Comfort Player's Mythic Overdrive from BYOC's PIFmas exchange

[midwayfair]

Comfort Player gave me the extremely generous gift for BYOC's PIFmas exchange of a complete kit for his mythic overdrive, including the very nice silk screened enclosure and high quality caps.



I can't really bring myself to build a klone stock, so as usual I got a little creative with the klipping. CP's enclosure had a hole drilled for a diode selector switch, and wanted something a little different than just an A/B with germanium and BATs or silicons. So I used a center off position with one set of diodes always on, and left/right picks a second back-to-back set in parallel with the first. (The parallel sets have a lower clipping threshold, so they take over for the most part, but you get a little extra character from the multiple types of diodes.)

I also realized I didn't have ANY pedals with Zeners as clippers even though I've experimented with them, so I decided to use them as the main clipping option. If you've never used zeners as clippers, they sound really cool, almost clinically transparent, but with nice rounded (distorted) edges that LED clipping just doesn't have. They have a very high Fv, so this way I get a little extra clean range on the gain knob that won't oscillate at max like a diode lift could.

The blue pair is 1N5711, a schotkey diode with clipping (Fv = .355v) just a bit higher than the average 1N34A. The clip a little hotter than most schotkeys (except for Smallbear's BAT41s, which clip around the same level -- I've never been able to figure out why theirs are different from everyone else's). This setting is really close to "stock" despite not being germanium. Ordinarily I find schotkeys to be less complex (and less spongy) than germanium, but having two different types makes them more interesting, and the parallel Fv ends up about normal for the stock unit.

The pairs on the other side are two 1N60P soldered in series for a Fv of about .45. This is my favorite setting; the diodes just seemed to mix well and there's a lot of good harmonics and even a little "hoot" and "chirp."

Of course, everything's socketted in case I change my mind!

Having built three klons in 1590As, two in 1590Bs, and one in a 125B, it was a little weird to work with a larger enclosure and also a little weird that it still felt like a full case. The wires are a lot longer than I'd normally like, but I'm not getting any noise. I'm also used to hiding my pot wiring under the board, so I had to focus on making things a little neater than usual this time.  :lol:

Thanks again, Comfort Player, for a really excellent PIFmas gift.

[nzCdog]

Woah that thing is HUUUGE!
Very slick Jon... Nice to see the handy dandy clip switch too!

[wolfingsworth]

This is anexcellent build! Major props to Comfort Player for the silk screened enclosure. I like what you've done with the clipping also, very creative!

[pickdropper]

Looks great Jon (and Comfort Player).

I really need to spend some more time with some of the more obscure clippers out there.