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Howdy y’all! I’ve taken to restoring my old gear and I noticed something that’s keeping it off the board. On the dry channel I get a squirrel-y breakup with my humbuckers. They’re medium high gain passive pickups so I’m sure it’s not the guitar. I considered it was an old build so I completely rebuilt it, replaced old capacitors, cleaned up my soldering and wiring, and the sound is still there. The wet channel sounds amazing as always, but I can’t figure out what might be causing the dry channel to do this. Should I be considering R25-28 biasing? Is Q6 potentially bad?

Things I know

Level has no effect on it

It’s 100% only occuring on the dry side

Update: got in there with a oscilloscope and the distortion occurs right at Q6, but the resistors are all providing similar drops to the rest of the circuit, I’ll try swapping it out and see what happens

Update 2, I have a few 2n5088 so I swapped it for a cooler one, it helped but not enough. Running at 18v also helped but not quite there. I’m beginning to think this is a case of it’s a feature not a bug (I am running rather hot pickups after all)

If I raised the value of the emitter resistor to Q6, would it make it harder to make the transistor saturate?


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Update 3, it seems the transistor may just be a little hot, I replaced it with a lower gain one and it has helped, but I’d appreciate any further guidance on this


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How old is your version? We tweaked the value of one of the bias resistors from the first version to reduce clipping.

_________________
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Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com

Version 2.0, 2009

Ty for the help

It's been a long time, so you'll have to forgive me, but I'm not sure what the differences are. At Q6 and Q7 do you have a 47k resistor or a 56k resistor connecting to ground to bias the base of each transistor? It was changed from a 47k to a 56k to reduce clipping.

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com

No worries! It’s the 56k, is there anything I can do to reduce clipping moreso? Even at the expense of gain so long as it doesn’t throw the rest of the circuit off


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You could increase the value of the emitter resistor on Q6 as you suggested. And even Q7. That would decrease the gain in those transistors and reduce clipping at the transistor. If it's clipping form cascading gain, you could increase the value of R29. Either way you skin this proverbial cat, you will likely need to increase the value of R30 as well if you want to keep the wet and dry levels similar. Not necessary, but only if you want it to be more 50/50 with the blend knob at noon.

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com

Super helpful, I’ll give this a shot over the weekend, ty so much [SPARKLES][GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES][SPARKLES]


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If I could ask one last question, why did you flip D4 on V2.1?

It’s the only change I see comparing 2.0 to 2.1

I ask out of curiosity, but also to see if I could implement the change, or if simply buying the pcb from the site is worth it

Also, in case anyone sees this in the future. I’ve realized the guitar in question makes most any pedal I have clip when I use it the way that inspired this thread.

If you have any doubts about getting this pedal dont, It’s amazing!

TBH, I can't remember as it's been over a decade, but I would have to assume that D4 was simply backwards. If this is the case, you don't need a whole new PCB, just flip the diode around so that the striped end (cathode) goes in the round hole. The round hole of both diodes in the full wave rectifier should be going to ground. If this isn't the case in rev2.0, and one of the square solder pads is connected to ground, then you should intentionally put that diode in backwards.

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com