Super Overdrive Conversion

[vanhansen]

Finally, some time to mess around with my pedals and decided to take on my SD-1 again.  I don't know why, but I love the tinkering.  Since I have a Wylde Overdrive which is a SD-1 anway, I decided to take my SD-1 and convert it to TS-808 specs as much as possible.

So, I got both schematics and compared them, noting what I had to change and what was changed already from previous mods.  In the end, I changed something like 13 components.  There's more than that in the differences between the two circuits but a few of them had already been done already.  Between previous mods and changing the rest, I've got 16 component differences.  There's more like 20 differences +/- between a SD-1 and TS-808.

Off I went with the iron and desoldering braid.  Little by little the SD-1 sounded more and more like an 808, but not exactly.  It'll never sound exactly like one because I didn't change components in the tone control section and the pots values are different between the two.  But the changes that I did make gave me the "flavor" I was looking for.  All in all, a good experiment with much success.  This is a conversion that I never thought I'd do a couple years ago.

All of the changes I did are documented on my site.  If you want to sacrifice a SD-1 and do this, go for it.  The changes can be found here, http://www.erikhansen.net/?page_id=29, under the heading "The Almost-TS-808 Conversion".

Enjoy!

[moro]

Cool. I've been thinking about doing this for a while.

Ever since I compared the schematics, I kind of get mad now whenever I see those "SD-1 to TS808 conversion kits" on eBay and it's like, two resistors.

[vanhansen]

Cool. I've been thinking about doing this for a while.

Ever since I compared the schematics, I kind of get mad now whenever I see those "SD-1 to TS808 conversion kits" on eBay and it's like, two resistors.

I laugh more than anything.  I saw one the other day that had 4 caps, 3 resistors and the unnecessary chip to change (the sound difference between the D and DD is hardly negligible, if at all).  You can get a mild flavor of it real quick by changing the output buffer to match the TS, remove D6 and jumper it and remove C6, like that nice artist rendering diagram that's out there.  But it's not anywhere near how it sounds with the rest of the components changed.