show your creative clipping circuits

[KarenColumbo]

Here's one thing I was playing with for a while. 
The obvious part of the clipping implementation is J5, which clips the negative-going part of the signal at which point the JFET is fully turned on in the capacity of a gate-follower.

The less obvious part of this circuit is designed into the current-limiting threshold which is coordinated by R10, Q2, J2, R11, R10, R14, Q1.  When J2 is driven positive, this causes an increase in current steering between J2 and J3.  You get the soft pinch-off as J2 drives J3 off, but it reaches a hard limit which is set by Q2.  With the right resistor combinations you can adjust the symmetry of this circuit.

Finally there is a dynamic element added to this by C8, since this cap is charged/discharged to an offset determined by the amount of asymmetry programmed into the whole network.

J1 clips if you drive it hard enough at the input.  This does something...but it's subtle.  It's mostly there for gain.

Needless to say, it is very interactive and interesting from a technical point of view.

How does it sound?  Like an overdrive pedal :/ .  The overtones added by the interesting circuitry are only subtle -- the sound that reaches out and grabs you is dominated by the pre-emphasis EQ and tone shaping at the output...just like any other clipper circuit.  When I was tweaking on the breadboard, I spent more time on the EQ and tone stuff than I did playing with the clipper.

I will eventually box one up because I need a good crunch overdrive pedal, but not because the method of clipping does anything amazing.

Here are some audio demos, anyway:
http://www.cackleberrypines.net/transmogrifox/Misc/Distortion_Experiment/demo/

Fantastic throaty/husky/hoarse compressed kind of overdrive!