Plexi variant?

[highway jones]

Any chance you have considered one of the brown sound Plexi variants as an offering?  There are quite a few to choose from but, the Carl Martin has resurfaced lately based on a demo by Peter Thorn.

[madbean]

That sounds like something that could be very worthwhile. Can you link us up to some of the stuff you've seen?

[highway jones]

"http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ng4peS3MjrY"

[redbean]

I need some Plexi-love for my solid state amps! 

[mjcyates]

That pedal sounds awesome! Of course the guy playing has a little to do with that.

[stevewire]

That pedal sounds awesome! Of course the guy playing has a little to do with that.

...and his array of fine guitars and amps.  It's a very fun video to watch.

[Myramyd]

Yeah, I could really use this pedal, so I don't have to haul my Marshall half stack to practice every week.

How much of a difference do you think there would be between this pedal and the Grapevine?

J

[madbean]

I think I could do something like this, but without the need of a transformer. Just take +/- 9v off a Road Rage which will get pretty close to the 12/-12 the Plexitone has.

It looks intriguing, so yeah, we'll see about this one.

[B_of_H]

I love that demo, he's come a long way since the days of doing lessons in his bedroom huh?  Good for him!

The crunch and high gain would be a great project.  Im noT sure the boost needs to be in there though.

As far as the grapevine is concerned i think this demo at least sounds more amp like.  I like the grapevine but it doesnt do the medium to lower gain sounds all that great but i havent really done too much testing with it.  Granted he's also using a tweed and marshall style amp when ive only used fender style amps with my grapevine. 

[madbean]

Here's the schematic I came up with for this. There are a couple of small changes, but it is mostly the Plexi. I dropped the buffer altogether because there's nothing special about it. It will run on +18 / -9v from the Road Rage.

I'll try and work the rest out when I have a little more time.



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[madbean]

R11 should probably be connected to ground, not Vb, I just realized.

[B_of_H]

wow that was fast, nice work. 

[Myramyd]

As far as the grapevine is concerned i think this demo at least sounds more amp like.  I like the grapevine but it doesnt do the medium to lower gain sounds all that great but i havent really done too much testing with it.  Granted he's also using a tweed and marshall style amp when ive only used fender style amps with my grapevine.  

Yeah, I have a DRRI that I like to take to practice since it's so much lighter than my Marshall half stack and two pedal boards (duh) but, I'm having a real hard time figuring out what pedal to get to cover that Marshall tone with it. I'm on limited funding right now so I can't really order a bunch to try out. I have an Egodriver and a BYOC Shredder (along with a BYOC Mouse, and a bunch of OD pedals). Those aren't doing much for me.

I haven't been able to figure out if I need to try a Grapevine or the new Boss Power Stack or some kind of emulator circuit or one of the other Madbean distortion projects (Krank, Kokbox, Boomstick). But this here pedal may just work perfectly--if it sounds good with blackface Fender amps that is. 

I had to pull out the PODxt tonight to use with the DRRI and it felt like plugging in to mashed potatoes. No sustain and reacts like a wet blanket. Arrrgghh. I can't believe I used to like that thing. Someone told me to get a Boss DS-1 too and I reacted poorly to that suggestion.

But, this Plexi thing could be a really great project. For me the boost would mean one less pedal on the light board too.

J

[B_of_H]

As far as the grapevine is concerned i think this demo at least sounds more amp like.  I like the grapevine but it doesnt do the medium to lower gain sounds all that great but i havent really done too much testing with it.  Granted he's also using a tweed and marshall style amp when ive only used fender style amps with my grapevine.  

Yeah, I have a DRRI that I like to take to practice since it's so much lighter than my Marshall half stack and two pedal boards (duh) but, I'm having a real hard time figuring out what pedal to get to cover that Marshall tone with it. I'm on limited funding right now so I can't really order a bunch to try out. I have an Egodriver and a BYOC Shredder (along with a BYOC Mouse, and a bunch of OD pedals). Those aren't doing much for me.

I haven't been able to figure out if I need to try a Grapevine or the new Boss Power Stack or some kind of emulator circuit or one of the other Madbean distortion projects (Krank, Kokbox, Boomstick). But this here pedal may just work perfectly--if it sounds good with blackface Fender amps that is. 

I had to pull out the PODxt tonight to use with the DRRI and it felt like plugging in to mashed potatoes. No sustain and reacts like a wet blanket. Arrrgghh. I can't believe I used to like that thing. Someone told me to get a Boss DS-1 too and I reacted poorly to that suggestion.

But, this Plexi thing could be a really great project. For me the boost would mean one less pedal on the light board too.

J

IMO the difference in marshall amps and fender amps all boils down to the tone stack.  the fender has more upper mids and the marshall has more lower mids.  To get a marshall sound out of a fender I think you have to slightly boost the 500hz to 900 hz and slightly lower the 1k to 1.6k range...but that is just an unscientific opinion based on my somewhat unreliable ear and 'betty crocker science'.    I'm kinda new at this whole frequency thing. 

I don't buy into the power amp differences being anywhere near as significant as the tone stack. 

I really dig the spackler project for this reason, I think at lower boost levels post dirt it can kinda turn a fender into a more marshall like sound.  I haven't extensively tested this yet though.  I do know that the spackler post OCD really sounds good to my ear through a fender blackface type amp as long as your speaker can handle it.  Those jensens in the DRRI can get kinda rough when you push them with too much lower mid content.  I put a Emi Governor in a friends DRRI with some JJ 6v6s's and it just oozes great OD tones now just by cranking it up and/or putting a TS style pedal in front of it (modded for more low-mids).  on top of that it has a lot more headroom now and can cut through a super loud drummer onstage. 

[madbean]

In other news, the PCB design is finished. I'll get this built up with some of the other stuff I'm working on very soon.

It'll go in a 1590BB long-wise and have board mounted pots. There will be plenty of room to work inside the enclosure, so no worries there.