help adding overdrive to Chopped Boss OC-2 clean octave down

[El Heisenberg]

I want to add a simple switchable overdrive to the clean channel. An overdrive or distortion that'll sound good with the octave down. I wanna add this to my build because I have a switch on the left side for an octave up filter and I want another switch on the right.

I already put an electra distortion in it, but I fed it's input with the first op amp buffer, pin 1. Didn't work, so I switched to a 3PDT switch to switch the output 100K from before the output transistor to after it, but still doesn't sound right and the control effects the other three. I'm thinkin I shoulda switched the input from pin 1 to the input at pin 3.

If not the electra distortion, then the Easy Drive. Something really easy but nice sounding for a simple add on.

I wouldn't have to ask for help with this, but it's already boxed up, and since it was a helluva perf biuld, the box is sorta stuffed. I put the distortion in after boxing it up.

This is the schem I'm workin from:




here's the electra distortion, I really liked it on the breadboard.




here's the easy drive:





help please, thanks!

[oldrocker]

This is of course a matter of opinion.  The Easydrive sounds better using 1n4001 rather than the SI's.  I built it as a stand alone pedal without a gain pot.  Just wondering if you've tried that yet.

[El Heisenberg]

yea they're both good for how simple they are. But I'm having trouble intergrating one of them into the circuit.

[El Heisenberg]

I should have seen that the electras clipping diodes on the output would mess with things.

[Quackzed]

i wanted to suggest a 'gated' type fuzz for the distortion element. or a fuzz with a bias trimmer to be able to dial in a gated tone. running my gated type fuzz into a shocktave pedal yielded some extra synthy tones due to the immediacy of the on/off gating ,and a fuzz will give you lots of sustain ,and a small input capwill give  a nice crispy high end to compliment the pedal..
just thought i'd give you some ideas, i keep meaning to build an electra type circuit, with so few parts theres no excuse not to.
i do have an arion moc-1- which is based on the boss i believe- on its way that i'm looking forward to tweaking, so your posts will be a great help for that! up/down octave fuzz is the direction i think i'm heading as i have a 'simple octave up' in an altiods box that is begging for a new home.nice gnarly up octave on that one.

[El Heisenberg]

Yea, that sound is cool, but I already have another version of this pedal that uses the blue box for the sub octave and a green ringer for the upper octave. The blue box has the 1 octave mod. Originally I had the shocktave in that build, but I opted for the blue box after perfing it.

For this pedal I wanted it totally clean. But the octave needed to be simpler. With the filter it runs cool. But I should've waited to perf it up and build it. I coulda tweaked the octave up more.

The distortion I wanted was a slight tube screamerish overdrive. The electra sounds exactly like what I wanted. I wanted to blend it with the octaves with the clean control instead of run them through the octaves, which would give me a blue box type sound.

I guess I'll have to wait till I build my next one so I can mess with it on the breadboard. If Taylor finishes his double sided PCBs and I could get some it'd save me some trouble I think. As long as I could impliment my mods to the bare bones chopped oc-2.

I'm still so happy with the electra dstortion. I put them in the control cavity of all my freakin guitars. It sounds best at aroud 6v on the collector. It'd be perfect for what I want with this oc-2. The clean sub octave and/or octave up blended with an overdriven guitar sound.