Tube box project

[Tube-O-Maniac]

Hello
First of all I'm sorry for my Inglish
I'm new here, very nice and BIG forum you have here, congratulations!
OK I have a "thing" for vaccum tubes, I can understand them, like the looks of it, the simplicity, and I bealive that distortion is best sounding regarding solid state ( not to be ofended all of you solid state lovers:) ).
SO I'm starting my first ( from scratch) stomp box project. It's still in software simulation, but I was hoping that you could help me with a couple of questions.
First what's the big diference in sound of symmetrical and assymetrical distortion? what do you ear diferent?
second this I think is a very popular question but never found a good answer, what should be the voltage to put in the input of the simulation? and for last I'm posting 2 pics of the circuits output. It's suppost to be a very mild distortion, blues like, to rock'n'rol. Should it have more clipping? thanks for your help, and again I'm sorry for my poor Inglish

http://img226.exs.cx/img226/1151/distsimetrica1tc.jpg

this is symmetrical
and this is assymmetrical

http://img226.exs.cx/img226/4216/distasimetrica8xk.jpg

is any of these ok?

Thanks
Fiquem bem

[JimRayden]

That's some nice saturation you've got there. You should have the maximum gain at harder clipping and just turn the gain pot down for blues.

Now, the asymmetrical seems to be more liked. Take a read:

http://www.geofex.com/effxfaq/distn101.htm

BTW, what are you using for simulation?

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Jimbo

[Tube-O-Maniac]

thanks I use Proteus 6.5 I really like this thing, if you have a nice pc (not me ) you can even ear a sound sample of the output. realy nice.

I think I'll put a switch on it, to switch from symmetrical to assymetrical at least in tests. I'm testing it with 500mV RMS on the input. is this ok?
So that clipping I have here is good for blues, you said?

Thanks

[JimRayden]

Yup, my humbucker gave 500mV. Could go up to 1V when playing hard. But blues rythm was something between 200 and 600mV.

And leave it more gain, so you could dial a nice saturation on lower output single coils.

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Jimbo