freestompboxes.org

Hello, first pedal I'm posting. I like the sound of this pedal mostly, found it for pretty cheap on Amazon when I had a giftcard to burn there. I wish it got a little brighter, so that it could get a little more of a trashy overdrive, and also it gets some hum when you start to crank drive and gain. When I opened it, I was a little surprised to find so much surface mounted components. Also, the output jack had solid core wire just wrapped around the tabs, not soldered on. Pretty weird. The labels on the board might appear blurry in the pictures, and to a degree that's my camera, but also they're actually printed kind of blurry.

It has one IC I cannot find, marked 9521 EZ809, and seems like it's from ST microelectronics.
Diodes look to be 1N4001
both transistors are 2N3393
Electrolytic Caps: C19,21 = 4.7u/35V; C20 = 100uF/16V; C22,23,24=10uF/35V
Unfortunately, I don't think any of the surface mounted caps have markings. I don't know if I could desolder each one and measure...although I did my first bit of surface mount soldering today. Used solder glue and a hot air soldering gun. That thing was magic.

Hope I did this right.

I was just wondering if anyone knows a clever way of getting the caps measured w/o desoldering.

You haven't got the toadworks compressor by chance for some guts shots iam hanging to see whats in that baby

Hey, sorry, no I don't have their compressor. Mr. Squishy is what you were (4 months ago) talking about right? Recently, I've been pretty unimpressed with the L'il Leo, now discontinued. I gave it a try, really tried to like it, but alas no. It is supposed to get "cranked Fender" sounds but it really doesn't have that slightly gritty or just barely fuzzy sound to it. Past minimum settings on both gain and drive, it is OK, but nowhere near the clean tone. I only ever turn the tone knob down below ~85% when I decide to crank both gain and drive, but that gives me this annoying low frequency humming/buzzing when I play softly. I'd think that a good Fender emulation, pardon my bullshit guitar-speak, would get really bright and twangy. This pedal isn't really that good, probably just some op amp gain stage with regular ol' diode clipping, a weak tone control right before the output and for the drive, an extra clipping stage with different caps for that "open" sound. Oh well. Maybe I'll flip it. I kind of feel bad though because I don't want to sell something I've altered--I ended up soldering the shitty connections to the pots. Can you believe they just wrapped wire around the lugs? I mean to sell that, and not even solder? Come on, I knew better as a freshman EE. I do that kind of stuff on breadboards when I have no idea what values to use. And for the record, my mangled, burned-traces, too many switches modded big muff pi makes less noise than this does.

I'm not sure if the L'il Leo is representative of the kind of pedals Toadworks makes...I almost went for the John Bull British overdrive instead, also discontinued. Both were about half off on Amazon for some reason (oh wait maybe the description above is that reason). At least the John Bull would have covered up the noise with the cock-rockin' distortion. Who knows though, maybe it would have been even worse.

As for compressors, all I've got is the EHX Soul Preacher, which I do like, even if it's a bit noisy. It really squishes by the time you get to halfway on the sustain knob. The internal trimpot is good for volume adjustment (input gain to be exact), maybe I have it set to high, but it is also just a little noisy for my liking, but that could just be me and my setup/crappy cables. I like having the attack time as a parameter, so maybe something like the EHX whitefinger handles the noise issue a little better. For the Toadworks compressor, I am willing to bet there's something out there that does what the Mr. Squishy does and more, and better.

pedalgrinder wrote:You haven't got the toadworks compressor by chance for some guts shots iam hanging to see whats in that baby

I have one. I will try to get those up in the next day or so

iam not sure if iam pushing my luck but i have found from other traces from photos we've never been able to see all the capacitor numbers. Is there any chance you could write down what numbers on the caps you see so we have a better chance of tracing it also a nice clear one of the track side so we can clone the board as in make it into a etchable. Thanks really appreciate it this one sounds like a great one and would be a good candidate for a new thread so even when you post the pics start a new thread. thanks a million happy as a little piggy in shit!!!!!!

pedalgrinder wrote:iam not sure if iam pushing my luck but i have found from other traces from photos we've never been able to see all the capacitor numbers. Is there any chance you could write down what numbers on the caps you see so we have a better chance of tracing it also a nice clear one of the track side so we can clone the board as in make it into a etchable. Thanks really appreciate it this one sounds like a great one and would be a good candidate for a new thread so even when you post the pics start a new thread. thanks a million happy as a little piggy in shit!!!!!!

Sure will bring to work today. I have used it on my board but it's pretty noisy. I have the original one serial number 134. It is a really simple circuit double sided board. It is a pretty noisy pedal. Lots of hiss. It feels like a pretty transparent comp but the noise was to much for me on a device that is to be squeaky clean. It drives my brute, klon, and fuzzs very well though.

Stay tuned

I went a little overboard before:
It's a pretty cool pedal, I just wish it had a little more in the low gain settings. Also, the low freq. hum isn't from this pedal. I unplugged a few pedals before it (It wasn't the haphazardly modded BMP doing it though--I still had that) and it was working without any hum even on the highest settings. Just a little hiss there but that's with everything aimed. Still not sure about the soldering onto lugs. It seems from what other people have played that it does get lower gain settings than I am seeing. Oh well. Just wanted to rescind the over-the-top bad review above and say what mattered in a more normal voice. Also correct the noise thing I put in there.

if anyone is trying to get rid of noise and hiss there is a verified pedal on this forum that everyone over looks the ibanez nb10 it uses a lm1894 from national semiconductors still easily available from evilbay and you can adjust how much you chop. If you read the theory on how it works you will love it for that hissy compressor you love but don't know how to tame on the hiss. this will do it. It is a seriously overlooked pedal really great option to have on your board.