Twill Deluxe (Les Lius) to High Power Tweed Twin

[jiverson]

Hey folks. First post here. Thanks for having me!

I had a Les Lius years ago. Once Lovepedal came out with the High Power Tweed Twin, I sold the Lius and bought the HPTT. The Les Lius didn't quite work for me personally. Something about not being able to control much about the boost side made it sort of pointless for my needs.

About 10 years and a couple dozen overdrives later, I just can't get the HPTT off my board. It does exactly what I want and it's my favorite drive.

Lovepedal claimed the HPTT was simply the most popular setting on the Lius (Twin) and put it in a smaller enclosure without the extra boost and added a tone toggle.

So my question is, has anyone successfully modded the Twill Deluxe into the High Power Tweed Twin? What would it take. Seems like it would be simple enough, but I feel like I'm missing something.

Thanks again!
- Josh

 

[t1redhands]

I'm not sure about the tone toggle off the top of my head.
Regarding the clipping switch, here's Lovepedal's description of how it works:

"This handmade guitar pedal features a three way toggle switch that allows you to change tones from 5E3 Woody (Tweed Fender Deluxe), High Power Twin (50's Fender Twin) and Master Volume Tchula (combination of both the 5E3 Woody and the High Power Twin). The amount of gain is controlled by the first knob. The second knob is a second gain stage which emulates what happens when you crank one of these vintage low wattage amplifiers."

So you'll want to find out which clipping diodes are the High Power Twin setting and set it there (I suspect it's just the pair of silicon diodes).
Also you'd wire the boost pedal to permanently "on:" skipping the switch and putting a jumper between the two connections.

Does the tone toggle make it brighter or just darker?

 

[jiverson]

Thanks so much for the reply. Did some deeper comparing of circuits (Lius vs HPTT) when I got home today. Here are some findings...

My comparison was based off of a Madbean Les Lius clone I made several years ago while I wait for my Twill Deluxe board from PedalPCB. But the circuits are pretty much identical except Bean recommended replacing the stock 2N5088 tranny with a 2N3565, and the gain pot is a B500K vs the B1K in the twill.

The voice on the Les Lius that's identical to the HPTT is the middle setting on the switch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the schematic I'm thinking I can just bypass the voice switch and D3 - D5 altogether (SW3 - see image)??




Another observation was that the gain amount was identical when the gains were maxed on each pedal respectively, but to match lower gain settings below 9:00 on the HPTT, the clone had to be about 3/4 of the way up. It seemed like all the usable gain on the clone was in the last 1/4 of the dial. Could that be because of the madbean clone called for a B500K pot there? I checked the HPTT and the gain pot is B1K, same as the Twill Deluxe. I may try swapping it out on the clone here to verify.

Otherwise, yeah, spot on tonewise. As for the voice switch on the HPTT, I typically play it toggled to the right, which is the middle brightness setting. This is also the setting that matched the clone the closest. So to follow up on t1redhands question, the 3-way tone switch on the HPTT is brightest in the middle (bypassed?) and darkest on the left, and somewhere in the middle on the right. I'm guessing it's just toggling in different resistors. Seems like a good candidate for a pot if you ask me. Thoughts?

Lastly, while I had the HPTT open I was hoping to aquire more info. It's a super simple circuit. But in the Lovepedal, they use those tiny components and part of the board was gooped

Sorry for the book. I'm gonna get there and hopefully this investigation helps someone else.

 

[t1redhands]

The tone switch on the HPTT probably switches out capacitors in a low-pass RC circuit. You know, you could probably reuse the "voice" toggle and the diode spots on the Twill board to recreate this. If you tie a 10K resistor in series with C2 and put a 15nF capacitor in either D3 or D4, and a 33nF capacitor instead of D5 you'll get a cut at 1,061hZ and 482.5hZ, respectively. Or mess around with an RC calculator to get the cutoff frequency you want: https://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm

 

[jiverson]

Brilliant suggestions. I’m gonna build it up once I source all the parts and report back. Thanks again!

 

[jiverson]

Update, and two questions:

Got this all built up. Stock circuit working as it should. I'm struggling with jumping the boost switch so it's always on. I keep second guessing myself.

I numbered the pads on the diagram. Which pads should connect to which here? Thinking 1 to 3, but again, second guessing...



Second question is, t1redhands mentioned adding a 10k resistor in series with C2 when I add in the tone cap options. Curious what the purpose of that resistor is.

Thanks again. Almost there!

 

[t1redhands]

To bypass the footswitch in the "boost" position you'd connect 1 to 2. It looks like 3 and 4 are used to turn on the LED in boost mode.

Compare the back half of the Twill Deluxe to the Distortion 250:



On the Distortion 250, R4 and C5 make a low-pass filter, rolling off the highs above 16kHz.

To get the same thing on the Twill Deluxe, you'd add a resistor in series after C2 and whatever capacitors you want in the clipping diodes positions to roll off the highs where you need.

Do you still have the HPTT? You could take a photo and see if we can identify the capacitors used in the tone switch.
I'd get some values using this calculator https://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm and socket the capacitors to test them out, soldering them in when they sound good.

 

[jiverson]

Thanks! I do have the HPTT, but the circuit is gooped. I need some sockets anyway, so I'll try the values you mentioned earlier as a starting point.

 

[jiverson]

Low-pass circuit in place. Works a treat. Tried the 15nF and the 33nF as suggested. The 15nF sounds about identical to the lowest voice setting on the HPTT. The 33nF was a bit too muddy. So I'll keep the 15nF for the lowest voice. To get that in-between voice, I'm thinking a 6.8nF? 5.6nF? Would just have to source one since I don't have one here.

I can't thank t1redhands enough for all the wisdom here. Once it's all sorted out I'll post a pic of the board with the updates for preservation.

 

[jiverson]

Following up with the results and final circuit tweaks to turn the two channel Twill Deluxe (Les Lius) into the one channel High Power Tweed Twin.

Again, this takes the most widely preferred voice of the Les Lius (HPTT), and makes all the gain available from one switch. It also replaces the voice toggle with the HPTT's EQ toggle. I'll say the EQ toggle is subtle, so by all means, experiment away. I've modeled my EQ cap choices after what sounded closest to my ears with what's in the original Lovepedal I own.

To summarize:
• Tie 10K resistor in series with C2
• Replace D5 with 15nF cap (most treble roll-off)
• Replace D3 or D4 with 6.8nF cap and omit the other (slight treble roll-off)
• Jumper the two leftmost pads in lieu of the 'Boost' footswitch
• You can omit the LED and R101 (led resistor) for the boost side




Pedal sounds great! I've incorporated the circuit into a 3-in-1 foundation pedal for my live rig.

Tellurian Drive > Twill Deluxe > True Bypass Loop

Here are a couple pics if interested...





Learnings:
• DD boxes have additional screw channels in the middle haha
• Don't design DD drill template to have holes in the center edges (again, the screw channels). Had to break out the dremel.
• Don't put your footswitch holes too close to the edge of the box lol.
• Tayda's UV printing is not bad at all for the money. Will do again.

Thanks again to t1redhands for all the help. Couldn't have gotten there without you.