a timmy?
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Give me a few more weeks, I have all the parts to build one of those too.

I will be giving this a go through my Tweed Deluxe next as I think it might do a Blackface job on it.

Update: The Tweed didn't like it much, I was hearing too much coming through in bass. However, on a Marshall style amp it sounds really sweet. There is a lot of harmonic content coming out that makes this OD really good for low gain expressive play. Its also good when the gain is wound up but volume on guitar is down.
 
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Good looking build.


Are those knobs dark brown, or are they black and look brown because of the lighting?


I like that it's NOT Royal Blue, even though it's called that.


Hmm "Royal Beige" ... 😸
 
Question for the team: is it usual for soft clipping LEDs to glow even on the softest of strums with Gain set to minimum? I decided to play this with the back off in a dim room, and was surprised that the LEDs glow so easily. They get brighter with more Gain and harder playing, but it seems they are always clipping to some degree. Is that expected in a soft clipper?
 
dcfvgb said:
I'm thinking of building one of these, wonder how it compares to a timmy?
Click to expand...
It's not very close to a Timmy. Its gainy-er and the clipping sounds more like a Dumble-esque overdrive than anything else. Keeping in mind that Juhl's always has his own thing going on. One of the reasons I love his circuits.
 
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