SSAS Drive - Super Simple Anti-Sparkle Drive (Reverse Transistor Trick)

[Earthscum]

Super Simple Anti-Sparkle Drive. It sounds really good, just like booster with a tone cut, "Anti-Sparkle", but not dull or lifeless! Really kind of neat, almost like a light compressor sound. I just came up with this by experimentation, basically sticking with the 10k and 2n2222 at the end.

Bias is held to about 3V with the 2N2222, and gives the cleanest amount of headroom. On the scope, this was showing a larger swing to positive than negative at the emitter (now the "collector"). Originally, I had 470k to positive, which biased it in around 4.45V, but to reduce the clipping I settled on the 100k in feedback over a bias from the rail.

Give it a shot and let me know what you guys think! 

[Colonel Angus]

Looks like fun! I'm ready to put my buzzaround on perf, I'll try this next.

[abram]

got some time to drop this circuit on the breadboard today. sounds really cool with my Gretsch baritone guitar. i also played around with some different values. bumped the 100n cap on the output to 1uF and 2.2uF to see how it affect the lower tones. definitely adds to the lower notes of the baritone.

i also changed out the values on the positive feed back loop to see how that affected the wave form. i substituted a 2.2M for 100k and put a 1.2M after the decoupling cap on the output side (since the gain was REALLY high). it seemed to make the clipped signal a less square and overall more uniform on the top and bottom. definitely added some more of that "anti-sparkle" sound.

great post. first time i've ever messed with reverse transistor biasing and this seemed like a good place to start. thanks for sharing!