Smash Drive Gain Question

[tommy.genes]

I'm building aron's Smash Drive for a friend for his 40th b'day, and I have a question about the drive control.

Is the drive/gain maximum when the drive pot is effectively 5k ohms or effectively 0 ohms? Right now I'm hearing very little difference in tone over the range of the pot, but when I get close to 0 ohms, I start to get a squealing sound. Is this oscillation due to high gain? If it is, that also answers my first question.

I'm liking the sound so far, but I'm thinking of adding a Swollen Pickle tone control to give it a bit of mid scoop. (I don't have enough parts to do a full-blown tone stack, and his birthday is next week.)

Thanks,
-- T. G. --

[tommy.genes]

In case anybody else was wondering, the lower the total resistance is between pins 1 & 8 and ground in Aron's Smash Drive schem, the higher the gain.

I could have figured this out analytically based on the internal schematic of the LM386 from the data sheet, but it was quicker to do it just through trial and error.

Below about 700 ohms, the pedal started to squeal - kinda cool in it's own right, but not what I was going for. I fixed it at 1kohm and called it a day.

With a Swollen Pickle tone control, this pedal sounds really good considering how simple it is to build. I was pretty much able to throw it together in two-to-three evenings with parts I already had. It's more of a "classic" metal sound than a "nu" metal sound. I'll do a more formal build report later this week if anyone is interested.

-- T. G. --

[MartyMart]

IIRC , I used a 10k pot with a 100 or 220 Ohm lower limit resistor, there
should be cleaner tones at the other end of the pot though !!

[rankine]

I really like the look of this pedal; simple and the sort of sound I'm after. I'd be really interested in a build report if you get round to it. Good luck with it.