My Marshall Bluesbreaker I pedal build sounds bad with a strat

[Der Groovemeister]

Hi, I just built a BLuesbreaker I after hearing a lot of good things about it but with my strat it sounds not very good. Kind of ghost-noting on the higher strings. Not if i pick softly, but normally i have a pretty strong attack and that gives some harsh ugly overtones. If i play it with a humbucker guitar it sounds better. I guess it is extremely sensitive for ringing of the strings on the frets. Is this normal? Can anybody verify this for me? Or does anybody have an idea to fix this? I don't have this problem with my other overdrives (TS, Eternity, Hotcake, Dist +). Thanks!

[nate77]

I have built the bluesbreaker and many of its children (KOT, morning glory, etc) and I haven't experienced that with any of them, not have I heard of anyone else that has. That however, in no way means that no one else has experienced the senthing you are. I'm in no way a guru here, but I'm not sure why single coils would produce ghost note issues. I know tht I basically didn't help you in any way here.......but I'm gonna take a look around and see if I can find anyone with the same problem.

[vigilante397]

What schematic/layout did you build it from? Would you be willing to accept the possibility something may be wrong with the build?

I have never had anything I could call "bad sound" from a bluesbreaker with any guitar.

[Ben N]

I used to own a BB II (the smaller silver box). I have no idea is the cicuit is the same or similar, but I never had anything I could call a "good sound" from it. Not terrible, just not very good. But no note ghosting, as far as I recall.

[Der Groovemeister]

I built it from this layout that's supposed to be based on the GGG schematic.
http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.nl/2012/02/marshall-bluesbreaker.html
GGG schematic:
http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/pdf/ggg_mbb_sc2.pdf

[anotherjim]

It can be a problem with guitar setup that's shows up with a high gain FX. Maybe a little fret buzz you don't normally notice - or the pickups (especially the neck), can be too close to the strings creating a "wobble" every time the string vibration takes it closer to the pickup.

[stallik]

I used to have an original which sounded very good with a strat. No ghost notes, great tone but at that time I wanted a little more distortion so Parted with it. Oops!

[Der Groovemeister]

@ Anotherjim: No it's not the setup of the guitar, it sounds great with all other overdrives or with my plexi on 11 ;-)

[nate77]

All of the various versions I've built are from different places. I've built 2 BBs, a morning glory and a prince of tone from PCBs from aion electronics, also a BB and a morning glory from the tagboard effects site (largely a massive collection of vero layouts), and a king of tone clone on a PCB from rullywow electronics. I agree that poor guitar setup is not your issue. The BB isn't a high gain circuit, an even if it was, you've already verified that it works well with other guitars maxed out. I would imagine that there is probably an error somewhere in the build. 

[Der Groovemeister]

OK thanks for replying everyone. I will check the board and parts values again.

[Der Groovemeister]

Double checked and parts are ok and no errors on the vero board! I googled some more around the web and found that there were versions with different values for R2 and R3 on the GGG schematic. Instead of 4K7 and 3K3, 27K and 33K. I tried that and it seemed to help a little. But i also increased the C3 cap to ground from 0.01uF to 0.47uF. Now it sounds great! All harsh ugly overtones are gone! Only downfall is that the tone dial doesn't add any highs anymore. Only cuts. That's of course because the whole pedal sounds less trebly.

[GGBB]

Double checked and parts are ok and no errors on the vero board! I googled some more around the web and found that there were versions with different values for R2 and R3 on the GGG schematic. Instead of 4K7 and 3K3, 27K and 33K. I tried that and it seemed to help a little. But i also increased the C3 cap to ground from 0.01uF to 0.47uF. Now it sounds great! All harsh ugly overtones are gone! Only downfall is that the tone dial doesn't add any highs anymore. Only cuts. That's of course because the whole pedal sounds less trebly.

I found the same thing when I built mine - the 4k7+3k3 version sounded thin and shrill, 27k+33k was smoother, but raising C3 (and C2 and C4) gave it back some much needed low end extension and smoothed it out a lot.  The legendary King of Tone variant uses 27k+33k.

[Johan]

The Marshall factory schematic is in the layout gallery under "Johans simple circuits"  if you want the original values. ..
J