Decade build report

[Ry]

I've been playing with Joe Gagan's Decade pedal for a while now, changing out components
and generally twiddling knobs...

First off, this thing is a monster!  The tone stack is wonderfully flexible and amp-like.
A full rotation of the gain pot results in a runs from a low gain growl to a relatively
high gain, somewhat Big-Muff like sound, maintaing touch sensitivity and throughout.  
This pedal is never terribly subtle, even on the low gain settings, it has a bit
of fuzz, but it never gets thin sounding or fizzy (depending on your diode choice, as noted
later).  The tone stack can radically change the character of the pedal, from a low grunt
to a nicely pronounced treble setting without affecting the amount of fuzz.  As with
all great fuzz pedals, this one is easily controlled by the guitar's volume pot.

Mods to mine include:

I changed out the MPF102's for J201's.  The J201's took some biasing (I did it
by ear) to find the spot where they really opened up the sound.  It was around 7.5 volts.  
The 102's always sounded a little muffled to my ear, even when biased per the schematic.

As for the clipping diodes, I tried 914's, ge's and red leds.  The Si diodes sounded
good, the Ge diodes were really fizzy and the red leds sound fantastic.

I haven't tried a trimmer to change the gain on my Ge transistor, I like it just fine as
it is.

Thanks for sharing another great design Joe!  This one really could be a great production
pedal.

[PB Wilson]

That's very cool! I've been extremely busy lately (end of the school year) and haven't had the time to finish breadboarding and playing with it. It's definitely on my "To Do" list. I'm excited about yet another NVN pedal and I'll definitely try your tweaks before I box it up. Maybe in the next few weeks or so, I'll be back with a report.

[Ry]

I just got an NPN ge trannie from Small Bear that I haven't had time to try it out in this pedal yet.  I have a bag of surplus ones that I've been working with, but they seem a bit noisy.

I'm still very impressed with this pedal, enough so to box it up pretty soon.