DEMO Uber Drive (Boss SD-1)

[Fizz]

@MichaelW do you notice any difference in those Mylar and Tantalum capacitors? For some reason I have a fascination with the OD-1 and found this post a while back where he describes getting better tone on his with Mylar and carbon resistors, etc. so I bought some to try.

RC3404 or MC3404 equivalents?

Working on a Boss OD clone and it’s asking for a MC3404 or I can also use RC3404. For the life of me I can’t find either of these online. I keep getting MC3403 and variants. Does that work? I can’t even find data sheets for the MC3404 but they’re both 14 pin chips, so I’m guessing they’re pretty...

forum.pedalpcb.com

I got all the Mylar sizes I could find at Tayda (which wasn't much.. and some are huge) just to try this on my OD-1 build and my second Uber build. I purchased two of these Uber PCBs (since they don't have the OD-1 here) and wanted to build the first one with regular parts... the second with Mylar, and carbon resistors.. possibly Tantalum too.

 

[MichaelW]

@MichaelW do you notice any difference in those Mylar and Tantalum capacitors? For some reason I have a fascination with the OD-1 and found this post a while back where he describes getting better tone on his with Mylar and carbon resistors, etc. so I bought some to try.

RC3404 or MC3404 equivalents?

Working on a Boss OD clone and it’s asking for a MC3404 or I can also use RC3404. For the life of me I can’t find either of these online. I keep getting MC3403 and variants. Does that work? I can’t even find data sheets for the MC3404 but they’re both 14 pin chips, so I’m guessing they’re pretty...

forum.pedalpcb.com

I got all the Mylar sizes I could find at Tayda (which wasn't much.. and some are huge) just to try this on my OD-1 build and my second Uber build. I purchased two of these Uber PCBs (since they don't have the OD-1 here) and wanted to build the first one with regular parts... the second with Mylar, and carbon resistors.. possibly Tantalum too.

I think this gets into the category of "mojo", which is hard to define. I'm a bit of a mixed bag, I like PIO caps in my guitars because I can hear a difference. But I've built some pedals with mojo parts and can't really hear any real difference between them and modern parts.
But I'm all for anyone one wanting to go down that rabbit hole... Let us know how it works out hahaha.

 

[HamishR]

Beautiful build as always, Michael! I like following your build reports.

I recently built an SD-1 just to see if I could "improve" it. Contrary to a lot of folks here I really don't like the sound of the SD-1 - it is probably that I am scarred from selling them when I worked in a music store and heard them played so badly so often. I don't like the slightly weird high end they have, and how thin they can sound. But what shocked me was how easy it is to get them to sound really good. I added a bass pot, used four diodes instead of three, tweaked a few other things and bam! A really usable OD. Then I got rid of the transistor stages - According to Chuck that's fine if you use a chip like a TL072 or TLC272, rather than the 4558. So now I have a relatively simple overdrive that actually sounds pretty darn good.

And I am far from being an electronics wizz like Chuck. I still don't really understand how these things actually work.

So now you have me trying other classic overdrives. I have a Blues Driver board on the way from Aion - they have made it possible to add a bass pot to it, which I think could be really useful on the circuit. I'd love to try the OD 3 too.

 

[geoffrey]

I too have never played an SD-1. And now (providentially?) I happen to check out this thread right after I post my Red Herring build report mentioning this. As usual, @MichaelW and the rest of you lot have given me no choice but to order yet another OD from @Robert.

As an aside, that's a sweet P-90 tele you got there. I'm in process of building my own partscaster tele and am considering just a singe P-90, Les Paul Jr. style. Might even call it a Tele Jr. This idea isn't set in stone, but I'll be sure to share it with you all when done.