Smash Drive Built/too much high end

[Mike Nichting]

How do I add more low end and take away some of the high end?? I would like to beef it up some. I just finished building it with stock values and it has very little low end.
Any other info that I could use??

Thanks all,
Mike

[Paul Marossy]

Try putting the Marshall stye tone stack on it. It will give you a low, mid and high control which may help. You could also try increasing the input and output cap values from .01uF (if memory serves me correctly) to something like .015 to .02uF...

[Mike Nichting]

The input resistor is .005uF. I have the version with the Marshall tone stack on it. I guess I don't need to decrease treble as much as add bass.

I will try increasing the inoput resistor first.

Mike

[Paul Marossy]

Well, that's my point... increasing the cap value will let more bass through.  :wink:

[Mike Nichting]

Hey Paul,
I did as you said and it sounds a lot better now :-)  I utilized the Tone Stack calculator for the first time in selecting the cap value that I used.
I changed the .005 to a .01 and the.022 on the tone stack bass pot to .047.
 I can deal with it now. It has this sort of raspiness to it though. Can you substitute IC's for the 386 or is that the only one for this circuit??

Thanks

Mike

[Paul Marossy]

I'm not too familiar with the LM386, but you could maybe try an NTE823 - it may sound somewhat different.

As far as the raspiness goes, I think it was Aron's intent for it to sound very "agressive". You could probably tweak all of the resistor and cap values some more to get it sounding more like the way you would like it to.

Do you have a breadboard? That would make it very easy to experiment...

[RDV]

I've read that the NJM version of the 386 is much more stable and is used to build the 'Smokey' amps. Smallbear has them.

HTH

RDV