Blues breaker build report and mod

[brett]

Hi.  I just finished building 2 bluesbreaker clones (from the pcb at tonepad.com, thanks Francisco).  

I REALLY like this pedal.  Perhaps more than a TS9.  It is really open and transparent sounding IMO.  Also, the distortion seems to vary more with how hard you are playing than a stock TS9.  I suspect that's because of the "double diode" clipping arrangement that gives it twice the headroom of a TS9.

As an experiment I built one with 4 x 1N4148 diodes (ie standard) and another with 4 x 1N4004 diodes.  The difference was VERY small, but I think I'd choose the 1N4148s next time.  They seemed slightly smoother and less harsh.

cheers