Condor Build Question/Request

[mydementia]

I just finished my Condor cab sim yesterday - this thing is awesome.  The condor/marshall switch makes a significant difference in tone shaping - very cool. 

Observation:
I had to run my Orange Squeezer as a booster to get the signal up enough for Cubase to 'like' it.  Might be due to the battery I put in (just grabbed the one laying on the workbench - dumb...but I was excited to try it out!).  My chain was: Guitar->pedals->Condor->Sound Card 1/4" input (E-Mu).  Once I got the signal boosted enough - the recordings were awesome - much better than I've done with a condenser mic in front of my amp...

Question:
I'm going to have to make a few more of these, and wonder if anyone has made a PCB layout with the condor/marshall switch mod items 'on board'?  The perf board I used was huge and my mod wiring is really ugly (caps hanging off the board!).  Ultimately, I'd like to fit this into a 125B.

Thanks for looking.
Mike

[slacker]

If you need a bit more volume out of your condor you can make the first opamp stage into an amplifier rather than a buffer, as explained by stm in this thread.
I made a kind of condor lite, basically a condor without the JFET stage with a switchable 10dB boost. This gives enough volume to clip the line level input on my soundcard.

[mydementia]

I just did the recommended mod to get more volume (100k resistor between U1 and U2 then run another 100k to Vref) - now the volume is low and the sound is distorted.  At first I ran the second 100k resistor to ground (oops) and got the exact same response.  Has anyone done this successfully?  I'm contemplating cutting out the 100k resistors and building a sound card preamp (from here: http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album20/SOUNDCARD_4_CHANNEL_PREAMP_VERO_CORRECT). 

Let me know what you guys think...
Mike

[mydementia]

UPDATE:
I added the soundcard preamp - bad idea.  As I turned up the volume pot - the signal got more distorted and unusable.  As I was about to give up in disgust, I noticed my ART StudioV3 (tube preamp) staring back at me - dumbass!  I set the Condor to the cleanest it would go (still had the little preamp circuit on it) and ran it into the V3 - beautiful.  Now I'm going to convert the Condor back to the ROG 'stock' state and call it good.  I have to make a couple more Condors for friends/bandmates - I guess I'm glad I've had this learning experience!  Maybe I'll try to get a Dr. Boogey clip up soon...

Now...onto the Gov'nor (I believe Buck when he says it's awesome...).
Mike