The Angry Man

[HamishR]

I built an Angry Andy a while ago and quite liked it. So I thought I'd have another look and see if I could get something I liked better out of it. The main thing is that it made the bass strings quite fuzzy, and unless I'm playing a fuzz I like twangy bass strings. So i simply moved the diodes from being hard clippers at the end of the circuit to the more usual place of in the feedback loop of the first gain stage. That made the circuit sound a lot darker, so I removed pretty much everything which could darken the signal! Added a bass pot because I always do. Changed the taper of the gain pot to audio. Reduced gain slightly, tweaked stuff in general and now I have succeeded in making it sound like all my other overdrives!

Well it does sound a lot like my Timbreman, but a bit more "solid" sounding; it's kind of not exactly more aggressive sounding but it is definitely not a shy sound. There's no fluff. It's a full, fat sound with nowhere to hide. I love it! So I'm calling it the Angry Man. I think it's going to get a lot of use in my rig.

The enclosure is becoming a relic job - it's had a few different circuits in it but this one is staying. It's a very simple circuit because most of what I have done is discard bits. I have to say thanks to Chuck for teaching me so much. I'm not sure he would have done to this what I have but I'm very happy with it anyway.

 

[JamieJ]

That gut shot is a vero work of art! Love it @HamishR

Also it wouldn’t be a build of yours if there wasn’t a bass pot added to the circuit

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Damn that's some sexy vero action.

 

[Laundryroom David]

 

[Feral Feline]

DIY incarnate!

 

[Guilherme Collateral]

Clean as a whistle! Love it

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

Schematic coming soon?

 

[HamishR]

Fine! Enough with all the nagging...



Actually it's a bit weird seeing the output section drawn as a schematic. But it works well. It's one of those pedals which seems to work with just fine everything at noon.

One thing I'm curious about is how it might work with something like a TL072. I haven't tried that yet.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

With DRIVE at noon, the 2nd stage won't saturate. Go much beyond that and it will. Different opamps will saturate differently.

So how does it sound if you set DRIVE to 3:00?

 

[HamishR]

Really dirty! I wouldn't use it there much. It's around noon for me, depending on the guitar. It might be 1.00 with a Strat, noon with the Les Paul and 11.00 with a Gretsch. As should be obvious, I don't really know what it's doing but damn it sounds good.

I changed from a B100K to A100K to give me more control over the lower gain settings.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

I like to be able to use the entire range of the knobs on my designs. If they go too far, I change something to reduce the range.

In this circuit, the ratio of the two R6s (!) sets the max gain of the 2nd stage. Consider increasing the R6 that connects to C4 or reducing the other R6.

your favorite spot won't be noon anymore...

Or install some blue LEDs between IC1-6 and IC1-7 to keep the 2nd stage opamp from saturating.

 

[Fama]

That is amazingly clean looking!

Also,

 

[HamishR]

Thanks Fama!

Chuck I might not use it much but I don't find it objectionable. There may come a time when I do use it - It's a pretty cool saturated sound for a kind of almost Muff tone - I probably prefer it to a Muff in some ways. I'm happy to have it available.

 

[HamishR]

Not really good at demos! Sorry. It's so hard to get a decent sound recorded.

And Chuck I was thinking about what you said. Thing is I don't know of a single overdrive pedal that I would ever use past 3.00. I did go back and test where I would use the Angry Man with both Les Paul and Duo Jet. And there is a range which really suits me - with my Les Paul it sounds just beautiful at 9.30 to 10.30, lower than I had thought before. With the Jet it's probably 10.00 to 12.00. And a little higher for the Strat. With the A100K gain pot it's easy to dial in where I like it, which makes me wonder if it's all that important what the gain sounds on full. Would I prefer it to stop at, say, 2.00? Possibly. Should I use an A25K or A10K pot? I'm ok with it how it is. I'm not making these to sell to the masses.

And FWIW I definitely prefer to have two R6s. How can you have tone for days without two R6s? I might use three next time. Anyway well done in spotting my deliberate error.

 

[Laundryroom David]

I had an AT+ for a few minutes a while back. It had truly impressive gain, but I did not care for the eq or the compression toggle. I can’t wait to breadboard this.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

BIG gain jump from 3:00 to 4:00 and even bigger from 4:00 to 5:00. Almost like a switch.

 

[Fama]

Not really good at demos! Sorry. It's so hard to get a decent sound recorded.

No worries, I've been living in the amp sim and later on Quad Cortex world for so long it's easy to forget that with a real amp capturing good tones is much harder, the few times I've mic'd an amp up it's always been a pain.

 

[HamishR]

BIG gain jump from 3:00 to 4:00 and even bigger from 4:00 to 5:00. Almost like a switch.

Yeah there really is. It's weird because it's so usable and easy to dial in below that. The sound is sublime with my Les Paul. So clear and powerful. I'm really impressed with how I can play clean notes then dig in a little and it howls. I'm thinking of experimenting with one of the R6s (possibly adding another) to see what happens. How bad could it be to have R666?

I already dropped R3 (sadly only one of those) to 470K in a (possibly misguided) effort to lower gain. I was thinking of trying a 220K at the second R6.

And if you are really fussy I have committed blasphemy and changed the name of R6-b (here seen as a 220K):

 

[HamishR]

No worries, I've been living in the amp sim and later on Quad Cortex world for so long it's easy to forget that with a real amp capturing good tones is much harder, the few times I've mic'd an amp up it's always been a pain.

When I had built a few amps I really wanted to capture the sounds of them, so tried an SM57 into an Apogee Duet into Garageband. Sounded awful. Bought a Seven Circle Neve style preamp which helped a lot, but still didn't sound anywhere near as good as the amp. Then I got a Royer 121 and tried close-miking with it, using it about a foot away from the amp, distance miking with the Royer and close miking with the SM57 (best sound so far) etc but still it sounds pretty crap compared to the real deal. I remember using an SM58 into a Tascam 234 - no mixer, no EQ - and it sounded great. I really struggle with digital recording.

And then the computer I recorded with died, along with all my files. I'm never going to be a recording engineer. I even read Geoff Emerick's fantastic book about recording the Beatles and still I can't record...

 

[Fama]

When I had built a few amps I really wanted to capture the sounds of them, so tried an SM57 into an Apogee Duet into Garageband. Sounded awful. Bought a Seven Circle Neve style preamp which helped a lot, but still didn't sound anywhere near as good as the amp. Then I got a Royer 121 and tried close-miking with it, using it about a foot away from the amp, distance miking with the Royer and close miking with the SM57 (best sound so far) etc but still it sounds pretty crap compared to the real deal. I remember using an SM58 into a Tascam 234 - no mixer, no EQ - and it sounded great. I really struggle with digital recording.

The thing is, a SM57 into an Apogee Duet into Garageband will probably sound good.

But the trick is in where you put the SM57. The location and orientation make a huge difference. And figuring out a good position is a huge pain in the ass. Moving the mic just a centimeter (or half an inch for you US people) can change the tone a ton, and similarly rotating it a bit will also change things. Not to mention moving the mic and checking how it sounds is annoying, unless you have isolated headphones and can run the amp so low you can actually hear what it sounds like live - and then you can't really be sure how the tone will change once you turn the amp up.

That's why it's so much easier to just use IR's from some professional engineer who spent years learning where to put the mics, so I don't have to.