highway 89 and vulcan just plain rule...

[b_rogers]

i just "rebuilt" these two circuits that were laying in a box with a bunch of other overdrives ive perfed in the past. i wired 'em up with pots and jacks, rats nest wires and all....

wow...i forgot how awesome the 89 is. boxed that puppy up!!!

vulcan is awesome too..i dont have an enclosure for the vulcan but im about to order one!

big props to Doug H and Joe D for these two. 

if you havent tried them please do so..you wont be sorry


Brent

[bluesdevil]

I love the Vulcan circuit as well. I added a lot bells and whistles to my build: a Big Muff style tone control, an extra footswitch to switch between distortion at full blast (for leads) or pre-set lower overdrive type distortion with knob, toggle switch to flip between inline diodes or resistors for levels of raunch and another toggle for lowpass filtering to take a little bit more treble off.
        I definitely plan on building Doug's Highway 89 too. Good to hear you gave it a thumbs up.

[Finch]

What does the highway 89 sound like?

Finch

[b_rogers]

fat, round and juicy. great sustain also.  cleans up really well with the vol control, at least it does with single coils. kinda of a gary mooreish still got the blues type of sound. not quite a fuzz but more of a very creamy OD.


Brent

[burnt fingers]

Anyone have the Highway 89 schematic.  I can't seem to find it.

Scott

[b_rogers]

you have to email Doug to get a copy of the schemo...its not posted anywhere.

[WGTP]

Funny this came up, I was reading about Dr. Z amps and curious about the tone control.  I started wondering about switching the Blackfire stage at the end of the 89 to 2 Vulcan stages.  Still uses the same number of 89's just a few more parts and different wiring.  Super Highway 89.   

[Doug_H]

Might be worth a try. My only concern is it might be Super Compressed. Don't the Vulcan stages compress or something? The 89 already compresses pretty good, but it would be fun to try.

BTW: Thanks, B Rogers for the nice comments on the 89. It was my "go to" pedal for a long time, and I even used it for my main clean sound with my guitar turned down. It's in the pedal hospital right now. I'm probably going to redo it and revisit the design in the process. There's an improvement or two I'd like to make.

Doug

[WGTP]

http://www.diystompboxes.com/analogalchemy/amps/headamp.html

Check out this headphone amp at Joe's site.  It starts out as a Blackfire plus some parts into the phones.

I was thinking the 2 Vulcan stages might turn it into more of a beast.   

[b_rogers]

anytime doug..i give credit where credit is due. ive yet to hear such a "round" sounding overdrive. no harshness or fizz. i cant wait to try it on the new bassman next week!

quick question though..the gain control is basically a bias for q1 right?  the middle lug is routed back into the signal path instead of wired like a variable resistor.  does this variation make any sound difference as opposed to biasing q1 for 1/2 supply then a vol pot between the tone stack and the blackfire stage? just wondering what was behind using that arrangement..

Brent

[Doug_H]

No, the gain pot works like the gain pot on a Rangemaster. The 10k resistance remains constant for biasing the transistor. The wiper just taps off how much signal gets sent to the next stage. As far as AC is concerned, DC looks like a ground. So the 9v supply looks like ground to the signal. Looking at it that way, the pot is wired like a volume control, with the "upper lug" connected to the collector (output) of the transistor. C3 is a treble-leak "bright" cap.

BTW, I don't think that gain control is real effective in this particular case and it's one of the things I'm going to look at improving.

Doug

[b_rogers]

ok that makes sense. i havent really looked at the rangemaster before.  thanks for explaining that to me.
i have noticed that if you crank the tone controls you overdrive the blackfire stage regardless of gain setting. have you tried the tone stack at the end of the circuit? or is its position part of the magic?

please keep us posted on your mods and improvements.

Brent

[Doug_H]

i have noticed that if you crank the tone controls you overdrive the blackfire stage regardless of gain setting. have you tried the tone stack at the end of the circuit? or is its position part of the magic?

The pre-distortion tone control topology was inspired by the Rt66 amp and I wanted to try that out. Yes, the treble control in particular will add more gain/harmonics. It's all part of the fun. Cool, huh?

Doug

[b_rogers]

i also like how this circuit reacts to a wah. very "hendrixy"

most of my other non diy pedals make my crybaby sound odd. with the 89 after the wah, before the univibe and octavia its very nice. i need to build another one with better wiring and layout, mine has a few wires that are about to crap out from to much bending.

sombody gave me a pcb layout back when you came out with this one that i never tried. the last pcb i tried was the RM axis and it turned out not so good..