Looking for a heavy distortion, any suggestions?

[andrewhy]

Hi all,

I've built a few pedals so far, mostly fuzzes and Ge circuits. I love my 3-knob Tonebender! I'm on my fourth pedal now, an Easyface. But I'm already starting to think about my next project (I think I have enough fuzzes for now)

I'm looking for something heavy, with a lot of low end, but not muddy. Something that would sound great playing barre chords on a downtuned guitar. Can any metalheads here suggest a good heavy DIY distortion?

Barring that, maybe a good overdrive or booster that can fatten up a fuzz or distortion without sounding splatty?

[mattpocket]

What is your set-up guitar/amp etc...

Matt

[RaceDriver205]

Make a tubescreamer and strap lead weights to it, nice heavy distortion.

Nah, make a Dr Boogie.

[pyrop]

Any of Joe Davisson's stuff... http://www.diystompboxes.com/analogalchemy/
I've built both the Obsidian & the JFet Vulcan... Both can be quite heavy.

pyrop

[David]

"Big Daddy" from Runoffgroove, baby.  Simple, loud, clean and HEAVY!

[jlullo]

andrew,
+1 on the dr boogey.  i've never built one myself, and i hear that they are a little tricky to keep the noise level down, but i've heard soundclips that others have build and it is DEFINITELY what you are looking for.

[Bucksears]

Question: what kind of guitar/pickups will you be using?

+1 on the Dr. Boogey
I used hotter/overwound Super 58's in my Ibanez Artist and they SERIOUSLY turned my SRRI into a Dual Recto via the Dr. Boogey. I even used an MPF102 in Q1 to LOWER the gain some. Hot pickups will bring out the bass in the DB. I'm using lower-gain PAFs now and thinking about going back to all J201s in mine.

- Buck

[andrewhy]

Guitar is a Santana SE with stock humbucker pickups. Amp is nothing special, just a 15W Peavey practice amp that I'm going to replace soon.

[Shepherd]

Along the lines of a booster that is heavy but doesn't get splatty, you can build a neutron without the envelope detector.  Wire in a variable resistor in place of the LDR across from R9.  If you're bread board is big enough it's super simple to tweak.  It can make your amp sound like it just drank a Guinness.

http://generalguitargadgets.com/diagrams/neutron_filter.pdf

[John Lyons]

+1 for the Dr boogie. I know it gets hyped but it really is full and heavy but  each string remains articulate at the same time.
When you dial down the gain the crunch and tone is still there but the sustain and girth drop down (in a good way).

John

[black mariah]

Barring that, maybe a good overdrive or booster that can fatten up a fuzz or distortion without sounding splatty?

LPB2 with a smaller input cap. Normally it's kind of dark, good for fattening up clean tones, but with a lower input cap value it sparkles like crazy and drives the goat pee out of anything pretty damn well. I use one through my Vox Pathfinder and get the metal tone I always wanted.

And no, I'm not deaf or stupid.