DIY distortion pedals.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steenamaroo
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Steenamaroo

Steenamaroo

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Any one ever dabble in this?

I know very little about it, but I was googling the other day and some of the diagrams seemed too simple to be true.

I made one up out of spare parts and I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with it!

I found it pretty amazing how much you can tailor the sound without a lot of previous knowledge/experience.


I'm hoping to use it at low gain before my new blackstar amp, but it hasn't arrived yet so time will tell how good/bad that is.

For now, here's a DI clip.

The tone knob in this picture was replaced with the diode switch.
Screen Shot 2019-04-04 at 17.11.46.webp




Please excuse the mess. I don't own a breadboard! :P

Screen Shot 2019-04-04 at 17.11.38.webp




Also, please excuse the shoddy 'playing'. I had an accident wit a hatchet so my thumb is taking the rest of the week off.
 
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I'd use perfboard, and sometimes they have solder pads to make life so much easier. Another thing to do is buy from either BYOC or General Guitar Gadgets. Or, buy something like a Distortion+, and maybe mod what's there, since there's so many web sites with the schematic and mod ideas. Once you get the bug, you want to get 'better', meaning more complicated pedals, or just neater workmanship. But for a start, hey, it works, and sounds like a fuzz box! Now tweak it to sound like you want it to.
 
In 50 years in electronics I had never bought or used a "breadboard" (the first ones were called an "S-DEC") but did so about a month ago because I was helping a budding tronics chap. It was useful but here's what I think is an easier way?

Get about a sq foot of 15mm MDF and 6inches or so of 1"x1" ally angle. Screw the angle to the edge of the MDF and then you can mount pots and jacks etc.

Bang in a few copper plated pins for anchor points and you are away. If you graduate to ICs buy a bit of stripboard and mount a DIL holder on it then bring out 8 wires to the pins.

Visit Music Gear, Equipment, Tuition & Reviews | MusicRadar and talk to pedal building nuts of all sorts there.

Dave.
 
Hi guys. Thanks for the info.

I just saw a diy how to on a site somewhere and the guy was raving about how great his pedal was, but with such a simple schematic I figured he was just a kid, or full of it.lol

I realised I had all the components needed, so why not try it out, since he didn't post an mp3? :facepalm:

The plan really was to do a low gain subtle boost pedal that I can maybe use before my amp, but it certainly won't be have as much gain as the mp3 demo.

If it plays nice with the amp once I fit a gain pot, maybe I'll make up a proper version and box it up all nice. Who knows.

I did fit a higher value resistor for lower gain at one point and got a really nice subtle bluesy crunch.
I think that's what I'm after. :)

Also, If I use any kind of cab emulation at all, this thing sounds much much nicer.
I'm guessing guitar->pedal->interface DI isn't a great test setup.


I'm thinking of maybe looking up some transformers and building a variation of the deacy amp some time.
 
If anyone's interested, here's what I've ended up with after a bit of tweaking.

I adjusted a few values and added a tone section straight from a Boss SD1.

I did away with the LPF switch. Instead I just picked a happy medium permanent filter value, and used the switch to pick between 1 transistor or two.

I'm pretty happy with it at the minute, but I still don't have my amp yet. We shall see.

Second clip will be at

This recording went into my auditronics preamp, whereas the other was into my motu.
Turns out the motu sucks for DI. :facepalm:

odtest.webp
 
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"Turns out the motu sucks for DI."

This is no surprise. Virtually all AI high Z inputs (and many are not even that high!) are flat amplifiers whereas any guitar amplifier worth a shilling is "voiced". That is to say the frequency response is tailored in some way to compensate for the response of the pickup, usually a broad midband suckout or a bass and treble boost, depending upon how you want to look at it.

Even with this voicing we rely on the speaker to do the final filtering. Check the paper response of any guitar speaker and you will see a serious dive past 8-10kHz, even as early as 6kHz with some models. This is why a straight line feed from an amp or headphone out usually sounds bad.

So don't blame the AI. It is doing a proper job in being an impedance converter. To get a good sound you also need some emulating software.

A very few AIs and Mic pres attempt a bit of response trimming but it is hard to please "all of the peop........"!

Dave.
 
I take your point, but I'm not blaming the AI for anything.
The DI in just sounds bad compared to the DI on one of my other preamps.

I did run through cab emulation at one point and I really liked what I heard; I'm looking forward to getting my amp though.
Then I'll really know what's what.

Having said that, I didn't think the 2nd clip sounded bad at all (except for the single transistor/full gain). What do you think?

Cheers for the info.
 
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Steenamaroo said:
I'm thinking of maybe looking up some transformers and building a variation of the deacy amp some time.
Click to expand...

Hope you go ahead with this one! Such an intriguing little amp.

I don't know off-hand what the transformer requirements are, but Edcor make very, errr, budget sensitive products which are actually quite well regarded. Sourcing appropriate germanium transistors might be interesting?

Paul
 
I took a look. They are there to be had on ebay.
There's a guy selling transformers for the job too, but I've know idea if they have a good reputation or not.

I'll do a bit of research on that.
If I knew for a fact I was going ahead with it, I'd give Stewart (xaudia) a shout.
I know he winds 'em.


I think I'd be more interested in a line/instrument output rather than a built in speaker, but we'll see.
 
Cool. Keep us posted. I'm acquiring bits to build some compressors from GroupDIY. Ah, the joyous carcinogenic whiff of solder smoke!
 
Will do.
I picked up some point-to-point solder boards and a handful of transistors, so there'll be something (neater) on the way.
 
BTW, love the enclosure for the pedal. Nothing says "ghetto" like a plastic storage box!
 
You knows it!
Plenty more where that came from.

Hey, are you also diggin the fact that it isn't foot-switchable?
 
This: PCB Equipment - Stripboard prt No 335-120, often called matrix board is better I find for projects than stripboard. If you can get it in FR4 glass it is very robust.

Maplins should have it but you have to be careful that what you get IS matrix and not stripboard.

Also get a bag of 100 PCB pins. And! A PCB cleaning block, makes soldering a dream!

Dave.
 
Thanks for that. It was matrixed stuff that I got in the end. (I googled the past participle and google said "did you mean matricide". :p)

Just ten small boards for a pound or two.
 
Man with a plan.
I'm gona build a treble booster with the parts that are en route and some others.
A few people didn't know what I'd want for christmas, so now they do.
Deacy parts kit should be arriving Dec 25th. :)

New thread to follow.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Man with a plan.
I'm gona build a treble booster with the parts that are en route and some others.
A few people didn't know what I'd want for christmas, so now they do.
Deacy parts kit should be arriving Dec 25th. :)

New thread to follow.
Click to expand...

Yeah Baby! That's what I wanted to hear! Which kit are you using? KAT?
 
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