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Post by billyguitar on Jan 12, 2007 6:07:02 GMT -7
I think I mentioned this one time before but the greatest overdrive pedal ever would be a Maz preamp! Along the lines of a Bad Cat Two Tone. Can you imagine that? Essentially you could have a two channel Maz 38/18 amp. I know there is already the 6545 but I don't dig that much gain.
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mikek
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Posts: 144
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Post by mikek on Jan 12, 2007 12:00:35 GMT -7
With a schematic, it could be adapted for use in pedal form. Would it sound the same? No, but it'd likely exhibit many of the same characteristics. By the way, I'm neither advocating nor asking for obtaining a schematic of any of the Dr. Z amplifiers.
I'm not the biggest fan of using tubes in pedals, as they don't seem to sound right when they're starved that much voltage. They sound extremely harsh to me.
There's a whole movement going on now in the DIY community using cascading JFET stages. You can take a schematic of an amp, substitute the triodes for JFETs, make some tweaks, and you have a pretty interesting little simulation.
The thing that's cool about JFETs in these designs is they behave like triodes. They only clip when overdriven, etc, etc. If you know what you're doing, you can augment the way the JFET distorts by adapting its D/S/G biasing so that it behaves in a Third Power Law, just like a triode. That means it exhibits primarily 2nd order harmonics, followed by a lower amount of 3rd order, etc. Rather than just a 2nd order like you'd get if you directly adapted the schematic.
In my experience, these JFET-based designs sound much more realistic that most pedals using clipping diodes in a feedback loop (ex - Tube Screamer, etc, etc). Not to say that clipping diodes don't sound cool - but if you're really trying to mimic the sound and behavior of a tube or amplifier...realistic they are not.
FWIW - the Menatone pedals are JFET simulations of amplifiers. TBIAC, KOTB, Howie, Workingman's Blues, etc.... Very cool stuff.
I've built a Soldano SLO-100 inspired pedal with great results, and I'm going to start on a D88ble Overdrive Special and Fender Tweed Princeton next.
If you're interested in this building this kind of stuff I can steer you toward great resources.
- mk
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Post by Lefty on Jan 12, 2007 12:20:16 GMT -7
I had the Bat Cat X-Treme. Not a bad pedal actually, the EQ'ing could have been done better. And with having the internal X-former (trans) it produced a hum, I'm guessing poor development. And not too mention it was BIG!
I find that pedals are emulate amps such as the Menatone's (some great pedals, some ...) tend to sound to me like they sit on top of the amp and add their own character, detracting from the amp, not melding with it. But hey that's just me. YMMV.
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mikek
Full Member
Posts: 144
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Post by mikek on Jan 12, 2007 12:46:29 GMT -7
I agree both - pedals that supply the right voltage to the tubes (Bad Cat, Soldano) are inherently noisy because of the transformer and other thingies. Like that jargon? Thingies. That's right.
On the JFET pedals - you're exactly right. They don't meld that well with an amp that already has its own character going on. They are designed to sound specifically like something else. However, through a clean amp with a pretty flat frequency response (like the RxES) they can be pretty magical IMO.
Good points Lefty.
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