Accidentally made something awesome, then fixed it :P

[vigilante397]

I made a bet with a friend that if he can find me an overdrive that I like better than the Klon then I'll build it for him for free, but if I build it and I don't like it he has to reimburse me for parts. Kind of low stakes since I don't box them unless I love them so cost is low, but so far he's more or less bought me a couple Tayda orders.

But about a week ago he challenged me to try the Shin's Music Dumbloid. I used Mark's vero layout on http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2014/03/shins-music-dumbloid-special.html and only made a couple mistakes that stopped it from firing up (backwards capacitor and misplaced resistor), but they were easy enough to find just by looking at the top compared to the layout. When I fixed those it fired up and sounded AMAZING, but for some reason the tone knob didn't work. It sounded a little dark, but it was a very meaty, saturated overdrive and I loved the sound. It was perfect for classic rock type riffs and the rock switch gave it the perfect bite for leads. So when I told my friend this might very well be a contender to dethrone my Klon he was confused and said that it sounded wrong.

I checked the board again and sure enough there was a solder bridge between the rows connecting Tone 2 and the switch. When I removed it my friend said it sounded just like it was supposed to and the tone knob responded as it should, but the drive lost the saturated edginess it had before. It still sounded good, and it's not supposed to be a really heavy drive, but I think I preferred it how it was before!

So when I get some free time for breadboarding again I'm going to lay the Dumbloid out and bend the circuit around to see if I can get that edgy saturated drive again, and I just might make that my new overdrive

[nickbungus]

Great stuff.  Very interesting

[Kipper4]

Let us know how it goes Nathan.
btw the tayda code ends tommorow.

[strassercaster]

i rarely have happ accidents ha ha. did you know toasted ravioli was a happy accident. so i guess you want the bridged sound and to be able to use the tone control? . I wish i could hear it. i built about 8 dirtboxes. the klon  is my number 4 favorite dirt box. maybe 3 its on my board and makes for a great booster after my other gains because of the headroom and i have selectable diode configurations for headroom as well. what would you compare this edgy tone too? perfect for what song?  Good luck

[vigilante397]

It works perfectly for a song that I wrote, but it reminds me of just about any rhythm guitar part from Spinal Tap

[sirbergersworth]

did you know toasted ravioli was a happy accident.

You must be from St. Louis?