"Te" drive (1590A Zen Drive!) and Mousefet OD (Mysterioso's ... uncle?)

[midwayfair]

Some more perf projects.



Big props and thanks to Dan Zink for proving it can be done and for the gut shot showing the pot layout (the lugs face each other).

I used a JRC4558 because I couldn't find the right one and frankly I can never hear a functional difference between most op-amps except in extreme usage anyway. No changes otherwise. The Mosfets are really only socketted because I blew one recently in another pedal (static, I guess) and now I'm paranoid about them.

I like that it does the Sonny Landreth chirp, and it's a nice change from what I'm used to, but I really don't know if I could have something like this on my board. Blues players, especially single coilers, rightfully go nuts for this thing, though. I'd also take this any day over a tube screamer. The "Voice" knob in particular is very interesting.



Not my favorite boxing effort here. I tried doing something that was a bit of a fail: I painted it blue and then sprayed white on top while it was still wet trying to get a wrinkly/cracked look. Unfortunately, it really only cracked in a few places, most of which aren't clearly visible, and the blue bleeding through all over the top makes it look a little dirty. Then I made things worse by not taking my time with the lettering ("Bypass" especially looks awful), and I couldn't acetone anything off without revealing the blue underneath. Finally, it's supposed to have blue knobs, but the only blue ones I had were too big. I'm going to include some blue Davies clones on my next Tayda order and replace them, but I guess the black looks okay.

Now to the more exciting and successful part: the second footswitch is Brian's Mids switch moved to a footswitch. The "boost" knob, though, is a pot in series with the mids cap and the boost trimpot. Putting the boost trim externally didn't work for me -- it oscillated in the last inch of the throw, and it was just too much dirt when it was dimed anyway. The mids boost, though, had potential. But it was usually too big of a tonal change. I experimented some and found that a 100K pot could tame some of the brightness when needed but still provide a shift upward in volume and tone to really feel like it was going from a rhythm channel to a lead channel. I had originally been afraid that the mids boost was actually going to cut some volume, but I was very wrong. I didn't realize until I physically wired it up that it's basically a treble bypass. And the series pot is the same thing as what's going on in the Kinman treble bypass I have in my guitar. So the bypass control is much more linear overall and the overall sound of the pedal can be fine-tuned based on where the internal trimpot is set if the mids boost is on all the time. I think this makes it MUCH more versatile for a second footswitch than the original pedal, which could only go between two drive and volume settings. It's also fewer controls overall.

The buffer is mildly interesting, but I think I could have left it as a dip switch inside. I vastly prefer the buffered setting.

Overall, I did find the volume output a little strangely low. With all the controls dimed, it's still much less output than a Red Llama, which has a similar overall sound but is more transparent (the tone control below noon just starts sounding like mud to me). It's only at unity around 12:00 on the volume and drive, which normally feels like a bit of a mistake to me, but I guess it's nice to have a pedal I can crank for once ... Given that the Llama has such a similar sound and is a much simpler project, I don't think I'd ever recommend this pedal over a Llama. But I'm not sad I built it. I didn't really have anything that was an overdriven Marshall sound, so it's a useful addition to the arsenal.

[skullservant]

So tiny and awesome!

[wolfingsworth]

Very nice Zen Drive! I may have to try this, always like seeing your hand painted enclosures. Kudos!

[midwayfair]

Very nice Zen Drive! I may have to try this, always like seeing your hand painted enclosures. Kudos!

Thanks! When you drill the pots, use the babyboard template, but drill them just a hair (1-2mm) closer to the sides than you would normally to be safe. They'll fit just fine.

If I can get in-line jacks going, I might do something with a 5th pot without resorting to sticking stuff out the sides. I think it can be done.