My First Build........Amazing Tone

[Tajmoben]

I started visiting this forum last Thursday and I became fasinated with the idea of making my own pedal. Saturday I decided to do it. I decided on a Distortion + as many people here had recomended it as a good beginer project. I made a few modifications with the parts based on my reading and after I worked out an error in the schematic I was using I found the tone to be amazing (way more crunch than the original, thanks to the mods). Anyway I wanted to say thanks for being a great resource and ask a couple of questions.

I'm using the suggested 1M gain pot but from the lowest setting up to about 70%. I'm hi-gain from 70% till 100% the rest is the same.... I've read that changing the pot to a 50k would remedy this. What do you think?

Does anyone know if it's possible to build an acustic simulator pedal simular to the Boss AC-2? If anyone has a schematic I'd love to give it a shot eventually.

Well.........that's enough for now.
Thanks,
Ben

[vdm]

hi! glad to hear it mostly worked out well - i must say my first build was finished over a year after i first came here (not for laking of trying though  :? )

if you have a single coil guitar i hear the woody acoustic sim is quite good. i dont know much about it, but do a search and im sure you'll find some info.

as for the gain pot on the dist+ this has been discussed before - but ill try my best to give you a crash course.

the gain pot is wired as a variable resistor to ground, and maximum gain occurs when the resistance is minimum (zero). this means that with any value pot you will be able to get maximum gain, but the size of the pot determines how much it can clean up. a large pot (1M) will give fairly clean tones whereas a 50k or 100k will not clean up as much as the pot is turned down.

if you use a smaller pot but find the gain to be maxed out for much of the rotation, you can put a small resistor in series with the gain pot. if you try this and find you cant get as much gain - decrease the value of the resistor, but if you still have max gain for too much of the rotation, increase it more.

well that was a fairly simple explanation, and i hope it helps you understand a bit more about how the circuit works (i know it helped me )

keep up the good work, and let us know how you go with mods and the such.

trent

[BILLYL]

Ben-

Do a search on this site for a project - WOODY.  This is a acoustic simulator pedal and although I haven't made it yet - is reported to be great.

Good Luck

BILL

[Mark Hammer]

Congratulations.  It's a good feeling isn't it, to know that YOU'RE the one who made it sound good?

The Woody "package" is available at my website (http://hammer.ampage.org) as a zipfile with sound clip, notes, schematic and explanation.  It's certainly no Variax-modelled-Martin, and I think it's "acousticness" disappears when you attempts single notes, but it does a nice job making a normal guitar sound like a strummed acoustic for rhythm parts.

It is based around a basic "exciter" circuit, and like all such circuits will not sound particularly great if you plug humbuckers into it and play them through sluggish 12" speakers.  This REALLY wants single coils, or at least coil-tapped humbuckers.

A pretty simple and inexpensive build, and pretty damn easy to work.  I don't have a PCB layout for it in the package, but Munky has one at his site.

[smoguzbenjamin]

I'll second the Woody Sounds pretty good and if you play a little up the neck, say around the 22nd fret or so, you can get a pretty mellow acoustic sound, even on single notes.