thor build report and asking for some sugg's

[km-r]

i have build the thor from ROG's site...
its high gain, but not very high... and has TONS of bass when the bottom switch is on.
with the bottom engaged, i realized how crappy my bedroom practice amp is... the speakers are suffering.

i used all 2n5457 since 201 are quite rare here...

one thing: it hums wildly, any suggestions on how i can reduce this?

[jonathan perez]

get a new pratice amp?

[stm]

Using a 2N5457 in the second stage will produce about half the gain of a J201. This is not necessarily bad, just it won't have as much gain as expected.  As it has been said before, the gain amount of Thor is modelled after a Marshall Superlead which wasn't high gain either.

Hum may be due to the following: lack of shielding of your build, too much 50/60 Hz hum pickup by your guitar/cable, and/or because of single coils.

If your practice amp speaker is suffering with bass you need to reduce output level and/or turn the amp's Bass control down.  Small practice amps of course cannot reproduce the bass content intended for a 4x12 at high output levels. At most you can get an approximation at low levels.

[km-r]

i have no problems with my practice amp since ive considered it as, well... practice amp.

i use my fender 1600 which is 2X12.
say, where do you guys get affordable metal casings?

[km-r]

to add.

does it matter to have bias set at 1/2 supply?!?!

i just biased mine listening if it sounds good or not...

[Auke Haarsma]

Well, the goal is to get a great sounding pedal. So, if you bias by ear and find a setting which sounds good, keep it!

However, numbers and thus a setting around 4.5V for drain Q2 (6.4 at Drain Q1) as suggested by the schematic will in most cases result in the sound which the design aims for.

[premiumplus]

You also asked about affordable metal casings, which leads me to believe that you haven't cased it up.  The metal will shield hum from the effect and setting up the right bias voltages will also help tame hum.

[petemoore]

  GEO has info on hum, many sources are possible, including power supply, one good way to test where hum is being introduced is to excuse and replace items like guitar/cable/amp/stompbox/power supply [battery makes really good DC for comparator testing 'is this actually close enough to DC?' for power supplies
  Turn the bass switch off...
  Or wait and figure out how to move the bass boost [lowpass or bandpass filter?] up so down the line things don't get swamped...perhpas consider moving the whole low frequency range up.