I was at the PV forum and the Bravo which is a tube amp has in-line diodes in the pre-amp section. I asked about it and the reponse was that the primary function was noise and hiss reduction, with a by-product being the cross-over distortion. Sort of a crude noise gate. Something to try anyway.
right...
in order to reduce crossover distortion and extreme gating you should try a resistor across diodes. Try to find a value that will work good for both the effect and by-product. It should probably be in the Megaohm region. . PV does this to recent amp series.
Due to the logarythmic sensitivity of our ears we can easily detect even the negligible additional hiss. That's why shunting the diodes with the multi-MegaOhm resistor will give the frustrating effect regretfully. At the same time it won't reduce audible crossover distortion too much.
Try Shottky diodes and the capacitor from the "output" terminal of the diode combination to ground.
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=25660.msg169245#msg169245
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=29504.msg200434#msg200434
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=7924
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=9654.msg58169#msg58169
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=7529.msg44846#msg44846
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=7743.0
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=42117
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=28158.msg193024#msg193024
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=38560.msg273477#msg273477
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=37057.msg263640#msg263640
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=51877.msg390717#msg390717
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=51565.msg387303#msg387303
Great links Ton, thanks
IMO the inline diode circuit is just a simple noise gate circuit having its limitations.
Using schottky diodes with a cap to ground might give less crossover but it will alter the frequency response of the whole circuit making it darker – even when the signal is pretty strong – but mostly when the signal is weak . That is really cool if we want to put a gate there but also shave some of the annoying high content of a distortion . But if we want to preserve ALMOST the same freq response to an existing circuit I think it is better to leave the cap out and test which diodes fit. 1N4148 shunted by a 2M2+ resistor gives a nice result, at least to my ears. The most important thing is to find where to place them in the signal path to allow both fast and dynamic playing.