Any good sounding Op-amp for high gain distortion?

[Agung Kurniawan]

Hi everyone..
I have watch some videos about op-amp comparison for drive pedal and they sound slightly different.

I have built a distortion with 3 stage gain with BOSS MT-2-like tone control. using 6 TL072 and it sounds monster.

Any best recomendation for good sounding opamp?
Imma looking for some bold and high gain opamp.
thanks

[ashcat_lt]

The most expensive ones.  Duh!

[Kipper4]

Oh the irony........
If it sounds monster, leave it monster.
6 op amps. Did you use a TL074? its a qaud TL072.

[Agung Kurniawan]

Well, its easier for me to design the layout with dual op amp

[merlinb]

[samhay]

>Imma looking for some ...high gain opamp.

If you can find an op-amp that is not high gain, then I will be very impressed.

[Agung Kurniawan]

Ahh come on guys, I just want to try different op amp

[antonis]

ANY Op Amp (even μA702 or μA709) will give you HIGH gain in open loop arrangement..!! 

To be more serious, you have to search and validate some data sheet parameters, like Large Signal Voltage Gain, Slew Rate, CMRR, Bandwidth product, Signal to Noise Ratio e.t.c.

After spending many hours, enough amount of coffee (strongly recomended..), pencils & parer, parabolic stencil rulers (essential for Nyquist plots..) you'll result to grab any general purpose Op Amp is available in your junkbox and place it on your breadboard...

P.S.
Start with LM1458 (do I hear some guys laughing..??) pass to TL072/TL082 then to OPA2134 and then to a discreat OP Amp of your own design taste..

[deadastronaut]

[Agung Kurniawan]

ANY Op Amp (even μA702 or μA709) will give you HIGH gain in open loop arrangement..!! 

To be more serious, you have to search and validate some data sheet parameters, like Large Signal Voltage Gain, Slew Rate, CMRR, Bandwidth product, Signal to Noise Ratio e.t.c.

After spending many hours, enough amount of coffee (strongly recomended..), pencils & parer, parabolic stencil rulers (essential for Nyquist plots..) you'll result to grab any general purpose Op Amp is available in your junkbox and place it on your breadboard...

P.S.
Start with LM1458 (do I hear some guys laughing..??) pass to TL072/TL082 then to OPA2134 and then to a discreat OP Amp of your own design taste..

That was really helping, thanks

[antonis]

That was really helping, thanks

All the above answers should also be helping to you..!!!

(maybe they didn't provide you the desipher code..) 

[EBK]

I generally stick to TL072, but here are some choices that often find their way into overhyped pedals*:
LF353, JRC4558D, NE5532

Otherwise, just take a look at what smallbear stocks and try a bunch of them.

*I do occasionally build pedals with these "magical" parts.  Sometimes that's part of the fun. 

[Mark Hammer]

When it comes to high-gain distortion, sometimes what you really want is an op-amp with limitations.  If a person was making a mic-preamp for sampling acoustic instruments, the you'd probably want something that was ultra low-noise (2nv/root-hz) and had a high slew rate (10V/usec), capable of handling 15khz content with ease.

But if the goal is to make a humbucker-equipped guitar really grind and sustain, then you're not interested in high-frequency content.  A slew rate of 0.5V/usec is perfectly acceptable.  And if the open-gain bandwidth shows serious rolloff above 5khz with gains greater than 200x, so much the better.  The op-amp might be a little hissy, but then you're going to have lowpass filtering in there anyway to round the edges off the tone and tame all that added harmonic content.  So don't underestimate the "poorly-dressed cousins" like the LM741, LM1458, and LM308.

[duck_arse]

6 dual opamps? why not string one of each in there, and have something really unique? it might take a bit of swapping/testing, but you could have an LF353 followed by a LM1458, a TL072, a TL022, an LM833, an LM358 [how many is that? we haven't even started on the NJM series].

[EBK]

So don't underestimate the "poorly-dressed cousins" like the LM741, LM1458, and LM308.

I still have a big pile of poorly-dressed 741s just waiting to get invited to rock out.  Not sure if I'll let them directly into my signal path, but I should probably make something out of them.

[EBK]

You'll never find a topic R.G. hasn't explored and explained first. 
Read through this, particularly under the heading, "The Opamp":
http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/TStech/tsxfram.htm

[anotherjim]

Poor old 741. It's kind of down there with the 555 as a "meh, that old crap". It's time will come again, oh yes. Wait 'till they've all been thrown out of the component drawers, just like we did with those crappy germanium parts -  and that stupid vacuum tube stuff...
Long ago, I had an amazing (at the time) solid state amp - the H|H IC100S. The S stood for Sustain, which was a wicked gnarly distortion. Saw a schematic recently and am amazed that the overdrive "sustain" feature had no clipping diodes. +/-16v supplies and it was all done by clipping a 741. It was all based on 741's, even the discrete power amp has one as the driver stage.
Still open for someone to make a pedal of this. I'll have a go at it some day...

Was poking around in a Behringer BDI21, which is a "clone" of the long serving Sansamp bass D.I. Behri' have used a TL074 in the drive/presence  boost section. If clipped, it sounds pretty nasty (not in a good way). I think I've tamed it by fitting LED soft clipping to the gain stages. I don't think TL07x like a big input - ok if only the output clips, but not if the input range is exceeded.

[Mark Hammer]

Again, if one was aiming for pristine, low-distortion, wide-bandwidth sound with a 90db S/N ratio, you'd steer clear of the 741.  But this is rock and roll, folks, not studio processing, or sound reinforcement.

If you're making macaroni and cheese, you don't use the $13.95/100g stuff from France, you use the good old cheap bright orange stuff, because absolutely NONE of the nuances of the better cheese will be detectable, or yield the degree of comfort that the "old familiar" does.

[EBK]

+1 on the cheap bright orange cheese.  Love that stuff! 

I just need to find a way to keep the cheap, bright orange cheesiness of the 741 from making a mess of everything near it.  Maybe a g(r)ated effect of some kind, or perhaps using it in a LFO. 


EDIT: From a brief amount of research, I apparently owe it to myself to build an MXR Distortion Plus.

[ashcat_lt]

I was working in this "casual" restaurant in New Orleans.  We made this five cheese baked macaroni thing that was pretty incredible.  Probably the best thing on the menu and was literally the thing that kept people coming back day after day.  The place got bought.  New owners sees the guy making the mac and how much cheese actually went into it and how much that added to in food cost and complained.  The cook sarcastically says "Well you could just buy a bunch of boxes of Kraft, I guess."  Next day, new owner comes in with a whole flat of the cheapest generic knock off of the old standard.  :/