I don't like my SD-9 clone

[nirvanas silence]

I just built a sonic distortion from the ggg site and it sounds too compressed and very muffled.  When I turn up the tone, the mids sound muffled and the highs are raspy.  Are there any common mods I should know of before I start tweaking.  I'm definitely getting new diodes, thats way to compressed.  Thanks!
~Josh

[RDV]

You could try doubling up the diodes(2 + 2) and experiment with the BMP style tone control on Duncan's toestack calculator.

RDV

[nirvanas silence]

Good call.  I'm quite familiar with the BM tone knob so i guess I'll add that.  I wonder what the deal is...

PS Lowering the input cap made it a million times better.

[nirvanas silence]

Wow, I did just commonsense mods and it worked great.  Lowering the 473 input cap and cap off of the emitter of Q1 made a huge difference in terms of chords and intermodulation.  Dropping the 47uF caps to 1uF made the low gain much better and the bass is not so boomy.  I decreased the 470 ohm resistor to 330 for more gain, I may go lower but don't want self oscillation.  I also removed the 2K2 in the treble side of the tone knob and increased the 6K8 to 22K.  Both gave a much better sweep.  This pedal kills now!  I'm working on the diodes too, 1N4148 just compress way too much.

[Phorhas]

For the clopping doides try Aron's Ge+MOSFET thing a-la-shaka III. you could also try putting a FET gain stage to handle the gain loss. try it with a 5k6 source resistor with no source bypass cap. it'll restore gain as well as as subtle sweet harmonics

[Phorhas]

"clopping diodes"... wow... I need sleep

[otokomae]

Wow, I did just commonsense mods and it worked great.  Lowering the 473 input cap and cap off of the emitter of Q1 made a huge difference in terms of chords and intermodulation.  

Hi, I'm modding this same pedal right now and I was just wondering, what values did you lower these 2 Caps to?  The Caps you'retalking about are C2 and C4, right?  What kind of effect did it have?  I'm mostly trying to smooth out the sound.  Thanks!!!

[WGTP]

Try LED's for the diodes.  

[otokomae]

I've already got LED's in therest looking for something else now.  Thanks though!