I used the Heavy Meatal pedal(VER.2) at rehearsal last night through my old(84') Peavey Bandit65. That amp can make good pedals sound bad, but the HM shined through it. What usually happens is that distortions usually sound 'paper thin' with the Bandit, but the bass parametric on the HM took care of that. On the boost mode(both bass EQ controls wide open) the pedal had copius low end; an almost 'full stack' style chunk to it. What was strange though is that the treble control had little effect(other than cutting some sizzzle) on the sound through that amp, whereas on the little Ruby amp it tends to cut level a great deal. What was quite relieving was that there were no oscillations @ any setting, plus with the volume on the guitar rolled down I got a nice cutting rock rhythm sound(on neck Les Paul PU) when we were working on Jet's 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl'. It does not however clean-up completely. My aim with this pedal from the beginning was to have a 'face-melting lead sound' type of distortion with boostable or cuttable bass EQ and I think I succeeded. I already had a bunch of killer overdrives, but nothing to stomp when it was time to really put a screaming lead out there.

I'll be posting again tomorrow after tonight's gig with a report on how it sounds through the Marshall half-stack.

Regards

RDV

Tonight's gig was at a place that has an abnormal amount of 60hz garbage on the AC line. Hum city, so it was a bit hard to use my new creation, but I did. I've decided that for me personally, the bass EQ knobs sound best with both full up for a big-ass lowend boost. It really takes over the sound then and saturates the shit out of the amp input. Through the Marshall(on the low-gain channel) it is very different than any of my pedals, it turns the amp into a big hungry eating machine kind of like a Mesa Rectifier amp sound. Feedback on virtually any note is possible, and come back next week, that sucker's still going.

This has got me thinking I should add a mid/high parametric section also, but still keep the treble rolloff control. HAH! Though that would bring the knob count up to 7.

Regards

RDV

Is there a sound sample anywhere?

Quote from: PhorhasIs there a sound sample anywhere?

I have no way to host them if I did them. Think Metallica @ at the extreme settings  on down to more tame overdrivish if you lower the gain of the 2nd stage(mine is cranked). My idea for samples was to record it through the Ruby, then my old PV Bandit, Then the Marshall, to give an idea how it sounds through different set-ups.

Regards

RDV

I've got to lower the clipping of the second section as it is squishing all dynamics from the signal to the Marshall. Having too much clipping is better than not enough though, as I can easily get it set with the 100k trimpot internally. The sound is really good though and I used it a lot for leads, but it's too compressed for any chunkyness on rhythm sounds. I had the gain way down and it was still completely saturated. It wouldn't hurt to have every pot in this thing be a regular size pot and forget the trims. That would be a total of 8 pots with max flexability available. There would be:
1. GAIN 1 - 500k gain over the first OA feedback loop clipper
2. GAIN 2 - 100k gain over the 2nd OA diode to Vr clipping stage
3. SATURATION - 1k between diodes and Vr in 2nd stage(does a lot actually)
4. TREBLE(rolloff)
5. BASS CUT OR BOOST(depending on which way from center point on pot)
6. BASS FREQUENCY
7. BASS RESONANCE(adjusts width of peak or notch)
8. MASTER VOLUME

Regards

RDV

Oy, you knob freak

About your other post I was gonna suggest making the EQ another box altogether, but now, it's definately what's needed to keep the knob count down? Though tailored specifically for the HMP.

Glad to hear your satisfied with the stage rendering of your pedal.
I got around to try the pedal on my Fender bullet reverb and it's really a whole new sound compared to the Vibe (4558 driven, cheap) amp I use to test my builds. It has more presence, much clearer and the bass isn't nearly as muddy. I play with the gains fully up (I even made the second 200k, but I get oscillation at certain settings). Btw, when you say 60Hz garbage, is it an "around thatfreq" or 60Hz specifically? The interference here are insane, it'd be great if I could just cut that one out with a bandstop filter or sum

Ciao.

I considered putting a preset notch filter in there set for 60 cycles to cut the hum, but really in these bars & clubs I play the wiring is done so badly that the x-tra hum & buzz can vary all over the place in frequency. In my band's practice room I did the AC wiring myself, so even with the gain all the way up on the HMP there's very little hum to speak of. It's all about correct polarity, and solid earth grounding.

I'm going to keep the knob count down to 5 in my prototype, though it would be cool to do deep tweaks on the fly by having all those knobs at hand, it just wouldn't fit too well on a 1590BB with room to stomp.

Regards

RDV

I hit the button 2nite after I had cranked the clean channel on the Marsnall all the way up to do our little "the Who" set, and was greeted with "howleeescreeglenyaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". Disbelieving my ears, I hit it again and was greeted by the same sound. You almost have to have a nice clean sound going to make this thing work due to all the tremendous gain & clipping going on. That said, if you want feedback on practically any note(and a nice strong low-end sound with scooped mids to boot), this thing is for you. Sustain for days. But there will be next to no dynamics if you've already got a bit of gain going. So it's not playing nice with my SD-1/808 and mos-boost cause they love an 'edge of distortion' sound to start with. I've either got to rethink my whole gain-structure of my 'live' settings on the amp, or add a speaker simulator to the HMP and use it at home. I'll try a much lower gain setting on the amp 2nite(Sat.) for a super-clean sound and see if I can stand it, so I can better use the HMP.

Will report success/failure.

RDV

Well, now, that's some nice follow through you're doing

And yeah, one thing that goes with metal pedal is that a little more distortion can quickly turn it into howling-tortion. Loud volume causes overdrive/distortion so it ends up causing the same effect as if you plug an overdrive in an amp on the distortion channel: more distortion... unlesss I'm wrong .

Last nite I tried going with a completely clean sound on the amp. This presented a whole new set of problems/assets.
Clean sounds were obviously much cleaner & clearer, but my SD-1/808 became quite weak & anemic sounding. To offset this I had to do a lot of tap-dancing on the mos-boost to compensate. The mos-boost also reacted much differently to the increased headroom. When I would normally get a crunch on a setting, I now was getting the clean sound, but much louder, so I actually had to turn down the mos-boost quite a bit to compensate.

The HMP sounded different like this also, while the clipping was better(not as mushy), the EQ had a weaker effect, meaning that my distortion channel on the Marshall is still kicking major ass on the HMP. BUMMER.

More work is needed on the Bass EQ section of the pedal. Period. It's not powerful enough methinks. I'm also going to rethink the high EQ, perhaps going with a BMP style one starting with the one Mr. Huge posted here(don't bother looking if you didn't grab it, he's taken it down since...) a while back.....

Stay Tuned....

RDV

I've noticed a big-time mid-scoop on the EQ section if you turn the FREQ & BASS knobs both all the way down. If I could figure out how to increase the IC2 gain at the same time to avoid the accompanying volume loss, then this thing would really rock for that scooped metal sound.

As you were.

RDV