Onerr Tungsten Overdrive (from Brazil) - the journey begins

[TheShadowKnows]

Got it off of eBay for $12 I think (still paid too much) an Onerr Tungsten Overdrive.
The seller, a guitar store in Indiana said it was from Brazil and gave it all kinds of glowing tonal accolades. Since I was interested in a box that's not from the eastern rim, I dedcided to take a chance and get it.
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It's brand new, came in a box plastic wrapped and all. Even has a catalog of products with Brazilian endorsers. I have a pic of the catalog. One of the endorsers looks like a pair or martial arts guys. Hard to say.
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The pedal's well constructed, all metal with the Boss type screw access to install a battery.
I was really hoping for something better than the off brand distortion torture that usually accompanies 'cheap' pedals. But nothing new is coming out of Brazil right now. I did a reveiew of the Washburn Soloist Distortion over at Harmony Central and this pedal sounds as bad only in a different way. Maybe they hear distortion differently in Brazil? Maybe when you import a Brazilian pedal it won't sound the same in your country? Do I need a 220v > 9V power supply? Hummm.
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There's really not much gain past unity. The tone control goes from 'blanket over your speaker cabinet to something a kin to treble, but at least it's not icepicks. The gain goes from 1 speaker cone slashed to all 4 cones slashed. Sorry Slash. I'm not dissing you.
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Imagine if someone took a razorblade to your speaker cones and you'll have the true sound of this pedal. But... after taking it apart (see more pics) there's so much room to play with. And they have a 4558 chip to boot! Lots of room on the PCB, so I'm not so disappointed.
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The clipping diodes are on the edge for easy access. SWEET! Now I have a new playground to explore. Should be fun! I'll keep you all posted with my progress and problems, if any.
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I do love their catalog slogan: Looks good. Sounds better.
Obviously they've not seen $300 hand made hand painted botique pedals.
Looks like Pooh. Sounds like heaven.
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[phibes]

Monica is smokin' hawt!!!!!!

[TheShadowKnows]

OK. After poking around in this Brazillian box, no side jokes intended, I was about ready to put it all back together and sell it on eBay to some poor unsuspecting soul. At least it would come with some decent diodes in it, for gawds sake!

I tried nearly every single diode combination I could think of but I was still getting a 60's fuzz box sound out of this crazy thing. Mind you, that's not a bad sound, if it's what you're looking for. But I didn't grow up in the 60's. So since I tried a silicon diode and a zenner diode together in series I thought, why not 2 LED's in series? Never heard that combo. What have I got to loose?

So with some creative soldering, I managed to mount them on the backside to test them out. See pic below. And that was it! The diodes in series really clamp down on the fuzzyness and made it into a dirty boost. The gain control barely starts clipping 1/2 way through the knob sweep and then it really comes on. I wasn't looking for this but it's a great treat! Running it through the clean channel of my tube amp and setting the box's gain just before it starts hard clipping gives you that wonderful compressed sustain blues overdrive. And here I thought I was going to have to dump this thing from being so frustraited with it.

So now I have 2 modded semi-chainsaw boxes, 2 modded nice distortion boxes, this dirty boost box and one more to try out this 'double diode' technique on to see if I can clamp down on the gain and make it into a dirty boost also. The nice thing about these 2 particular diodes is they make the signal very clear or transparent (plus a volume bump doesn't hurt). So I really needed both of them to clean up the signal since I was at my knowledge limit concerning altering circuitry.

And that's my story of the Brazillian box gone bad then made good by meeting up with the double diodes.
I love playing mad scientist with stomp boxes. And the best part is when you FINALLY get them to sound like you want them to.
That's like money in the bank... because I didn't have to spend a wad on the bowteak handmade ones.
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[kleuck]

I used to have a CarbonX, and it's a clone of the TS9, minus the switching system.
I suppose that their other pedals are clones too.