Blackstone Appliances Mojo

[randaji]

Just curious if anyone knows what gives the Blackstone overdrive such an amazing sound.  I'd just like to know from someone who has one about what's inside.  Is it all transistor?  One op-amp (JRC or TL?)  Carbon or metal film Resistors?

He says on his site that there's no electrolytic or tantalum C's in the signal path.  That's a start.

Also curious if there is a separate gain stages for Brown and Red "channels" or if switching just kicks in a different set of settings (R values for instance).  I'm guessing it's the former.

I'm not asking for a reverse engineer ripoff schematic (although I'd love to see it ), it's just that I'm not likely to be able to afford one for a while (last one on ebay went for $238) and he's out of stock anyway, so I'd like to know what tricks I might add to my own design if I'm shooting for that sound.

Thanks for any insight.

-Randaji

[cd]

Start with this document:

http://geofex.com/effxfaq/distn101.htm

And then breadboard up 4-6 MOSFET gain stages and adjust the gain/frequency response into each of them.

[squidsquad]

I heard (read) it's 3 mosfet gain stages...perhaps similar to Joe's Obsidian.  I love mine...but you can't see components without a total dis-assembly...which I won't do.

[soggybag]

I remember reading a post on this list where the author said they talked with guy that makes the Blackstone and he saif it did not use a mosfet for the input stage, because it was too noisey.

Search the list for Blackstone.

[RDV]

..adjust the gain/frequency response into each of them.

This little statement is the end-all and be-all of getting a distortion of any kind to sound good, especially frequency response.

Gain structure and filtering. I know this from my failure(s).

RDV