Green Riger Diodes???? which silicone work best? and R4 Resistor question

[Canucker]

So I put together the Dragonfly version of the green ringer today (without a switch for now). I only had silicone diodes and have read that it works with them just doesn't sound all that good. I was fine with that until I order some parts...as long as I got some kind of sound out of it indicating my project was working..... so I plugged it in and well I get signal but its just clean normal guitar...no effect at all. Fresh 9 volt out of the pack and tested. Before I start doing readings does anyone have any idea of what the best Silicone diodes would be for this? I have a few different ones to choose from. http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/DRAGONFLY-LAYOUTS_0/album18/album151/DAN_ARMSTRONG_GREEN_RINGER_PERFBOARD.gif.html   
I also noticed that the R4 resistor (by the input) is 4.7M but in all other layouts I could find online its 2.2M should that make much difference?

[theehman]

I have a large quantity of the original dual-diode (MSD6150) if you want to try it.  I use it in my builds and it sounds fine.

[Canucker]

Looks like I got it going but I'm not getting full volume out of it....fresh battery of course.....had to add a few resistors together to make the R4...but after inspecting things it turned out one of the 1m resistors I used in that cluster was mis-labled and was actually a 10m resistor....not exactly 5% accuracy. I wonder how often that happens.

[LucifersTrip]

I saved these voltages...so you can check to see if you've got it close:



It looks like that 2.2M / 4.7M isn't in other schematics...

it's probably just there to stop pops when you switch

The only problem I had with the Ringer is that it didn't sound good at all with any Walwart. I had to use a battery.
ugly_guitar_guy had the same problem but fixed it with PRR's suggestion:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=94291.0

[Canucker]

cool thanks for that. I'll check it out soon (tomorrow)...it looks like there are a lot of variations on resistors floating around on the net and even a few in how many caps there are...I've seen 4 and 5 in some places and different transistors too! If you don't actually match diodes what would the results be like?

[LucifersTrip]

cool thanks for that. I'll check it out soon (tomorrow)...it looks like there are a lot of variations on resistors floating around on the net and even a few in how many caps there are...I've seen 4 and 5 in some places and different transistors too! If you don't actually match diodes what would the results be like?

I built mine from the above schematic (notice the resistors on the 1st stage are the same, just flipped for npn/pnp) and it worked great right off. I didn't match diodes, but if I remember right, I did try a variety with little change. Note the schematic calls for either, si, ge, or sch.

regarding the transistors, just remember that Q1/3 are higher gain and Q2 is lower (I used one with ~ 100 hfe)