Does the Dr Boogie cleans up very well?

[RonaldB]

Hello,
I recently build the Dr Boogie with 2N5457 jfets and i love the sound.
But it doesn't clean up very well when I roll down my volume knob on the guitar.
Does this has something to do with my biasing (it's biased add 4.5v)?

Or is this distortion to high gain to clean up.

best regards
RonaldB

[crane]

As far as I remember mine was the same. It's too high gain. Even if it became clean sound was awful because volume pot had to be at too low setting.
I don't think that you can "cleap up" Mesa DR's red channel either.

[lonewolf]

if you have the gain at less than 12 o'clock it will clean up somewhat but still has distortion..it may clean up better with J201's

[ghostsauce]

Mine cleans up beautifully... actually I use a fetzer boost before it set below unity gain just so I can switch to a lower gain 'channel' which is something like ac/dc-ish gain setting. Kinda apples & oranges since you need power tube saturation for that sound but that's the closest I can think of in my current state of non-coffee.

I biased mine so that it didn't sound buzzy though (around 6v), and I run the gain at 11 o'Clock on a 500k gain pot. More than enough gain for metal and rock and using the volume knob I can get bluesy breakup.  Also I used J201s and matched them but apparently I'm told matching doesn't matter so... idk. haha

[RonaldB]

Thanks for all the tips, I will try these out on the bread board.

RonaldB