This Week on the Breadboard: The Lingonberry OD

Chuck D. Bones

Circuit Wizard
Another One Control / BJFe creation. Similar to the Strawberry Red OD (Snozzberry OD), it has a Bass Cut up front, followed by a variable gain stage driving a Honey Bee style OD stage and a Treble Boost at the end. Typical of BJ's designs, the EQ knobs are subtle. Here's Kanengomibako's trace of the Lingonberry OD. This thing is a MotherFucker in stock form, but you know I just can't leave well enough alone.

BJFe Lingonberry OD.png

Like the Strawberry, it has separate Vrefs for each stage. Overkill IMO. C7 and the Vref for U2B (schematic above) are extraneous IMO because U1B's output is plenty close to Vref. I replaced the passive treble Boost at the last stage with an active Treble Boost/Cut. On the breadboard, I added a "HamishR switch" to select between red and IR LEDs for D3 & D4 (switch not shown in schematic below). IMO, red and IR sound so similar that one can install one or the other. The IR LEDs have a lower Vf, similar to two Si diodes in series. For most control settings, you'd be hard-pressed to hear the difference. D1 and D2 don't glow unless you dime DRIVE and slam this with a booster. Their purpose is to prevent U1B from hitting the rails. BASS has a much broader sweep in both directions with the new component values. I bumped R6 up a tad so that DRIVE is not so touchy near zero. Unlikely that anyone will set it below 2 (9:00). Other than that, I left the gain and OD stages alone. Except for adding the COMP pot. HamishR gave me that idea and it's a good one. With COMP dimed, D5 & D6 provide a ton of compression. As we turn COMP down, the dynamics and volume increase. The volume increase necessitates putting the LEVEL control ahead of the last stage to prevent it from saturating. VR3 now provides about 9dB boost or 11dB cut at 10KHz. Compare that with 6dB boost or 0dB cut with the original circuit. The original circuit uses TLC2272 for U2 because it has a rail-to-rail output for maximum headroom. I don't have any of those (yet), so I tried LT1490 (also rail-to-rail opamp), CA3240, CA3260 & TL072. They sound pretty similar, so in a pinch, I'd use the good 'ol TL072. At the moment U2 is LT1490. U1 is not critical, as long as it's low-noise, so TL072 is good there as well.

I may fiddle a few component values, but it's pretty damn good as drawn. R13, R14, C10 & C11 affect the midrange tone. C6 affects the bottom-end. C15 & C16 control the TREBLE control's freq range.

Lingonberry OD cb mod v0.2.png

U1 is at the lower right, U2 top center. Spare opamps bottom center. D3 & D4 light up quite nicely, especially if they are super-brights. One or both could be used to light up something like a satanic sheep on the front panel.

Knobs (L-R): LEVEL - TREBLE - COMP - (HamishR Switch) - BASS - DRIVE
Lingonberry OD cb mod v0.2 breadboard 02.jpg
 
Last edited:
Nice demo!
Even when people says a layout is "verified," it may not be fully functional. There are some good layouts on dirtboxlayouts and it's treasure trove of pedal schematics, but as darwin999 says: caveat emptor. I have seen layouts there with errors that prevent them from working.
I trust Kanengomibako's traces.
 
Last edited:
I definitely agree re: dirtboxlayouts - and frankly think it's good policy for all stripboard layouts to take the time to painstakingly go through the schematic and make sure every connection between components is correct in the vero layout.

And yes, from reading Kanengomibako's blog (w/ the help of browser auto-translation), it is eminently clear that he is extremely thorough.
 
Last edited:
I have built this too, from the same trace that Chuck used. This is the Layout I drew up and it works! No mods in this layout.

Lingonberry OD.png

I have also built a version of it with some of my mods. This reduces distortion and sounds good to me - but it's not really a Lingonberry OD any more. The BASS control works better than it the original. The clipping diodes are two pairs of 1N4148s. This one works to and is more to my taste, which may not be everyones!

Lingonberryish.png


I hope this is ok Chuck - I can delete if it's a hijack!
 
I feel I should add that Chuck has been incredibly generous with help and knowledge with me in aiding my feeble attempts to find the sounds I want. He may be a stern taskmaster but he is a treasure to this forum. And now I will stop sounding like a sycophant.
 
Vertical components? Have I taught you nothing, grasshopper? 😁

Note that TLC272 & TLC2272 are not the same thing.

The clipping diodes on the gain stage (U1B on my schematic) have no effect on the sound, except under extreme conditions as noted above.
 
Last edited:
By the way, the TLC072 (072 not 272) is another superb dual opamp like the TLC2272 - just noting.
Very low voltage noise, extremely low current noise, very high input impedance, and designed for single sided supply.
 
Yeah I know they are different opamps but I struggle to hear a difference! I mean obviously the difference is 2000 but it's hard to hear. I do like the Tender Loving Care though. I feel that's the important thing. Plus I have quite a few TLC272s.

And I think if vertical components are good enough for Ibanez and Boss... I doubt my pedals will be going into a space telescope, for example.
:)
 
Back
Top