Serious-Hard-On (build report)

[RickL]

I found this in MarkM's layout gallery here: http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/MarkMs-Gallery/album15/album76/SeriousHardOn_LAYOUT.gif.html

I was looking for a simple little project for a rainy holiday afternoon and this fit the bill perfectly. I built it on perfboard using the layout as a guide with a socket for the transistor.

It sounds pretty good. I didn't have the exact transistor called for (CV7112) so I tried the one NPN Ge that I had and several Si NPNs. I didn't hear much difference between transistors so I'll probably end up using a PN2222.

It's got lots of volume, clean until the guitars volume gets to about 8 (tested with humbuckers), then it get a little dirty. Backing off on picking intensity at this point also cleans it up so you can go from clean to dirty by just banging the strings harder. It seems to be quite transparent when clean, I didn't notice any dramatic frequency boosts or cuts.

Without comparing the schematics directly it looks like an LPB-1 variant so I imagine using a smaller input cap would make it a decent treble booster and replacing R2 and R3 with a 500k pot or trimmer could dial in some asymmetric clipping. All-in-all a nice easy afternoon build that I'll have to get around to boxing some day.

[blanik]

the real SHO uses a BS170... try it! 

[Purple People Eater]

the real SHO uses a BS170... try it! 

Looking at the layout, the biasing isn't set up to work with a mosfet. It "might", but it's not designed to.

[kurtlives]

I don't think the name of the pedal has anything do with that bow tweak pedal we are thinking of.

[RickL]

the real SHO uses a BS170... try it!

I have, some time ago. I don't think anyone thinks the name of this pedal implies anything more than that it is a booster.

I just hadn't seen any reports of anyone building it and thought some people might be interested in my experience. I have often wondered how many pedals actually get built after these schematics and layouts are posted. I'm going to try to remember to post a brief blurb each time I build one, especially if it's not one of the mainstream ones (hence my recent post about the Pic-A-Wah).