Fred Briggs - Silver Orchid Boost/Overdrive

briggs · Post by **briggs** » 22 Jul 2009, 10:16

Here is another little circuit. I added a switch to the clipping diodes and a switch to go from 18-9V, sounds sweet

Greg · Post by **Greg** » 22 Jul 2009, 10:33

Hi Briggs... good to see you back on board

This one looks pretty interesting.
I'll have to try to build one.

briggs · Post by **briggs** » 22 Jul 2009, 10:50

Cheers Greg - I needed a serious rest for a while. Not been great at all.

The circuit is just a step forward from the overdrive I produced months ago but it's worthy of a schematic update so I thought I'd post it. If you combine this the the Hummingbird they compliment well.

Hope you're well

RnFR · Post by **RnFR** » 22 Jul 2009, 13:19

welcome back freddy! glad to see you're still alive.

briggs · Post by **briggs** » 22 Sep 2009, 21:36

You may want to increase the 220n cap on the bloom control to increase it's impact a little. See the comments on the Silver Orchid page of my blog

Glad some people are building this!

John Lyons · Post by **John Lyons** » 28 Sep 2009, 17:24

I built this on the breadboard. A VERY light overdrive. Mostly clean with a light overdrive behind the clean signal. Is this correct Fred. By the description of "..cranked amp" I was thinking it was going to have a little more drive.
I was playing it through a Fender Twin Reverb so the amp remained very clean.

Thanks

John

briggs · Post by **briggs** » 28 Sep 2009, 20:10

Hello John, after I played this on a Fender Twin I should have also commented on the levels of overdrive which it can get achieve - It really needs to be running on an amp which *can* generate it's own power tube distortion. I design on an 18 watt style amp so dual el84. When running into a clean amp it'll get a decent level of boost with a moderate level of clipping on full gain with some beefy humbuckers (I run Gibson Classic 57 buckers as my main..) with something using single coils into a Fender twin style amp you will struggle to get much overdrive out of this thing on it's todd - you'll need at least another stage of boost in there. I'll publish the dual unit I designed recently, it's capable of all the Silver Orchid sounds and boost but with a nice added clipping stage too

I also played with fiddling the bias, try a 100 - 220 ohm resistor in for the 330 ohm and a 5k6 ~ 8k2 for the 4k7. Up the input resistors to 4M7. Also stick in a 470n for the 220n on the Nature control. That turned it into a more rockable driver pedal than a subtle booster which adds it's own shimmer.

John Lyons · Post by **John Lyons** » 01 Oct 2009, 05:08

Ok, Fred.
Thanks for the sanity check.
I was using single coils...

I figured that the amp overdrive
had something to do with your description.

John