Overdrive
MATSUMIN: Valve Caster
Just realised that I never posted a regular vero layout for one of my favourite guitar effects – the Matsumin Valve Caster. It doesn’t require power filtering, so you could easily drop the 100ohm resistor and 100u cap. The Valve Caster was one of my first builds, and it doesn’t have any power filtering and … Read more
SPACEMAN EFFECTS: Redstone Germanium Preamp
Yet to build this myself, I quite like the idea behind this – I am partial to anything with bass / mid/high controls for guitar and a germanium transistor. Bonus points for also including a discrete op-amp, which I’ve been playing with lately. Before I looked at the schematic for this, I was playing around with modding a Boss Blues … Read more
BOSS: OD-1 Overdrive
A classic Boss overdrive – the one that started it all for Boss guitar effects, originally sold from 1977 to 1985. This is one of the later designs that does not use the quad opamp. Kind of curious that after this, many designs used the Boss version of a discrete opamp that can be seen in several … Read more
Solid Gold FX Super Drive
Here’s an interesting take on the classic DOD 250/MXR Distortion + circuit. It’s pushed by a simple BJT boost and has an added presence control and tone switch. Schematic here. Easy to fit in a 1590B or 125B.
Mad Professor Ruby Red Booster
For now, only the booster/overdrive section, might add a separate board for the switchcable bypass buffer later on… 2N5952s is getting really scarce but 2N5457s or 2N5458s is usually a good sub. Just mind the orientation! Schematic is avaiable HERE.
DOD: 250 Overdrive Pre-amp
A nice simple one – the DOD 250, which is a Distortion + variant. Or is it the other way around? Either way, it’s a classic. DOD 250 OVERDRIVE PREAMP – VERO LAYOUT DOD 250 OVERDRIVE PREAMP – SCHEMATIC DOD 250 OVERDRIVE PREAMP – VIDEO DEMO
Rift Amplification EL34
Almost didn’t draw this up since it’s just another Electra variant, but they almost always sound good, so why not? This one claims to emulate the sound of EL34 tubes, which sounds like marketing gibberish to me since it’s just a diode-less Electra. Originals are all hand wired, point to point, floating in the 1590BB … Read more
MARSHALL: Blues Breaker, Discrete Opamp Mod
I’ve had some success with the Joe Davisson diode compression discrete opamp on some other circuits (namely the Cornish SS-2), so I thought I might try a Blues Breaker – it works… sounds good. Apart from the lack of IC, there are a couple of other minor mods to a stock Blues Breaker, mainly a larger input … Read more