Pete Cornish’s excellent take on the MXR Distortion + the Pete Cornish SS-3 Soft Sustain.
I used a vintage tin can IC in the first gain stage, and while it added a bit of noise, it certainly added some grit and character. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a standard single op-amp – potentially better, depending on what you want out of this.
The Cornish buffer is included in this layout.
PETE CORNISH SS-3 SOFT SUSTAIN – VERO LAYOUT
SCHEMATIC
A schematic from Aion Electronics and their tracing journal can be found here. This is quite possibly a better source of information for what the SS-2 should be, as there are a couple of different values for capacitors etc.
POTENTIAL MODS
While building this, I tried a few different things with the diodes – maybe too many things.
Try adding clipping diodes on the first opamp like a Tube Screamer, and swap between these and the hard clippers (sounds bad when on simultaneously). Different combinations of germanium and silicon are also fun. There are so many options to try. I did a crazy layout with a bunch of switching for this, but I gave up on it as it was just too many options for a pedal that already sounds really good as it is.
Build photos below are care of Palelite from Freestompboxes. It’s a really nice-looking build using a slightly earlier version of the layout above.
LTSPICE
Frequency response of treble and locut on a medium gain setting
Same again but with sustain on 100%
Frequency response at various gain settings, with tone control completely open
Output trace at various gain settings, with tone / locut controls completely open
Output trace at various gain settings, with tone / locut controls completely open, at various stages in the circuit
