Dragon Cave Overdrive

This is the Dragon Cave Overdrive. It?s a clone of the elusive and price winning OCD from Fulltone, witch it self is a tweaked clone of the Voodoo Lab overdrive. It is actually a quite ordinary OD but with a big difference in the clipping section. In stead of having the clipping diodes go between signal and ground as the MRX distortion+ this effect has MOSFET clipping with one 1N34 Ge diode on one of the MOSFET:s. It also has the clipping section go between the signal path to Vb, not to GND as usual. This design lest more volts flow trough to the inverted second stage off the OP amp. When the signal from the first stage of the OP amp is strong, that is when you have strummed the stings hard, this cause more volts and distortion. If you pick gently you will not get much distortion or eavn a clean signal, regardless of how you dialled in the gain Knob. Overall a very nice pedal that is easy to build but extremely expensive to buy in original.

The TT, Tube Tremolo

Is this a overdrive or a tremolo?. In fact it's both in one box. This is the Tube Tremolo or TT. A 12au7 tube based overdrive combined with a LFO to dubble as a tremolo. Its all tube in the signal path. The gain stage is comprised by a 24V driven 12au7 tube. It is designed to run on 12V DC. I have added a MAX1044 to double the plate voltage to 24V to get a better headroom and nicer clipping from the tube. I have tryed to run it on 9V and it workes allthough the sond is not as godd as with 12V.

THE VIPER

This is my version of the Double D from Runoffgroove. In my opinion this is the best design around a 4049 IC I have tested so far. It is a really nice pedal if you like the characteristics of the clipping sound from the 4049 chip. The fact that it has two channels makes it more useable, from mild OD to really heavy distorted sound, although the type of sound is not that versatile. The sound is quite hush and hard. This is not the pedal you are looking for if you are looking for a pedal with a dynamic that follows your attack. The sound is distorted all over the register. This makes it a good pedal for all kinds of heavier rock and metal. I personally would not use it for layd back blues or soul.

COYOTE

This is the Coyote. As the name suggests it howls like a whole colony of wolfs. Its original name Thor might suggest more of a hammering sound but I would definitely go for wolfs. It is suppose to emulate a Marshall 100W lead head. Well it gets on the way but not the total distains. Never the less it has tons of fat distortion in it. One thing I like is that it does not filter the bass like many dists does. The two switches (active bright and bass on-off) gives it a vast range of possibilities. If you turn the drive knob almost contraclockwise and the bright switch on, you have got your self a very potent treble booster. This one really rocks and I recommend you to build it. The tone pot (a simpel 10KB pot and a 47nF cap paralell with the volume se the DCO on this page for schematics) is my own tribute to this one.

TS-808 Clone

I don?t think this one needs any further presentation. The Ibanez Tube screamer is the most famous of all distortion pedals ever made. The early 70 models is highly sought after by collectors. I have equipped this one with MOSFET clipping as well as the standard asymmetric Si diodes. It is almost impossible to distinguish it from the Full drive 2 so this one is a one of my favourites, especially for blues and such.

Full Drive 2 MOSFET

This one is a really good pedal. It's built like a tank and has a really nice sound. The circuit is a tweaked tube screamer with MOSFET and standard Si Clipping. People in the DIY seam to have a thorn in the side for Fulltone products. I think its because Mike has been so successful and one of the first to do grate business on boutique pedals. Most of the stuff Mike does is tweaked clones but that goes for most of the boutique scene. I think that Fulltone should have pushed harder on the supreme quality instead of trying to be so extremely unique and outstanding sound vice. After all, the stuff that coms from Fulltone are not uniqe in sound allthough they sound teriffic. I use this one as a reference to my builds.

Grim Reaper (Proco Rat clon)

This is a shredder. A real high gain distortion pedal with a lot of attitude. The tone knob has a grate impact on the sound. There are not much of undistorted sound in this box so heavy rhythm and high gain solos is the name of the game here.

BIG FUZZ (fet.Green Ringer)

This is a wired one. It actually consists of tree different effects crammed in to one box. As probably most DIY effect builders do I started with a project that looked simple and there was the classic Fuzz Face. After some investigation I understood that the real McCoy was to build it from Germanium PNP transistors. That was when easy become difficult. At first I found 3 AC128 but they sounded crap. I wanted to add a tone control to it. Then I found Smallbear and bought from there. I also found his project Bear Face witch had the tone control I was looking for. It also has a booster in it. I made my own PCD layout after the Bear Face breadboard layout and discovered that it also sounded crap to my ears. I went back to the schematics and did a couple of mods. First I divided it in two stages. The stompswitch to the right switches on/off to bypass the booster and tone pot part of the circut. Whit out this part it's a standard Fuzz face. I changed all the caps to original Fuzz Face specs in this part. The stompswitch to the left is a standart true bypass.

A month later I found the Green Ringer. It looked simple enough so I built that one too. I must say it sounded horrible to my ears. So I decided not to spend any money on boxing it. Some what later I heard the Green Ringer together with a Fuzz Face and they did not sound that bad together. Since there was a bit of space left in the Fuzz Face box and the Green Ringer is a tiny build I decided to cram it in to this box that I already had. I wired this one in as a separate DPDT true bypass Switch in between the first stompswitch and the end of the circuitry. This gives the box the following five options:

1. Fuzz Face.
2. Fuzz Fase + Tonstack and booster
3. Fuzz Face + Tonstack and Booster + Green Ringer
4. Fuzz Face + Green Ringer
5. Green Ringer

Well, If you ask me, I still think it sounds crap and I don't use it that much. The Fuzz Face part sound like the ones I have hared from aNaLoG Man and his Sun Faces. It culd depend on that it is based on the same old circuitry ;-) but according to his site you have to be a Ge sorcerer to get the mojo sound out of those little Ge bugs. Well, judge for your self. I think it has more to do with who's holding the guitar then what's in the box. Witch explains why I don't like it when a lot of real guitarists do. Never the less a Ge Fuzz of some kind is a must for most DIY effect builders and this is mine.

CHILLI (MXR Distortion+ Clone)

This is a classic in its own. One of the first really big commercial successes for MXR in the early 70:s in what was to become the MXR success story. The sound is very 70:s rock like Deep Purple Etc. Originally the Distortion+ had Ge clipping diodes. I have added Si diodes as well with an on-(off)-on switch. In the Ge mode it is quite fuzzy and the diodes takes a lot of the boost. In the off mode you can get a good clean boost. The MXR micro Amp is the exactly same circuitry with some different component values and no clipping diodes. The Si clipping is some whare in between.