Clean boost with lm741 or lm386????

[GibsonGM]

My thoughts exactly, Tonefreak.  What if you get the 741 circuit working, but it sounds like crap? It well may, being an older, slower and limited opamp.  It's likely to be tinny and distort a lot.  By changing some components, you might be able to work something good into a circuit you'd otherwise walk away from because it doesn't sound right on the first try.  Voice of experience, LOL.   And nobody can nail it totally for you, because your rig will sound different than anyone else's...I used to think the schematic was the last word in a circuit, until I started messing with in/out caps and gain resistors!  My pedals aren't like anyone else's, they're custom and sound better with my axe/amp.

For $30, you could set up a simple breadboard system, but that's up to you, and if you might not stick with it, maybe you don't want to bother?  Just trying to point you in the right direction...if the 741 project doesn't do what you want, i'd suggest building one of the 'known to be good' boosts, like the AMZ Mosfet, etc.  They're designed for maximum clean (usually), where the 741 is known to clip an awful lot.

[wsgarner]

GibsonGM,
Not a bad point (building a known to be good boost). My free time is very limited with all that I'm into (lifting, motorcycles, playing, family,...). The list seems to never end. But I have no problems putting an hr aside to build a pedal. I would even consider buying a pre-done PCB for a boost. This way I could just put it together.

I know; "You sure seem to have a lot of time to mess around in this forum!" I'm in-between projects at work, so I have time to kill right now. It wont last long!

Then why am I here? I can spend half the money and get just as good a pedal if I build it myself. And this started because I needed an effects loop with a blend and couldn't find what I wanted to buy, so I decided to make it. "Couldn't be too hard, right??!!"

[d95err]

A cheap alternative to breadboarding can be to use sockets for components that you think you may want to experiment with.

First, you should always (ALWAYS!) use sockets for ICs and transistors. As long as you do that, you probably have a few extra IC sockets laying around. Cut two "legs" off an IC socket and use it to socket the gain limiting series resistor. 

I think a typical solo boost would be somewhere around +6 to +10dB, which corresponds to a gain of about 2-3. Try a series resistor of about 20k to get a maximum gain of 5.