I posted recently about my "Stack Here" 1590G builds, I finally did a demo video – it's a whistlestop tour covering:
These are both great circuits and can play very well together – these highlights are just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out, parallel mixing is a lot of fun and you can get some great and unique sounds.
Signal path:
- Box Of Rock and Hot Cake circuits individually
- Mixing them together in a few combinations
- Boosting them both with an SHO
These are both great circuits and can play very well together – these highlights are just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out, parallel mixing is a lot of fun and you can get some great and unique sounds.
Signal path:
- SHO 1 for boost >
- Buffered splitter (Fuzzdog Spluffer) >>>
- [ Box Of Rock > SHO 2 on zero gain, just to get phase back to normal ]
- [ Hot Cake - B50K gain pot instead of C50K, sorry ]
- >>> Active mixer (GGG Mini mixer) >
- Output to Harley Benton GPA-100 on low volume, through a Vintage 30 in my ancient Valvestate open-back combo.
- Layout – the biggest issue for 1590G builds like these but definitely some ups and downs. The Hot Cake was my first custom overdrive layout and I learnt a lot; the Box Of Rock was comparatively a walk in the park; the splitter/buffer is a very simple circuit but trying to squeeze in those giant blue 1U capacitors absolutely kicked my arse.
- Drilling – always important but zero room for complacency here. Measure 3 times, center punch, center punch again, 2mm starter hole, step drill bit (carefully), final bit for the actual size. And even then a bunch of filing.
- Hot Cake EQ – the tone on this thing is wild, not just because the "presence" control is actually a mid boost, but also taking the gain past 75% really sends the peak down to 600hz and boosts everything under it.
- Shoulder washers for isolation – very helpful for using whatever jack socket you like and keeping it isolated from the enclosure.
- Schematics for research – I've found PPCB and Fuzzdog exceptional references for schematics, very helpful to cross reference and investigate why they sometimes differ and what impact it does/doesn't have. Learnt a lot.
