Mudbunny Clipping Diodes and/or other mods

[mysticaxe]

I've finished my first build - Mudbunny to Civil War specs with the Jack Orman mids (fixed the capacitor and resistor that go on that side of the tone stack), and caps on the volume and sustain pots that Skreddy uses on the P19. 

What I would like to do is lower the clipping a little and smooth it up some.  I've seen people play around with the diodes. 

- My first question is whether the 1st or 2nd set of clipping diodes has more impact on the final sound?
- If I were to try germanium diodes, which have a forward voltage of ~0.3 (vs. the ~0.58 on the silicon ones that are in there), would there be a difference in tone of 2xGe vs. 1x Si?
- I've seen a couple mods that add a cap in parallel to the clipping diodes to bleed treble to ground, would this be effective in smoothing a little?

Thanks!

[pietro_moog]

i think the 2nd position is the one with the big impact. many muff derivates don't have diodes in the first one. with a single germanium clipping diode you expect a big loss in volume. in the 2nd position this could be manageable with the volume pot. in the 1st position you have less clipping too, because of the loss level in the signal going to the 3rd stage. i tried both combinations and to my taste one was very cool, and the other not so interesting, but i cant remember which. i think the cool one had germaniums in the 2nd, i used
2 in series to steer away volume loss.
Ge diodes that way sounded very meaty and bassy (really too much on a green muff, i added a 470nf cap before). on a humbucker neck pick up you can have something like a nice "bloom" on single notes, meaty chords, and sometimes a slight octave, but slight. very cool if you ask me.

the pharaoh muff has that configuration, asymmetrical though.

i don't think the muff needs to cut trebles, just don't go crazy with the tone knob, but that's your choice.
and technically you can increase the size of the cap in the fb loops.
the mudbunny document says everything you need to know.
take a look to the darkside too, in the discontinued projects forum. that's a dark muff

[mysticaxe]

For asymmetric clipping, would there be a big volume drop for 2/1 Ge vs. 1/1 Si?

[pietro_moog]

i have no idea, never tried. just try, you won't regret it. there's not such a thing like the perfect pedal