Voodoo Octave Fuzz becomes Compact Direct Drive #2

[jugglindan]

It doesn't look so sparse as it started to fill up with wiring. So many pots, so many switches, so many wires.
I have seen beautiful wiring in pedals, with everything cut exactly to length, but I am not of that school of thought. I find that if everything is only just long enough it can really suck to make repairs, and the final wiring gets really difficult as well. So I end up with this:


Yes, I know the pots are not all neatly lined up. The mini circuit board adapters I made to convert the PCB mount pots collide with the case walls so I rotated them a bit. Fortunately the pot shafts are round so I can get away with this. Chamfered pots wouldn't have let the knobs line up correctly.

At this point I put the back on and hooked up to my amp for a good-news, bad-news moment. All controls seemed to work as expected (always test this), but the sound was off. Certainly nothing close to my version. There were echoes of my pedal, but everything was fizzy and noisy. Normally if there is an electrical fault the result is much more obvious: no sound, nothing but noise, noise from a pot, volume wired backwards, that sort of thing. But here, everything worked as it should but the sound was fizzy and wrong. The only other clue to the issue was that the gain switch didn't make a lot of difference.

Based on this, I had an intuition to swap out the op amp. I always use sockets so it's an easy change.

Plug in again and - drum roll - sounds nearly exactly like my version. So the first op amp is a dud.

But only nearly. The high gain settings don't have quite the same gnarly Marshally grind that I get from my pedal. But I know the rest of the circuit is good so I am going to experiment with a few other op amps to find one that sounds better. I have around 15 4558s and 10 TL072s so there should be a better one in there somewhere. Will try tomorrow as I find myself oddly tired now. I think the pressure of building a pedal for someone else made this project a lot tougher than my own. For my own pedals I will gladly shelve something for a month before I feel like fixing it.

Oh, nearly forgot the late-night-bad-lighting photo:

[jugglindan]

Kind of fitting. That's exactly how I picture my brain in comparison to my skull. Lots of empty space .. great for a reverb chamber .. maybe I could convince @igor to implant some input and output jacks for me...

I managed to find a few short minutes today to knock up a quick pedal board

Looks great! Is that the buffer pedal?

Sent from my moto g(7) using Tapatalk

[Bakersdozen]

Yes the little buffer works great

[jugglindan]

Yes the little buffer works great

What circuit did you use? I found lots of different ones before building mine. I chose based on components I had in stock more than reviews.

I will do the op amp swapping tests with your pedal today. Should get it in the mail this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

[Bakersdozen]

I just followed this quick and easy circuit

https://youtu.be/dMxwT7BT7oE

I know there are more advanced circuits, but this was a simple start for me.

Awesome thanks for all your hard work dude - much appreciated. I'm super excited to have a play around with it. Shoot me an email and we can work out fundage.

[jugglindan]

OK, swapped out the op amp for another 4558, then plugged into my board alongside my build so I could do a true A/B test. After dialing in the settings, I can't tell the difference between the two pedals now. The new pedal still sounds awesome with a compressor in front of it. I got some radical sounds by stacking one CDD into the other as well. The first on low gain setting, and the second on high. Sustain for days

It also has the same sweet spot as my build for a clean tone. Tone 1 o'clock, gain at 12, volume just over unity, harmonics on (up for high harmonics), high-gain switch off. Sounds juicy with my amp. Your mileage may vary. Just heading to the post office now to send the pedal on it's way. Once I find some bubble wrap.

[JohnH]

Great work! I've only ever built two or three pedals for other people but I always found it super stressful - right up until they had it plugged in and were loving it lol

[jugglindan]

Great work! I've only ever built two or three pedals for other people but I always found it super stressful - right up until they had it plugged in and were loving it lol

I can relate to the stress part. Putting a failed build in a drawer isn't an option. Fortunately no builds this year have failed, yet. Touch wood. Too early to say if BD will love it, but I hope so.

[Bakersdozen]

Pretty sure I will .. keep you updated

[Bakersdozen]

Dude! I just spent a couple hours behind this thing. You knocked it out if the park I'm getting smooth creamy overdrive all the way up to cranked Marshally goodness out if this thing. I can only really describe it as "amp like" .. totally takes on different characteristics of each guitar being either humbuckers, p90's or single coils and reacts very differently as opposed to a generic pedal where everything sounds the same.

Playing with the harmonics switch and the high cut you can really dial in all kinds of sweet spots for what each guitar needs and wants according to the tone your chasing. I found the single coils needed the harmonics off or the high cut dialled right back with it on. I totally understand their choice there as it's the only thing that you feel like you need to change when the trebles get a bit harsh.

And the gain control on the Footswitch was a magic touch. Pretty much a 2 channel pedal. And so handy to have that at your feet to crank it over at will.

I couldn't stop playing it and super satisfied. It's a well designed and thought out circuit and you totally did it justice mate. Well done and thank you so much again, I can't thank you enough. You might be able to tell, I'm pretty stoked and it's living up to my hopeful expectations of what this pedal would bring.