Diodysus design stage

Frequent asked about building blocks: gain stages, buffers, clipping configurations, ...
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Kierkegaard
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Post by Kierkegaard »

hey my friends

had an idea today whilst messing around with a breadboard, following a few tutorials and learning about a simple amplification circuit and had an idea, probably not news to you guys but id like to see it through.



here is the schematic, i basically took the simple amplifier and then ran it through two different pairs of germanium diodes to hear the difference, boosting again after to get some volume, my idea is to add maybe 5 or 6 different diodes on a multi switch so i can have access to lots of different subtleties in one box.

i would like to have a pot that controls the gain of the diodes, right now im driving them about half as much as i would like too, but im very green and have not much of a clue where to start with this. I read about putting the Diodes in series will decrease voltage loss (more volume) but also soften clipping (less gain)

i was also looking at the OG klon circuit and thought that maybe i should use TL072 instead of JFETS but that feels like a whole bunch more to learn about, maybe its unnecesary?

anyway, hope someone can see what im going for and give me a few pointers in the right direction

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soulsonic
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Post by soulsonic »

Bypass R4 with a 10uF cap with a pot in series with it. I would choose something between 1k to 5k for the pot. The 10uF cap bypassing R4 will give you very much increased gain, and the pot would allow you to dial in how much.

Try lots of other diodes. They all sound different. Comparing germanium diodes to, say, LEDs is a huge drastic difference that isn't subtle at all.
"Analog electronics in music is dead. Analog effects pedal design is a dead art." - Fran

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