Soft Clipping Diode Modification Question

[TheWinterSnow]

I am aware that this topic has been talked about before but I have a slightly different question.  I have a circuit that is a solid state replica of a 65 twin reverb's normal channel and because I knew that my design would not have the harmonic distortion that a tube amp would have, even if it is a clean amp so I implemented the front end of a TS-9/SD-1 hybrid, you know the soft clipping diode section.  Playing around with it, the crunch it can provide is cool, but at the same time I wanted the lower levels of clipping to sound more like harmonic excitement and brightness rather than audible clipping.  

I got the idea to add trimpots in series with the clipping to act as a current limiter further softening the forward biasing transition of the diodes but I remembered the idea of using multiple diodes in series to change clipping.  Other than having more clean output before clipping when adding series diodes, what would be the tonal differences between adding more diodes versus adding resistance?  Which route would you guys go (or possibly other ideas) if you wanted harmonics and clipping that didn't result in audible clipping but more or less add some top end sizzle and compression?

[nocentelli]

Use two antiparellel pairs, and keep the gain down like in the Timmy - sounds good. I've only seen resistance in series with clipping diodes used to lessen the degree of distortion when they are clippping to ground, not in a feedback loop.

[duck_arse]

here is "a" method of controlling soft clipping:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=102162.0

[Quackzed]

imho other than raising the threshold, and clipping the same sized signal less, adding diodes doesnt change much, if you used a signal that was 2x as big to hit the 2xdiodes , you'd get very similar results to hitting 1xdiodes with 1x signal.
adding resistance is different in that it acts as a clean blend at the diode threshold, so you can get less audible clipping. you want to avoid this at low thresholds as it begins to behave as crossover distortion, but with just peak clipping thresholds, adding a smallish resistance can 'open up' the ceiling of audible clipping a fair bit. used as a voltage divider with the preceding series resistance before the diodes 10k series and 10k btween diodes and ground is a 50/50 blend which is probably too much for this, more like 10k/2k 10k/1k for just a bit of clean blend to avoid the crossoverish scenario... try the straight to ground diodes, then try a 1k btw them and ground and experiment from there...