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Well heck I guess a flippant answer is in order...In my 20 years of playing professionally I always tried to make life as simple as possible, playing in a power trio and playing keyboards and singing, the last thing I wanted to do was try to match volume in a distortion pedal using a knob on the floor... Actually I didn't use distortion pedals in the 60s and 70s, I had a batterey powered opamp in my guitar that would blow out the front end of any amp, along with all the pedals and such, I was using... Maybe I'm just odd?

So I want to understand this. The type of diode sets the headroom of the IC and the IC does all the clipping? That is not how I think it is...Or the diodes have an inherent clipping profile which includes their rise time and forward voltage which is controlling the gain of the opamp as well as supplying the shape of the clipping?

So what you are saying is that if I lower the voltage AFTER the clipping occurs with the LEDs and lower the overall gain of the opamp it will be the same as using silicon?

Please help me to understand this as I have not gotten any answer that makes sense to me... Basically all I have heard is you have to live with it. I'll go with that if that is how it is...

Thank you guys for your replies I really do appreciate it and am trying to learn...

Daniel Shattuck

When soft clipping using the feedback loop of an Opamp, with 2 LEDs then switching to four IN914s, there is a large gain drop in the signal. How would you control the difference? Is there a way to maintain the clipping caricature but lower the amplitude of the LEDs side of the feedback circuit?

Dan