Carvin T01 Overdrive

All about modern commercial stompbox circuits from Electro Harmonix over MXR, Boss and Ibanez into the nineties.
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Frank_NH
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Post by Frank_NH »

I picked non-functioning Carvin T01 on eBay. Turned out the wiring was messed up and the cheap volume pot was bad. Replaced all the pots and fixed the wiring, and now it works great. I traced the circuit and it appears to be a part-for-part copy of the Boss SD-1. Sounds great though - probably because it uses the highly coveted JRC4558D :lol: Also, you'll notice that it has a third jack which turns out to be a footswitch jack - not sure what advantage that provides, but there it is.

On the plus side, this pedal is built like a tank. Heavy duty steel construction and smooth controls. On the negative side, the jacks are all board mounted and wiring is less than perfect. The switch is also a bit iffy and may need to be replaced at some point. Still, it's a keeper, if for no other reason than it's relative obscurity in the world of pedals.

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Frank_NH
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Post by Frank_NH »

BTW - I'll post some pictures of the circuit board when I can get them to embed in a post (for some reason my links aren't embedding :scratch: ). There you'll see the footswitch jack...

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Frank_NH
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Post by Frank_NH »

Here's the Carvin T01 PCB (top).
IMG_2028b.jpg

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Post by Frank_NH »

And the bottom...
IMG_2030b.jpg

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tube-exorcist
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Post by tube-exorcist »

How cool:

"Carvin - a company which can build a Boss SD-1 clone with all its drawbacks."
"I've noticed there's an inverse relationship between cost of gear and talent. If you need the most expensive gear to get decent tones, then you suck as a player."

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Frank_NH
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Post by Frank_NH »

Well, it actually sounds pretty good stock. It rolls off the annoying higher frequencies you hear in most TS clones, and has enough crunch for the blues or classic rock. It's definitely a keeper since I don't have an SD-1 :)

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