I had a KOT and sold it. It was nice. I was underwhelmed by the drive side. The boost was excellent. If he sold just the boost... maybe I'd keep it. Is the Aristocrat the drive side or the boost side?
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Show posts MenuQuote from: madbean on July 07, 2010, 12:40:26 PM
You've got a solder bridge between the Master vol and one of the led's or the 9v rail, I think. Or, the grounding isn't correct. Those are the only two things I can think of that would make that control affect the LED.
stecykmi is right on. I would disconnect it from the switching altogether and verify that the circuit works correctly first.
Quote from: madbean on June 29, 2010, 11:36:28 PM
I'm not talking about any one particular effect, as much as stating a general preference. JFets sound more natural to me, with more harmonic content than most op-amp based overdrives. They work great for boost and distortion, too. I came to that conclusion solely from having built lots and lots of circuits and listening to their character and texture. I can usually tell one type from the other just by listening, although voicing and other factors can make them sound similar.
Anyway, there are a lot of great op-amp OD's out there, and in a way they a bit easier to work with in terms of bias and gain. The jFets can be finicky with the biasing (except for mu-amp type stuff like the BSAIB) so it requires a bit more attention if you are actually trying to DESIGN something. With op-amps, it's more predictable: stick a large enough resistor in series with your Vref and then it's just plugging in the right pots/resistors/caps to get the voicing you want. You get a good OD or distortion from only one stage.
The fets require multiple stages to get those kinds of gains, which opens more possibility for shaping the tone between and through those stages. But, that's also part of the fun. For example, the "Faultline" has A LOT going on. Three gain stages and two buffers and tone controls. And the result is something you just won't reproduce exactly if you were trying to do it with op-amps. It would not be as warm and "sticky" sounding. And that's the real magic, IMO: there's a certain saturation and feel to them that is unique.
Obviously, IC's are made up of a bunch of transistors, and there are jFet-based ones out there like the LF347 that might work just as well. Honestly, I haven't spent enough time researching that to give a better opinion. I'm commenting only on what I hear, and trying to wrap some kind of reasonable explanation around that. I might be completely wrong