High Gain PCB recommendation

[Marshall Arts]

To complete (well... it's never complete, right?!) my arsenal of dirt boxes, I am searching for a ready-made PCB for a high-gain pedal. It should provide some good chugga-chugga but should also be usable for screaming lead sounds, if that makes any sense. Looking at originals or clones on youtube is nice, but maybe you guys got some recommendation for me. So far, I am thinking about ONE of the following:

PedalPCB.com:
- Thermionic Distortion (Friedman BE-OD)
- Valhalla (Diezel VH4)
- Wrecktifier (Wampler Triple Wreck)
or maybe just a plain Dr. Boogie.

I'm drawn towards the Thermionic, but than again I already have a BSIAB and an OCD, which covers the Marshall territory to some degree already.

Hints and help welcome!

[blearyeyes]

To complete (well... it's never complete, right?!) my arsenal of dirt boxes, I am searching for a ready-made PCB for a high-gain pedal. It should provide some good chugga-chugga but should also be usable for screaming lead sounds, if that makes any sense. Looking at originals or clones on youtube is nice, but maybe you guys got some recommendation for me. So far, I am thinking about ONE of the following:

PedalPCB.com:
- Thermionic Distortion (Friedman BE-OD)
- Valhalla (Diezel VH4)
- Wrecktifier (Wampler Triple Wreck)
or maybe just a plain Dr. Boogie.

I'm drawn towards the Thermionic, but than again I already have a BSIAB and an OCD, which covers the Marshall territory to some degree already.

Hints and help welcome!

I have Wrecktifier and it is pretty unruly. Definitely super high gain. Not the best for leads IMHO.  Don't know the Thermionic. Dr. Boogie is still waiting to be done. What amp(s) guitars do you use?


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[Marshall Arts]

To complete (well... it's never complete, right?!) my arsenal of dirt boxes, I am searching for a ready-made PCB for a high-gain pedal. It should provide some good chugga-chugga but should also be usable for screaming lead sounds, if that makes any sense. Looking at originals or clones on youtube is nice, but maybe you guys got some recommendation for me. So far, I am thinking about ONE of the following:

PedalPCB.com:
- Thermionic Distortion (Friedman BE-OD)
- Valhalla (Diezel VH4)
- Wrecktifier (Wampler Triple Wreck)
or maybe just a plain Dr. Boogie.

I'm drawn towards the Thermionic, but than again I already have a BSIAB and an OCD, which covers the Marshall territory to some degree already.

Hints and help welcome!

I have Wrecktifier and it is pretty unruly. Definitely super high gain. Not the best for leads IMHO.  Don't know the Thermionic. Dr. Boogie is still waiting to be done. What amp(s) guitars do you use?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have a Marshall Silver Jubilee 2554 and an Engl Ironball, but this one is for my Matchless Spitfire Clone for occasional harder stuff. Strats with HBs or SCs in Bridge Position with active onboard preamps...

[Willybomb]

I'm still searching for that sound too...

As far as high gainers go, I've built the BE-OD, BSIABII, Crunchbox, jfet JCM800, Mudflap (triple wreck clone with modified boost), Dr Boogie, Boneyard (dual and single channel), Superjudge, Purple Plexi 800, None More Black, Plexidrive, Sovereign, Big British Distortion, Seventh Heaven, and probably a few more too.

I still haven't quite found anything I like as much as my HT-Dual.  Even the LT-Dual didn't come up to it.  Funnily enough, jamming with the cover band sees me using the Zendrive 90% of the time and the HT-dual stays at home.

A quick rundown of of a couple opinions would go like this (these are just the ones I can recall right now):

- Mudflap:  Insane amounts of dirt.  There is no mid or low gain on this, just slightly less dirt.  Pretty noisy.  I'm going to use it with a gate.
- BE-OD:  Nice, but I think mine suffers from 4148/914s in place of the Bat46s.  I have two more of these to try out.  Didn't think it did low gain that well.  Bit dark too.
- Seventh Heaven:  Cold? Sterile?  Doesn't have the "edge" of other pedals but does have it's own thing going on.  Almost like a high gain blues pedal, if that makes sense...
- Marshalls in a box:  In order of lowest dirt to highest - Superjudge, Plexidrive, Boneyard, Crunchbox.  All these do a nice plexi but you can do metal with the crunchbox...  The Superjudge really needs a buffer in front of it, but kicking it with a boost makes it magical.  The plexidrive is a good allrounder, the Boneyard takes that a little further, but the crunchbox tops these but is a little woody imo.  The BSIAB is similar to the Crunchbox in terms of gain, but does the lower gain thing better and is less woody.
- Purple Plexi800:  had a farty note decay in my build.  Seems to be an issue with the 386 based builds.  Was a bit noisy too.
- Big British Distortion:  A bit bass heavy for my tastes.  Basically a 3 knob jfet marshall layout (gain, tone, vol).
- None More Black:  I really liked this one, but it seemed to have an undercurrent of noise that I'm putting down to the charge pumps I had (I had a really bad run of noisy pedals using charge pumps).  Going to try it again.
- Sovereign:  If you have a single coil in the bridge, you need to try this out.  It ca have a strange spongy attack with humbuckers, but with a tele it really is fantastic.
- Jfet JCM800:  The eq on this doesn't really work that well at all but you can clip a capacitor to fix that.  However, this rendered the High/Low input mod unusable in my build when I couldn't one of the j201s to bias correctly after clipping the cap.  Fixing the cap meant the High/Low inputs worked.
- Dr Boogie:  Pretty similar to the Mudflap/Triplewreck soundwise if different in topology.  I think the Mudflap might have a more cutting distortion though.

What do I like most?  Very hard to say.  I want to try a Dirty Shirley as my tastes are dropping back from the extreme high gain stuff, but I do like the BE-OD.  I quite like the sound of the low input on the jfet JCM800 too.

[thomasha]

Some years ago I built a Sr. Boogie for a friend.
I used a bigger box and added another footswitch just to change the gain pot (with added bypass cap) and that was enough to have both worlds in one pedal. There were other interesting mods, like bypass caps or a different tonestack.

The Dr. boogie is also a good starting point. There are other pedals, similar in structure and some of them also use the extinct J201, which in this circuit works almost like a tube gain stage. You will definetely need to go smd. There are some smd to through hole boards though.

[gordo]

I'm obsessed with the PedalPCB Wrecktifier lately.  Lots of gain without getting too thin and this is the first version I've built that is relatively quiet.  A booster in front tends to make it mushy for leads, but a klon-ish booster behind it works well.

[Marshall Arts]

Wow. Thanks for the fast and detailed answers!!!

[287m]

I'm still searching for that sound too...

As far as high gainers go, I've built the BE-OD, BSIABII, Crunchbox, jfet JCM800, Mudflap (triple wreck clone with modified boost), Dr Boogie, Boneyard (dual and single channel), Superjudge, Purple Plexi 800, None More Black, Plexidrive, Sovereign, Big British Distortion, Seventh Heaven, and probably a few more too.

I still haven't quite found anything I like as much as my HT-Dual.  Even the LT-Dual didn't come up to it.  Funnily enough, jamming with the cover band sees me using the Zendrive 90% of the time and the HT-dual stays at home.

A quick rundown of of a couple opinions would go like this (these are just the ones I can recall right now):

- Mudflap:  Insane amounts of dirt.  There is no mid or low gain on this, just slightly less dirt.  Pretty noisy.  I'm going to use it with a gate.
- BE-OD:  Nice, but I think mine suffers from 4148/914s in place of the Bat46s.  I have two more of these to try out.  Didn't think it did low gain that well.  Bit dark too.
- Seventh Heaven:  Cold? Sterile?  Doesn't have the "edge" of other pedals but does have it's own thing going on.  Almost like a high gain blues pedal, if that makes sense...
- Marshalls in a box:  In order of lowest dirt to highest - Superjudge, Plexidrive, Boneyard, Crunchbox.  All these do a nice plexi but you can do metal with the crunchbox...  The Superjudge really needs a buffer in front of it, but kicking it with a boost makes it magical.  The plexidrive is a good allrounder, the Boneyard takes that a little further, but the crunchbox tops these but is a little woody imo.  The BSIAB is similar to the Crunchbox in terms of gain, but does the lower gain thing better and is less woody.
- Purple Plexi800:  had a farty note decay in my build.  Seems to be an issue with the 386 based builds.  Was a bit noisy too.
- Big British Distortion:  A bit bass heavy for my tastes.  Basically a 3 knob jfet marshall layout (gain, tone, vol).
- None More Black:  I really liked this one, but it seemed to have an undercurrent of noise that I'm putting down to the charge pumps I had (I had a really bad run of noisy pedals using charge pumps).  Going to try it again.
- Sovereign:  If you have a single coil in the bridge, you need to try this out.  It ca have a strange spongy attack with humbuckers, but with a tele it really is fantastic.
- Jfet JCM800:  The eq on this doesn't really work that well at all but you can clip a capacitor to fix that.  However, this rendered the High/Low input mod unusable in my build when I couldn't one of the j201s to bias correctly after clipping the cap.  Fixing the cap meant the High/Low inputs worked.
- Dr Boogie:  Pretty similar to the Mudflap/Triplewreck soundwise if different in topology.  I think the Mudflap might have a more cutting distortion though.

What do I like most?  Very hard to say.  I want to try a Dirty Shirley as my tastes are dropping back from the extreme high gain stuff, but I do like the BE-OD.  I quite like the sound of the low input on the jfet JCM800 too.

hell yeah!! another gainiac hunter!
i must admit, at first, i think the post written by J0k3rx, Temol, or Brejna. hahaha. peace man!

what, no tight metal? morpheus? riot? 5150? krank?
and now i know, why your nick is Willybomb. 

[junkemail86]

Like many of you, I am also on an endless search for the perfect high gain pedal.
I've built the BSIAB II, Reezafratzitz, DAM Sonic Titan, Pinnacle, Dr. Boogie, Zvex Box of Rock, Zvex Box of Metal, Crunchbox, Suhr Riot.
I'm more of a shredder than a rhythm metal player, so I guess it depends on what you are looking for.
For screaming leads, I like the Pinnacle (pretty comparable to the BSIAB II if you do the contour knob mod, I also did what I think was called the smoking bullet mod or something that removed some of the caps at the end and improved the sound a lot for me) and Reezafratzitz.
Sonic Titan, BSIAB/Pinnacle, Crunchbox, Riot, and Box of rock do a good medium/high gain Marshall rhythm tone, but not so much a hardcore metal sound.  All have pretty good medium to high gain Marshall lead tones.
The Dr. Boogie and Box of Metal do more of the high gain Mesa metal rhythm sound, but I don't like the solo lead tones personally.

Hope that helps

[sonnyboy27]

I built the BE-OD recently and it's great. It has a bit of a mid scoop and doesn't do low gain well. But it's definitely got that thick Marshall through a 4x12 sound.

I'd recommend the Dirty Shirley or the Brown Betty board that Bugg made. That way you get the mid control. If there isn't enough gain in the Dirty Shirley (which is hard to imagine. I have the internal gain trimmer all the way off and it's still a ton) then you can swap one resistor in one of the gain stages to make it the BE-OD with a Mid control.

[Marshall Arts]

I built the BE-OD recently and it's great. It has a bit of a mid scoop and doesn't do low gain well. But it's definitely got that thick Marshall through a 4x12 sound.

I'd recommend the Dirty Shirley or the Brown Betty board that Bugg made. That way you get the mid control. If there isn't enough gain in the Dirty Shirley (which is hard to imagine. I have the internal gain trimmer all the way off and it's still a ton) then you can swap one resistor in one of the gain stages to make it the BE-OD with a Mid control.

BUGG?

[brucer]

BUGG = MB username BUGG = http://www.pedalpcb.com/:

- Dirty Sanchez: http://www.pedalpcb.com/product/dirtysanchez/
- Brown Betty: http://www.pedalpcb.com/product/brownbetty/

[bsoncini]

 The two pedals that I built recently like this are the be od and the triple wreck.

I really dig the be od. The triple wreck not so much. I can't put my fingers on what was wrong with the triple wreck but it just seemed really generic to me with both single coils and humbuckers.  The bass control was useless outside of 11-1 o'clock. Ymmv. I found the be od much more versatile. Could be the gear I used or my personal tastes.

I've never tried the dirty Shelly nor the brown Betty. But the brown Betty I can see being really versatile. You get the mids control and the tight control from the be-od (very useful)

But take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm not looking for a particular sound or trying to copy a sound and i build pedal to see if I bond with them or not, and most I don't really.

[somnif]

Please don't take this seriously, but this thread really reminds me of a hilarious vid about how to get a good Metal guitar tone (tongue firmly in cheek):

Beyond that I'm not much help here, as I prefer a low-mid gain sound and playing with other sonic wackiness (I own a cello bow, but no cello, and 4 reverb pedals. To give some clues).

[somnif]

Oh and its slightly more serious sequel (still with glorious rubber faced Scottish fellow included):