Messages

Encase it in an aluminum box to hide your shame!

Nice build! And very nice demo! Some great sounds there!

Whats up with the bias arrangement for the op amp stages? I'm not very used to the 386, does pin 7 provide a Vref?

Thanks! The LM386 creates it's own bias voltage which is accessible on pin 7. I experimented with a separate bias network for the other opamp stages, but didn't find it improved noise performance. Using pin 7 for the bias voltage seemed to tighten up the circuit's response to me—and it saves a couple of resistors!

I saw a few YouTube demos of people getting super sludgy, doomy sounds by running a Rat in front of an Acapulco Gold. This design began with asking, "What would happen if you just shoved the LM386 gain stage right inside the Rat where the clipping diodes usually go?" A high-gain turducken! There ended up being more to it than that, but that's where it started.



Bare metal felt like the right look.



This layout should fit in a 1590B. If you were really ambitious, you might be able to cram it in a 1590A.

A short demo:

The "Focus" control grew out of the Ruetz mod for the Rat. The values were changed so that turning the Focus up cuts bass frequencies, but also increases the gain significantly. The clipping diodes help to limit how hard this first gain stage hits the input of the LM386—it can only take so much input signal before it turns to mush—and the asymmetrical arrangement emphasizes 2nd order harmonics, making the guitar sound more nasal and mid-range focused. This feeds the LM386 which is set up the same way we've seen it in the Acapulco Gold, the Smash Drive, the Clari(not) and other designs. Last is an active tone control that creates a high shelf at 720Hz. It's capable of -13dB to +7dB. This design isn't the most versatile, but I think it does very convincingly get into that Sleep/Sunn O))) territory.



..and the layout for anyone that might be interested in building one.

Looks good! What's the story behind the artwork?

Looks nice! Do you have any projects in mind to use this as a platform for?

And what a cool demo!!

Thanks! I didn't want to futz with video editing software, so I had to find a way to do it in one take without any fancy title cards or captions. I also didn't want to yammer into the camera. My favorite demos have always been of the "less talking, more rocking" variety.

Awesome design! The doubling is super sweet. Love that the range is useful on everything, I never manage that 

Thanks! It was definitely hard to resist the temptation to add more range to the "Detune" control, but if I want octave drops on sixteenth-note repeats, I'll get my Clari(not) out.

They look really good, especially together!

Special Sauce is for when your tone needs a little something extra. It's a PT2399 based delay with envelope controlled pitch modulation that does chorus, vibrato, doubling, or slap-back delay.



The board is mounted to a wooden standoff with hot glue. It sounds precarious, but it's the best way I've found to mount vero builds.



This circuit is tuned for short, bright delays ranging from 30–150ms or so. The short delay time meant I could use the first CMOS stage of the PT2399 as an input buffer instead of for filtering. A Mosfet at the output supplies 0—35dB of gain. The real trick here is using the voltage on pin 8 as an envelope follower (as discovered by DeadAstronaut). Instead of applying the pin 8 voltage directly to pin 6, I used it to control a 2N5089 set up as a voltage sink. This makes the pitch bending much more pronounced, especially at shorter delay times.



Here's  a short demo:

Here's my layout, if anyone else wants to build it.

Super exciting! I started looking into lasers after my last water slide decal debacle...definitely need to keep saving my pennies.

Guess it's time to build a Boss Tone!

I've had this one boxed up for a while and have been hesitant to make another Electra post, but I do think there are some interesting features in this iteration. I started with a list of all the features I wanted in an overdrive pedal and ended up with this: pre-gain bass control, post-gain treble control, a "texture" control (which I'll explain more later), and enough output to boost other pedals downstream.





The texture control was inspired by Jack Orman's articles on "warp" controls, where a potentiometer is used to vary the clipping threshold of different arrays of diodes. I didn't see the arrangement I ended up using, but it definitely inspired me to explore. When the texture control is fully counter-clockwise, you get symmetrical clipping. This is the familiar squishy and harmonically rich sound you'd expect. As the control is turned clockwise, the clipping becomes increasingly asymmetrical. This emphasizes the even-order harmonics, creating a reedy, nasal, and in extreme settings, almost octave-up kind of sound. The advantage of the particular arrangement I've used is that the volume is very consistent across the range, unlike a lot of other diode-switching schemes.



The values above reflect the circuit as I built it. If anyone else is interested in building this circuit, let me know; some of the values could probably be streamlined with little effect on the sound. 

Really cool idea! Looks functional as well as aesthetically striking. I imagine the horns make it easier to twist knobs on the fly with a foot.

Thanks! I'm hoping they'll come back in stock at Small Bear (they carry other things I need), but it's nice to have a Plan B.

I'm looking for a rotary switch for an upcoming Glasshole build. They are currently out of stock at Small Bear and it's not very clear what the manufacturer/spec should be. Does anyone know of another supplier, or at least the make/model that's appropriate for the Glasshole?

Thanks for the help!