Hi all,
I was bored so I started building a pedal that I already sort of have
. Well, I have the Thermionic Deluxe. And now I built the normal Thermionic on Vero, using a layout from Alex over at tagboardeffects.
Why? Well, bored. And I thought it'd be interesting to see if with Vero I get oscillation. And also, I read that the original used BAV99 diodes (in the Deluxe I used 1N4148s) and the shop I usually use had them in SMD.
In the pic below you can see the SOT23 BAV99s mounted on TO-92 adapters. They have 2 diodes in series each, so instead of four 1N4148 you see two BAV99s.
The Vero layout is identical to the Thermionic, except it's using a few 100nF caps less in the power section. The layout is mean for 125B, but I like to use plastic standoffs with Vero, so I cut the board a litter wider and used a 1590BB.
Initially I did get oscillation with gain cranked. I thought maybe it's due to the lid and case having no contact due to the thick paint, so I took some paint off where the two connect. Maybe that helped a little, but oscillation was still there. So I replaced the input and output wires of the jacks with shielded wire. As luck would have it that fixed the problem.
As far as noise is concerned the Vero build is on par with my PCB Thermionic Deluxe. Maybe the PedalPCB beats it by a fraction. Considering that
1. the vero build has a lot more flying wires
2. sits in a smaller case, it is pretty crammed
3. this is a gain monster
I find this is actually pretty impressive.
Soundwise the first thing I noticed was that they sound very different when all their knobs are at 12 o'clock. I had expected them to sound about the same at this position. As it turned out all I needed to do was dial down (way down) the Mids on the Deluxe. With that they sounded the same to me and when when turning the rest of the knobs they also behave the same.
In hindsight I think I'd have preferred an audio taper gain pot instead of the stock B1M. I think for lower gain settings this could be useful, because with B1M it ramps up pretty quick. I could just swap the pot, but I'm feeling lazy right now. Maybe later
Regarding the diodes. I can't hear a difference. I guess that was to be expected.
I was bored so I started building a pedal that I already sort of have
. Well, I have the Thermionic Deluxe. And now I built the normal Thermionic on Vero, using a layout from Alex over at tagboardeffects.Why? Well, bored. And I thought it'd be interesting to see if with Vero I get oscillation. And also, I read that the original used BAV99 diodes (in the Deluxe I used 1N4148s) and the shop I usually use had them in SMD.
In the pic below you can see the SOT23 BAV99s mounted on TO-92 adapters. They have 2 diodes in series each, so instead of four 1N4148 you see two BAV99s.
The Vero layout is identical to the Thermionic, except it's using a few 100nF caps less in the power section. The layout is mean for 125B, but I like to use plastic standoffs with Vero, so I cut the board a litter wider and used a 1590BB.
Initially I did get oscillation with gain cranked. I thought maybe it's due to the lid and case having no contact due to the thick paint, so I took some paint off where the two connect. Maybe that helped a little, but oscillation was still there. So I replaced the input and output wires of the jacks with shielded wire. As luck would have it that fixed the problem.
As far as noise is concerned the Vero build is on par with my PCB Thermionic Deluxe. Maybe the PedalPCB beats it by a fraction. Considering that
1. the vero build has a lot more flying wires
2. sits in a smaller case, it is pretty crammed
3. this is a gain monster
I find this is actually pretty impressive.
Soundwise the first thing I noticed was that they sound very different when all their knobs are at 12 o'clock. I had expected them to sound about the same at this position. As it turned out all I needed to do was dial down (way down) the Mids on the Deluxe. With that they sounded the same to me and when when turning the rest of the knobs they also behave the same.
In hindsight I think I'd have preferred an audio taper gain pot instead of the stock B1M. I think for lower gain settings this could be useful, because with B1M it ramps up pretty quick. I could just swap the pot, but I'm feeling lazy right now. Maybe later
Regarding the diodes. I can't hear a difference. I guess that was to be expected.
