What do you think of my distortion pedal idea?

[kcs]

Heres the planned features of my pedal:
Eight bands of EQ, a noise gate, a compressor and two types of distortion. One stomp can go from high gain, br00tal stuff to a more mellow, crunchy distortion.

So here's my goals for this project:
Cheap! Under $250 AUD
Excelent tone control
Versatile sound
Visually appealing. Is it just me or does a string of shitty coloured pedals look really bad?

The high gain distortion is going to be based of the Metal Muff and the low gain is based of the Marshall Guv'Nor

I've started on the EQ today. I'm $28 into my budget. I still need 8 100k pots and some perfboard to finish the EQ. That's going to bump me up a bit.

[GibsonGM]

Wow, ambitious, man!  I'd like to see what you come up with in the end. 
It would be tough to match the EQ to be able to stomp switch both pedals back & forth, what's good for one might suck on the other.   But worth a shot for sure if you've had building experience...

[asfastasdark]

Lol, I saw this thread at ultimate-guitar.com!  Anyway, I say a Rat and Big Muff Pi, with a LPB-1 in front of them, master volume at the end, Juggler to switch the two distortions, and add the BYOC Mouse mod to the Rat (rotary switch to switch between 6 different clipping devices). 

Edit: OMG, you're doing this on perfboard! 

[Boogdish]

Sounds fun.  Have you already thought about what sort of enclosure you're going to use for this and or if you'll need any special tools to machine it?  This could eat up a lot of your budget. I haven't done it myself, but I'm under the impression that cutting the slots for a graphic EQ can be quite a lot of trouble. 

Good luck.

[dschwartz]

your project looks fine, but definetly, i ´d put the eq on a different box as a separated fx..or maybe in the same box, but as a complete different stomp..

for the high gain distorstion, forget about the metal muff ...it sucks and it is complicated,..try something simpler and nicer.. the 8 band eq will make almost every distortion sound good..

[mth5044]

yes, putting 8 pots just for eq will require an incredible amount of surface space, plus probably 10 more knobs for the rest of it? Unless you get one of those large panel kind of things that dano uses over at beavis audio, you could be in for some cramped, probably ugly device, which is not what you want apparently. Plus you will need a switch for the eq and everything else, so you can't have all that close together or you wont be able to stomp them.

So +1 on the eq in a different enclosure, even though its still going to be HUGE.

[cheeb]

Why a compressor? Distortion by nature will take care of that, especially high gain.

[FiveseveN]

I always thought "the more knobs, the better" but I know a lot of people prefer it the other way around, so here's a trick I recently used: trimmers instead of pots for an EQ. I've installed a set of 8 so I have access from the front panel, but I practically only set them once, so trimpots seemed like the perfect choice. Plus, they're a lot cheaper.
If I were you I would put it in a 1U or 2U rack box, too, though rackmount might not be your cup of tea.

[mth5044]

I always thought "the more knobs, the better" but I know a lot of people prefer it the other way around, so here's a trick I recently used: trimmers instead of pots for an EQ. I've installed a set of 8 so I have access from the front panel, but I practically only set them once, so trimpots seemed like the perfect choice. Plus, they're a lot cheaper.
If I were you I would put it in a 1U or 2U rack box, too, though rackmount might not be your cup of tea.

I also like a lot of knobs, but not on stompboxes. If I want a lot of knobs on an effect, I usually put toggles on it and set it ontop of the amp.

As for your trimpot idea - I actively change my eq settings, so making little trimpots, even if they are accesable from the front, can be more of a hassle in live situations or changing on the fly. A rack would be cool, you could make the footswitches be external and set them out on the floor.

You have a lot of options infront of you kcs 

[asfastasdark]

An idea might be to put the nine knobs of the distortion pedals on the top, and the nine knobs (one of the nine if volume) of EQ on the side, facing you. Then three stompswitches underneath the nine distortion knobs, but still on top of the enclosure. And you're going to need a big mother-f-ing enclosure for this beast.

[mth5044]

You should email Dano about what kind of enclosures he uses. What you want to do should definitly fit in this (knob wise)

http://www.beavisaudio.com/Projects/UberSubCommander/

or something like his fuzz lab.