Smooth Creamy Over Drive

[petemoore]

At JD Sleep's "guitar Effects Projects"> links >near the bottom

[Eb7+9]

I am looking for a schematic of an overdrive that gives a smooth creamy overdrive sound.  I want to incorporate this in the front end of a small amp I am modding.  Nothing too serious though,  just something simple and quick.
Thanks!
Arn C.

For a smooth  overdriver may I recommend a minimalistic Tube Screamer clone like mine http://www.lynx.net/~jc/pedals.html ... the transparency of this circuit is high  so an LED circuit along with footswitch is indispensable (I use Joe Davisson's) ...

For more of a smooth fuzz or fuzz/overdrive type sound, I can say I've had some great experiences with Aron Nelson & Gus Smalley's "Rocket", which I regard as a smooth Fuzz Face ... and Doug Hammond's "Meteor" FET-based Tube Amp simulator which is most smooth sounding ... here the links to my tweaked versions :

http://www.lynx.net/~jc/rocketModded.gif

http://www.lynx.net/~jc/meteorModded.gif

... them's what I been playing with lately and I really like 'em,  too both clean up fairly nice and gradually when rolling off the volume on the guitar ...

FYI, I don't have any audio clips of the Meteor at my site, maybe Mark you're refering that JoeWalshish clip that Doug released this summer, I think I was ranting my head off about it ... btw, I can't find a link to that clip on your website Doug ... great stuff !

jcm

[Doug H]

FYI, I don't have any audio clips of the Meteor at my site, maybe Mark you're refering that JoeWalshish clip that Doug released this summer, I think I was ranting my head off about it ... btw, I can't find a link to that clip on your website Doug ... great stuff !

jcm

It's on my sound page:

http://dhammond_1.tripod.com/sounds.htm

The sounds page is linked from my home page too:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/dbhammond/doug.htm


Thanks for the compliments, JCM!  I have a pcb I'm going to try your variation on. I also like your tone control on the rocket, that makes a lot of sense (and is simple). I'm going to breadboard that one too- I love Gus's stuff.;-)


Doug

[brett]

CMOS is not just a bit creamier, it's full on whipped and wonderful as far as I'm concerned.  Anything with a mildly-driven CD4049 will be good.  MY own take on this is a very mildly driven '49.  It keeps the tone warm with 100k feedback resistors and 220 pF caps in each of the two stages.  Go for up to 470pF (pstyrene) caps if you want really soft gooey od.

You can see my Tube-like fuzzhere: www.members.optusnet.com.au/~jethro.dog/gallery.html

(You might be interested in the VoodooDrive as well, it's a VOX/MXR D+ -ish kinda drive.)

Have fun.

[Doug H]

You can see my Tube-like fuzzhere: www.members.optusnet.com.au/~jethro.dog/gallery.html

(You might be interested in the VoodooDrive as well, it's a VOX/MXR D+ -ish kinda drive.)

Have fun.

Wow, I really like your site! Nice work! I love your magnetic wah too. That's a really great and simple idea. Nice clean work!

Doug

[Arn C.]

Brett,
    Do you have any schematics for these?  Populating the boards with parts is straight forward but what about hooking up the pots and dc volts?

Thanks!
Arn C.

[Mark Hammer]

Brett,

For me, if I had to pack one pedal, it would probably be my CMOS overdrive with the low value feedback resistors.  It isn't everyone's cup of tea but I find it lets me get most of the different sounds I like.

On the other hand, I suspect that most 3-stage devices that use cascaded reduction of high end can work nicely, regardless of whether they are FETs, invertor sections, op-amps, or whatever.  Something nice happens when you "request" lower harmonics of lower harmonics, and using multiple gain/clipping stages accomplishes that.  Placing all one's gain/clipping eggs ina  single basket can sometimes yield something wonderful as in a Rangemaster of TS, but the more vocal-sounding pedals tend to use more than one stage to get the job done.  The Meteor is certainly one of them.

I will still put in a plug for 2-pole lowpass filtering.   Same thing as a Rat-style tone control, just times two (with cap values adjusted).  Less fizz with steeper filtering.

[petemoore]

With an Nte 4049.
 Both sides of the Double D wired and fired right up...nice [I had to lpay twister with the Jfet for a minute].
 This being my first CMOS inverter ckt, I'm imressed at what a different 'FUzz' this is than any of the others I've built, especially the 'ampy' sounding side [I believe its called Jiggle] which breaks up with some characteristice remarkably like like a 'clean' tube amps output getting hammered and loaded.
 The 'heavy' side [Bounce] gets real sweet harmonics/chirp feedback, great sounding voice and fun lead play.
 The lower bass strings area is a little wooly I wonder if I can just put an incap like on bipolar builds, or would putting an incap in front of a Jfet's gate at input play funny on the cutoff freq. [ie throw it off what Im used to seeing/hearing].
  Or is it better somehow to just pull the first cap [on the Jfet's Drain] and change it's value.