i built up the fuzz i had laid out (slightly modified the layout, actually, didn't bother grounding all the outs)
and it fired right up, sounded pretty good.. but i wasn't satisfied with it. it was ok, and very much like the snarling dog black dog i had had tonally.
ok, but not great.
so i decided to put on my vivisection hat, and molest the circuit a bit. :icon_twisted:
first, i changed out the gain pot to a 500k instead of 1meg. it just didn't need that much gain, and there was minimal difference between the two. 500k seemed to have the best sweep, so i went with that.
i added reverse battery protection, power supply filtering, and a 1 meg pull down resistor on the input.
it sounded better, and i almost kept it as is.
but then i got thinking about all them wasted stages, and wondered how it would sound if i paralleled the second stage with the unused 3rd stage.
so i jumped them together.
holy SHIT! THIS FUCKING THING GOT LOUD!!! like, loud enough to drive a speaker i think. WAYYYYYY more than necessary.
going with my creed of "too loud, it's excellent", i tried a 1k pot for the volume instead of 10k.
that helped a little bit, but not all that much.
so i decided to try and stick a pot as a variable resistor between the 2nd and 3rd out, with the 2nd and 3rd inputs tied together. it made a minimal difference,
not enough to justify existing.
then i got the bright idea of making it into a tone control...wired as a variable resistor, with the unused terminal going to a cap to ground.
tried .22u, didn't like it. tried 2.2n, same thing. tried .47u, nope. same with .1u. then i tried .047u. bingo. gave a real nice sweep from treble to mud, without getting TOO muddy.
now i could go back to 10k on the output pot. the thing sounded great.
but i had also messed with diode clipping on the output, tried symetrical and asymetrical clippers of various types, si/ge, si &ge, pretty much every type you can think of. 1n60's gave it a bit of octave down, but it was too intermittent to bother with. at some settings of the volume on my guitar i got the most bizzarre tremolo kinda octave down sound. not something i'd really use, so i tried some led's... a pair of super brite clear orange led's gave it a nice edge, AND it looks cool, cuz ya can watch the led's flash with every note you play. but i don't like led clipping all the time, so added another switch.
done deal.
so, when all's said and done, nice very boogie-ish kinda tube sounding overdrive, decent tone control, loud as FUCK!!
when i box it, there will be a tb 3pdt footswitch for in/bypass with led "on" indicator
a second dpdt footswitch with bicolor led (green for rhythm, red for lead) to choose between "lead" or "rhythm" settings
and a switch to turn the led diode clipper off and on. i'll probably mount the led's so you can see 'em thru holes in the top of the pedal.
ANYWAYS, it's a real simple little design that's obviously been done a lot.. but with a couple twists. obviously, using the 4069 instead of the 4049 is the first twist.
the diode clipper is a PREDICTABLE twist.. but i don't recall seeing anyone else use a stage just for a tone control. i am probably wrong on that one, tho.
i'm pretty happy with it so far.. if anyone gets a wild hair across their arse and wants to build it, this vero layout is verified, works great, and imho, sounds pretty freekin' good, too!!
of course, schematic and Stupid Pedal Tricks video coming soon.
rock on and have fun!
