zachary vex pedal question (not a schem)

[Dragonfly]

It occurs to me that you might be better suited to reduce your guitar's overall volume if your amp already has heaps of gain...  This can be done before the preamp, as Dragonfly suggests in his Clean Machine, or in the effects loop, as DIY Guitarist suggests in the Solo Pro.

Reducing pre-preamp will affect your gain, and thus your tone (this could be good, or not).
Reducing pre-power amp (effects loop) will preserve the sound of the preamp, but simply make it quieter (or not).  If your pushing your power amp into clipping this will also affect your tone.  If the power amp is running "clean", this will likely NOT affect your tone.

Both builds are so simple and cheap, I suggest trying both...

btw...ive built sparkle boost / clean machine "combo" pedals for a few people...its a great combination. set the amp for a nice "medium" gain, and use the boost to kick it into "high gear"...and use the clean machine to "clean up" the sound...effectively mimics a 3 channel amp on a single channel amp, like a marshall jmp....

andy

[bigjonny]

btw...ive built sparkle boost / clean machine "combo" pedals for a few people...its a great combination. set the amp for a nice "medium" gain, and use the boost to kick it into "high gear"...and use the clean machine to "clean up" the sound...effectively mimics a 3 channel amp on a single channel amp, like a marshall jmp....

Cool.  Have you settled on an order?  Sprakle->Clean or Clean->Sparkle?

[gaussmarkov]

I did the MOSFET Boost + Mini Booster that robotboy was so nice to point out.  Sounds good, but gets distorted when the two are ganged up (of course).  The problem with running two boosters, cascaded is that you run into limitations of the 9V power, and thus get distortion no matter how "clean" they are to start with.  You might consider running @ 18V?

i have collected the pieces for a dual mosfet booster but it had not occured to me run that at 18v.  this is a helpful suggestion.  am i right reading the bs170 spec sheet (fairchild) as saying 18v would be no problem?  i think it says that maximum drain-source and drain-gate voltages are 60v and maximum gate-source is plus/minus 20v.  seems obvious enough, but i'd appreciate hearing someone knowledgeable say i'm using this info correctly.  thanks!

[petemoore]

I've been using the Mosfet Booster   , great for driving something with.
 I've yet to see a circuit with a Mosfet as distortion element that inclined me to build and use it, I tried somet hings with them tho.'
 I have a pile of 2N7000's.

[bigjonny]

I've been using the Mosfet Booster   , great for driving something with.

Along the same lines of driving stuff with a MOSFET... I just stumbled across J. Nagy's designs.  He has a bunch of stuff that uses a BS170 to drive some JFETs...

http://diystompboxes.com/pedals/schems/blue_magic.pdf
http://diystompboxes.com/pedals/schems/earthshine.pdf
http://diystompboxes.com/pedals/schems/killerbee.pdf
http://diystompboxes.com/pedals/schems/supanova.pdf
http://diystompboxes.com/pedals/schems/xfet.pdf