Soul Sonic - Folk Driver, The Honey Bee Challenge!

earthtonesaudio · Post by **earthtonesaudio** » 05 May 2009, 12:19

Somehow I missed the clips earlier. Very nice with a boost in front also.

Thanks for the links, JiM, very cool.

I remembered there's a positive feedback example circuit in the LM380 appnote, with a formula for determining the gain. Perhaps useful as a generic formula...?
http://www.national.com/an/AN/AN-69.pdf Look at figure 21 on page 7. It also describes how to determine the oscillation threshold.

fuzzca · Post by **fuzzca** » 07 May 2009, 01:30

I built this "on the quick" yesterday and wanted to add a couple of "honey" moon comments.

First off, thanks to Soulsonic for the fine efforts.

I have a friend who owns an original Honeybee and has sung it's praises to me for a few years now. I had the opportunity to test it out when I visited him last year and I was "subtly" impressed. A nice stacking pedal with his KOT I thought. My friend was pretty wild about the HB but when I watched him playing live with the pedal I was a bit underwhelmed. I had been through several "transparent" overdrives and was a fairly critical tonewise.

So, I built the Folk Driver and tried it with an amp I just picked up, a Fender Bass Breaker (basically a Fender Bassman reissue with two Celestion V30 12 inch speakers). My first impression is that there is a nice wow factor to the boost when worked toward the right and left ranges of the timbre control. The middle range of the control seems kind of flat and blah, dull actually.

When I disengaged the pedal from the signal path and just added a bit more volume from the amp I was very impressed with the "boosted" tone. I do like the option of adding the character provided by the Folk Driver when needing a differt lower range boost and higher range boost. Not so much for a mid boost.

Anyway, not a complete review by any means just a few preliminary thoughts. Nothing negative intended. BTW, I used a few different guitars, Tele, Strat and ES335.

Whoismarykelly · Post by **Whoismarykelly** » 07 May 2009, 17:58

Folk Driver into a 386 distortion. Fat and rich with a lot of gain to be had when stacking. This is a great stacker Soulsonic!

soulsonic · Post by **soulsonic** » 08 May 2009, 00:12

Cool. I'm glad you're enjoying my design. I hope to see more people building them soon!
It is a great stacker... I tried it after a stock Fuzz Face recently, and it does a great job of bumping up the presence and making it stick out without wrecking the basic good tone.

Thanks for the review, fuzzca. I pretty much agree 100% about the middle position being a bit on the boring side... I intended it to be the "neutral" position, and it certainly is quite neutral.

But sometimes that position can be just right... like when used after the aforementioned Fuzz Face. With it to the left or right, it changed the sound too much, but with it straight up at 12 o'clock, it was perfect.

Beedoola · Post by **Beedoola** » 23 Aug 2009, 06:17

Anyone built the vero? I rechecked everything quite a few times and its not working. At first no sound went through, then a tiny amount came through, not overdriven though. Bypass is fine. The trannies I got 5089s, are around 550 HFE, could that be the the issue? I know Soulsonic mentioned that 700-1000 is ideal.

Beedoola · Post by **Beedoola** » 23 Aug 2009, 17:42

I switched the orientation of the trannies and got more signal, controls work but there is no drive and the output is very low...I'm guessing this is cause of the low HFE of the trannies.

soulsonic · Post by **soulsonic** » 24 Aug 2009, 06:34

an hfe of 550 should still be enough to have a decent signal. You might want to try new transistors; they may have been damaged from being put in backwards.

kurtlives · Post by **kurtlives** » 26 Aug 2009, 03:58

Breadboarded this circuit tonight, what a dandy!

The circuit gives some great underlying girth and punch. Very light overdrive, I love it my style. Kinda reminds me of a soulful old blues amp or a well tuned jazz Dumble.

It was late so I couldn't really fully explore the circuits potenial. Does seem like it has a lot of output, great for boosting. The timbre control is very unique, I really like it. It looks like Joe Gagan's cap blend, but a gain control too. Is that basically what it is, a selective frequency gain control? Noise level was also quite low. My guess is this is because the emphasize on the low frequencies and also the transistor selection.

I tried asymmetrical cliping and didn't like it. Added too much clipping imo and the pedal lost it's uniqueness and character.

Ill have to re-evaluate at louder volumes but it seems like a great little circuit. Definatly going to box up.

condorface · Post by **condorface** » 01 Sep 2009, 02:50

Nice Pedal, Soul Sonic. I built it the other day using an NTE replacement of the 2n5089's (NT47, i think). I'm not getting as much volume as it seems like it should get, but I am getting very good tone. It's got both more distortion and more touch sensitivity than I expected, which is great. It really sounds good with the neck pickup on my strat. Very bluesy.

I also modded it a little with interesting results. I switched R8 for a 50k resistor and a 5oK Pot in series, and I definitely hear the effects of the two feedback loops affecting different frequencies (at least I think thats the effect I am hearing). When I turn the extra gain pot up (or down rather, less resistance) and the Nature control to one of the extremes, it gets a really nice fuzzy cocked wah sound. Thinking about maybe putting the Nature pot in a foot rocker pedal for neat distorted wah/phaser type swells. When the Nature control is in the middle, the extra gain pot kinda works like the bias knob on a fulltone 69---one end overdrive, the other end fuzz.

PerS · Post by **PerS** » 22 Feb 2010, 19:44

Hi

I have just finished my Folk Drive and I like the sound of it. Really neat pedal, especial nice with my strat and timber turned to the “bassy” side.

Have one question about how much volume I should expect, it's quite low. First I thought I had made something wrong. Measured caps and resistors, checked the vero but it looks fine, even exchanged the transistors to check. The responses from Timber and Volume seems correct and the sound is very similar to ibodog2's mp3. I also have build the Honey Bee-clone, works fine, and they sound smiler, but the FD is much lower in volume. All components I used are as listed in the schematic, no mod's.

So, when turning Timber full cw and ccw I get a boost in gain, around 12 o'clock I get a decrease in gain/volume. That seams correct according to description in this thread – Tone and gain in the same pot... etc. If I turn the Timber to 12 o'clock and turn the FD off I get an increase in gain/volume, meaning the output is reduced from my FD with Timber at noon. My question is if that is normal and expected?

It's OK for me, just so I know... If so I add a clean boost, need a bit more volume. But like to know if I done somthing wrong first...

Thanks
PerS

royal jelly · Post by **royal jelly** » 01 May 2010, 20:07

Thanks to you guys for putting up the Vero!! having a few problems on the build though.I used MPSA18"s for both trannies and its not as loud as my bypassed signal.I noticed on the Vero layout that the diode grouping are not opposite each other.Im referring to the bands that each carry to designate there direction.Is this due to the Vero layout or is this a mistake? And would this have an effect on the low volume and very little clipping?

royal jelly · Post by **royal jelly** » 01 May 2010, 21:29

I followed the Vero as far as the direction the transistors are facing.also arent the clipping diodes supposed to be opposite of each other as far as the cathodes orientation? thanks for your help.

royal jelly · Post by **royal jelly** » 01 May 2010, 21:39

Yeah it figures looks like the pinout for the MPSA18 is opposite from 2n5089 RATSLSNAKES!!! do you think the diodes look ok on the Vero thats posted? Thanks..

royal jelly · Post by **royal jelly** » 02 May 2010, 01:21

I desoldered the transistors and put them back according to there pin-out.thanks for the reminder,I learn every time I try and put a pedal together.Sounds great now lots of volume on hand and its a nice dynamic sounding circuit.I was getting some loud popping noises when I was using it as a lead boost but I soldered in a 1meg ohm resistor to ground,after the circuit input.This even made it much more quite when turning the volume down on my strat.I was getting some hum but all is good now.Great circuit.thanks!!

soulsonic · Post by **soulsonic** » 02 May 2010, 02:11

Glad you got it working!

royal jelly · Post by **royal jelly** » 04 May 2010, 00:42

Thanks, I let our guitar player use it for a gig last night running it into the clean channel on a roland cube 60. It really sat in the mix well and gave his leads a little sweetness so he didnt have to fight so hard. He pretty much ran it about 3 on the volume and 6 on the timbre.I would have ran the timbre all the way cc. though, as it cleans up pretty well when you dont dig in so hard,and I like more overdrive. Needless to say it sounded good through the solid state amp at live volume levels.

jaydawg · Post by **jaydawg** » 19 Jul 2010, 00:44

Is D5 solely to protect from a reversely hooked up battery?

briggs · Post by **briggs** » 19 Jul 2010, 19:44

Yeah, although it will drop the supply voltage by a small amount due to the turn on voltage requirements of the diode itself, if you remove it you shouldn't notice any difference in tone....

dorfmeister · Post by **dorfmeister** » 12 Apr 2011, 21:57

I'm pondering buying one of these from Soulsonic. Anyone have any new insights after spending some time with the pedal.

Thanks.

Greg · Post by **Greg** » 13 Apr 2011, 08:05

dorfmeister wrote:I'm pondering buying one of these from Soulsonic. Anyone have any new insights after spending some time with the pedal.

Thanks.

I don't sorry.. but if you talk to Martin, tell him we miss him..
He left and never came back.