First Attempt At Distortion

[TheShizzle]

how does that look?

ill have to order some more caps cos the schools stock is appaling, but i guess i can live with that, thanks a lot for the help!

[scaesic]

you should add a pull down resistor after that capacitor on the ouput, so the ac signal has a good ground reference after the cap.

id add a potentiometer to the output, one outer lug to the output line, the other outer lug attached to ground, and the sweep attached to the output jack.

If i were you i'd ask your teacher, to order/for money, to go to maplin to buy the parts, caps/resistors are about 10p.

make sure all your caps are rated well above the voltage you intend to put into it, say around 50v.

other than that, this circuit looks a lot better than the first one.

[TheShizzle]

pull down resistor meaning a resistor attatched to ground and after the 2.2uF cap?

thanks a lot for the help!

[scaesic]

yes. tell us how you get on.

[Steben]

how does that look?

ill have to order some more caps cos the schools stock is appaling, but i guess i can live with that, thanks a lot for the help!

Those are very odd values: 40uF?, 8kohms pot?, 73pF?..
In practice you'll have 47u, 10k and 68p or 100p.

Surprise the teacher with how well you adapt the theory to the purpose of the circuit!
If you would go for nice smooth rock tone once you have trespassed the door to FX building, I would suggest taking the HiFi frequency response away, by substantially lowering the "40u" cap (to 0.47 or 0.33) and raising the 73p cap (to 150-220p or so). You can switch between those values and the former values and hear the difference on a guitar.
Maybe the gain pot (8k now) could be a 100k one.

[TheShizzle]

thanks for the help and advice guys, i have a week to build it so i will be starting asap, tho id like to know what type of caps would be best? any advice?

and yeh the values in that diagram are pretty pointless, most of them are wrong

ill let you know how i get on, oh , and also aswell as the caps what type diodes would be best?

[Melanhead]

metal film caps if you can for values below 1uf, electros for above.  4148/914 type silicon diodes. You could also use 1N4001, 1N34 germanium, or even LED's ... they all sound different. Use sockets if you can and expermint, mix and match ... For the feedback loop cap either Ceramic disc or silver mica ... basically use whatever you can to get the right value. I always use the best I can afford for consistency but there are ton's of arguements about what caps are best or if there is a tonal difference