Aion Electronics Nimbus - Easy question about the extra pads

[mongchacha]

hi, for anyone who knows more than me...
i recently just built Aion's Nimbus (and before that, the Refractor) and i love it (i love them both). i'm just curious as to how to utilize the extra pads that were provided. i bought 4 diodes just to play with, but i guess i don't know how to insert them into the circuit.
here's a picture of how i currently have them in the circuit right now.
if anyone could shed some light on this, i'd love to mess around a bit to see what i like.
thanks!



oh, and if anyone is interested, here's my blog, where i share about my builds...and other stuff: www.mongchacha.com

[aion]

The extra pads allow you to stack diodes, for instance putting two in series instead of one. This has the effect of raising the clipping threshold (one 1N914 clips at 0.6V while two of them would clip at 1.2V, they just add to each other) which would make the clipping sound more open, dynamic or transparent while also being a little louder. It's definitely worth trying since you've got sockets!

Anyway - looking at the board, the middle two pads in each row of 4 are connected to each other. The way you have it (stock), the diodes skip over these two pads, but if you set the diodes upright, you can fit two on a row instead of just one.

As long as each row has the diodes pointing in the same direction (the black stripes) then you'll get the stacked effect.

The other thing to mention in this circuit is that since it mixes the clean signal with the gain signal, it's possible that stacking the diodes like this might make the gain side a little louder than the clean side and throw off the mix a bit. I haven't tried it so that's just theory - one guy did report back and said it sounded fine to him, though.

Hope that helps!

[mongchacha]

i'm assuming this is Kevin. Thank you for replying! and thanks for your great site! this is a hobby i only picked up this Spring...and it's so fun

i THINK i know what you're saying here.  what i did is i kept the diodes as shown in the image, but i inserted the additional diodes into the middle sockets. this is probably so wrong that you're getting a good chuckle right now. so from what you're saying it seems like i'm supposed to put them side by side in the orientation i've got them in presently...

man, i cannot wait to go home...can. not. wait.