synthesiserror
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I haven't seen any other build reports on this one yet. I snapped this up when it dropped, but I was only recently able to start working on it.
I ended up breadboarding this one before I populated the board, and I'm glad I did. I was disappointed with the stock sound. Very compressed and very muddy; I suppose that's kind of the point, but it lacked the bark of the tone it was supposed to emulate. I set out to see if I could improve that.
I started by building to the schematic specs, then removing the stock clipping diodes. It sounded exactly the same without the LEDs. All of the clipping in this stage must be happening in the op-amp. I swapped the LEDs with 1n4148s, which killed the gain, but the clipping sounded way better. I swapped one of the 4148s for a BAV21 to make the clipping slightly asymmetrical, but the effect was subtle. After trying a few more, I settled on this combination.
To make up for the lost gain, I increased R13 in the next stage from 10k to 100k.
I couldn't just leave C13, the random electrolytic in the signal path. I tried everything from a 50pf ceramic, to a gamut of film caps, up to 470uf electrolytic in this position. They didn't make one damn bit of difference, as long as there was some capacitor here. Use whatever's handy. So anyway, I ended up leaving the 1uf electrolytic.
At this point, the pedal had a lot more bark, but low E settled into a harsh overtone pretty quickly. Drop tuning made this effect much worse. Increasing R7 to 68k helped this out without dramatically changing the sound. I also swapped R14 to 220k to take a little bit more high end off.
Here's the hideous product of my labor:
I really liked the quality of the powdercoat on this enclosure- this is the matte dark grey from Tayda. I ordered a bunch of different powdercoats on my last order, and this one was easily the nicest, even if it was pretty plain. Graphics are an inkjet waterslide decal with a lacquer film coat. I kind of chowdered the decal up in places, but next time I'm gonna get these UV printed.
I ended up breadboarding this one before I populated the board, and I'm glad I did. I was disappointed with the stock sound. Very compressed and very muddy; I suppose that's kind of the point, but it lacked the bark of the tone it was supposed to emulate. I set out to see if I could improve that.
I started by building to the schematic specs, then removing the stock clipping diodes. It sounded exactly the same without the LEDs. All of the clipping in this stage must be happening in the op-amp. I swapped the LEDs with 1n4148s, which killed the gain, but the clipping sounded way better. I swapped one of the 4148s for a BAV21 to make the clipping slightly asymmetrical, but the effect was subtle. After trying a few more, I settled on this combination.
To make up for the lost gain, I increased R13 in the next stage from 10k to 100k.
I couldn't just leave C13, the random electrolytic in the signal path. I tried everything from a 50pf ceramic, to a gamut of film caps, up to 470uf electrolytic in this position. They didn't make one damn bit of difference, as long as there was some capacitor here. Use whatever's handy. So anyway, I ended up leaving the 1uf electrolytic.
At this point, the pedal had a lot more bark, but low E settled into a harsh overtone pretty quickly. Drop tuning made this effect much worse. Increasing R7 to 68k helped this out without dramatically changing the sound. I also swapped R14 to 220k to take a little bit more high end off.
Here's the hideous product of my labor:
I really liked the quality of the powdercoat on this enclosure- this is the matte dark grey from Tayda. I ordered a bunch of different powdercoats on my last order, and this one was easily the nicest, even if it was pretty plain. Graphics are an inkjet waterslide decal with a lacquer film coat. I kind of chowdered the decal up in places, but next time I'm gonna get these UV printed.
