Zen Drive Thumbs up

[Kipper4]

I needed a quick build tonight as I'd just finished a long hard 12hr day.
So After lastnights research following my Sweet Honey OD thread I discovered Nalle colt (see the Sweet honey thread) said in an interview if he could only take one pedal to a gig it would be the Zen Drive. Looked it up on you tube and as soon as i heard it I already had an idea in my minds eyes of the make up of the pedal. (thanks in part to a recent experiment, after some discussions with Paul Morrisey)
I guessed it was a mosfet clipper type ckt.
I was bang on the money.
Looked up on google and found Rick Holts layout.
Built it in a few hours and it sounds amazing. I cant test it on the Tube amp as its way too late and the wifes getting her beauty sleep in the next room. So I cant wait until morning.
Anyways Long story short.
Its spot on and i love it so far.
It's given me a few more ideas too.
Dammed this pedal building larks got me good and proper.
BTW I used bat 46's as i had no 41's
and a jrc4558 op amp.

Do you like it?
Have you built it?
How do you rate yours?
Thanks for reading
Rich

[armdnrdy]

I built a dual Zen Drive for a friend's son.....He loves it! It sounded good to me for the short period that I had it.
I ripped it off of my workbench and gave it to him before the paint was dry! 

[stallik]

Really like the zendrive. Great on their own, awesome with another TS pedal before them. Built a combo Zen and SHO. put in an order switcher but found that the SHO before the Zen was not to my taste. Useful as a boost after it though.

[pappasmurfsharem]

I built the zen from rick's layout as well. It's pretty nice, VERY mild overdrive.

Its great by itself into my Hot Rod Deluxe, but it makes the crunch channel on my Dual Rec half stack sing.

[Kipper4]

Thanks guys
I love it with the tube amp clean or overdriven.
Although with an amp just breaking up i roll back the gain and use it more as a booster with very little overdive and it still sounds great to my lugholes.
I even tried it with my mini phase 45 infront of it and its a cracker for those bluesy on an island type progressions.
It responds so well with dynamics and just as well to rolling off the guitars volume. That i love.
I can dig in with pick or fingers and it gets dirtier in a good way though. Not filthy or mushy overdriven messy.
I think it will record well.
I havent tried a screamer infront of it yet i will though. Thanks for the tips.

[Jopn]

Looks like I need to revisit my build then.  Based on a lot of positive feedback I built one up on vero about a month back.  It was pretty uninspired sounding, but the Voice control also didn't do anything so I know I screwed something up along the way.  I never got around to troubleshooting it though, so probably worth a second look.  It's also small enough of a circuit that I may just pop out the IC and build it up on perf if I don't see anything obvious wrong with my vero build.

[Pojo]

Looks like I need to revisit my build then.  Based on a lot of positive feedback I built one up on vero about a month back.  It was pretty uninspired sounding, but the Voice control also didn't do anything so I know I screwed something up along the way.  I never got around to troubleshooting it though, so probably worth a second look.  It's also small enough of a circuit that I may just pop out the IC and build it up on perf if I don't see anything obvious wrong with my vero build.

In my experience, any time a vero build made sound and seemed to work, but one of the pots didn't function, it was due to off-board wiring for that pot to the board being off by a row or 2. And the true sound of the circuit wasn't revealed until fixed.

[Jopn]

In my experience, any time a vero build made sound and seemed to work, but one of the pots didn't function, it was due to off-board wiring for that pot to the board being off by a row or 2. And the true sound of the circuit wasn't revealed until fixed.

Oh, no doubt that's the case.  I just got caught with a deadline on something else to complete, then stuck it in the "troubleshooting" box.  I'm still working on my self discipline to finish up those troubleshooting projects rather than always jumping to "new & shiny!" projects I come across while browsing during work breaks.

[Pojo]

100% understood on that!

[Kipper4]

Do a debug post John for the vero. I'll see if i can help ya out mate.
It'd be handy to know which schemo it was built around though.

[Jopn]

Do a debug post John for the vero. I'll see if i can help ya out mate.
It'd be handy to know which schemo it was built around though.

Not worth it.  I just opened it up and it didn't take long to realize that I had the voice wires going to the tone pot and vice versa.  5 minutes later I was rocking out (at "i just put the kids to bed" volume).  Definitely going to play with stacking this in the morning.

[Kipper4]

Cool good work John. Have fun