Peppermill build report, sound sample, etc...

[transient]

I had some free space in my Orange Squeezer enclosure, so i had this idea of adding a simple overdrive to it. After doing a little research, i decided on the ROG Peppermill, it was simple enough to fit there, and the explanation on its page seemed to suit my needs. So i built it on a small piece of perf. I didn't want to drill the box for two more knobs, so i omitted the knobs and added resistors in their place, simulating both gain and volume set to max. It was only a little bit louder than unity with those settings anyway (maybe something's wrong with my build. The FET's biased to 4.5 v at the drain, but the source voltage is more than double the ROG measurement, around 300 mV. I tried a lot of J201's, can't get the source to measure as low as 115mV as ROG suggests).

The actual plan was to place the Peppermill *after* the OS, and i first tried it that way. Although it sounded fine, placing it after a compressor made its touch responsiveness useless (which was expected). Then i tried placing it *before* the OS, and it sounded better that way, so i wired it like that. I didn't want to add a second footswitch either, thus the wiring is done so that the OS is always on (i always keep it on anyway), you can turn the Peppermill on/off with the footswitch. I really like how these two circuits work together for a specific sound.

Here's a short and rough sound sample. The rhythm guitars are OS only. The solo is with the same settings but with Peppermill on (i only added software delay to it afterwards). And towards the end, you hear OS+BSIABII for the rhythm guitars. But i strongly suspect that my BSIAB is misbiased, it sounds a little dirty. Most of the voltages are close to GGG measurements, but a few of them differ (the biggest difference is 0.7 volts if i remember correct). I tried different transistors, but it didn't help. Can post my voltage measurements if anybody's willing to help.

And thanks to ROG for the Peppermill, Ed G. for the BSIAB2 and all this community for all the information available.

[Doug_H]

Sounds pretty cool!

Doug

[petemoore]

Nice Clips !!! sounds great /

[nelson]

Nice sample! Great tone.

[transient]

Thanks guys

I think i found the problem with my BSIABII. I had adjusted the trimpot to around 4.5 volts at Q5 drain, but i didn't know that the battery voltage had gone down to 8.2 volts. So i tried adjusting it to 4.1 volts, and it seems to have fixed the problem. But i'm not totally sure as i won't be able to test it loud since tomorrow.

I also tried the "replace the j201's with 2n5457's" mod, and decided that i like it better with this mod.

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emre