Danelectro - D2 Fab Overdrive Traced [schematic]

[Nick C]

I've had the Fab OD for years and like it pretty much, but often wish I could dial in a bit more treble. Having only ever found Clay Jones' schematic without values I finally took it on myself. Skipped the buffering and switching. Apart from all the SMDs there are four poly caps that could be easily changed. I see the biggest cause of mud to be from the gain network, unfortunately C7 is a SMD. Lowering C2 could bring good results. I haven't modded it yet, but thought I'd share it. I'm glad to see it's not a TS clone

[Nick C]

I ran some LTSpice and found that a change to R8 would make a bigger change in tone that changing C2. It should be easy enough to short out the SMD R8.

The plots shows the tone control range stock vs shorted.

STOCK

SHORTED R8

[Nick C]

Last night I soldered a small wire around R8. Really increases the treble response in the last 25% of the tone pot. Some big crunch happening now. I think there would be no problem cutting thru a band even on a neck pickup. Stock sound is still there when you back the tone off some and it will never be described as transparent, but I like it.

FAB MOD2.jpg (82.69 KiB) Viewed 1578 times

[Frank_NH]

Interesting post. I was wondering why you need C6 at the output? I would make C3 = 1 uF and remove C6.

[Nick C]

C3 is a poly and C6 is a SMD on the other side of the board. Maybe when Dano copied the infamous circuit from the mom and pop pedal they did it just verbatim and plopped it between their standard buffers.