May Queen, good for anything

[mnordbye]

I just recently built a May Queen from the ROG site, and it's great! The only thing i changed was the 4 220nF caps. I only had 100nF, so i used them, works great.

And yes, i dare say this works for everything, and with a tad more distortion, it would be perfect for my kind of metal too. It's voiced very good, and cuts through the mix and the brick wall behind us. 

Well, my question is, what parts of the circuit adjusts amount of gain or distortion? I want to experiment with higher gains, and lower, but mainly my goal is to make a high gain pedal out of it.

Also, could changing some of the transistors with higher gain/lower noise ones be a good idea?

Thanks,
Magnus N

[mnordbye]

By the way, i believe this has been discussed before, but where would the best place to put a gain control be? In between the 1st and 2nd transistors?

And here's the link to the schematic too: http://www.runoffgroove.com/mayqueen.html

Magnus N

[mnordbye]

The only thing i changed was the 4 220nF caps. I only had 100nF, so i used them, works great.

I wrote the wrong numbers. I used 82nF instead of the 4 100nF caps..

[frankclarke]

Gain mods would change the tone, but maybe adding another transistor gain stage in front of Q1 would work. Quick mod, you could get a little bit of extra gain by putting a large cap across the 150 resistor. You could set Q1 up for about twice the gain, but the tone would be different. If you have a clean boost pedal, try it in front to see if it does waht you want.
Having a passive bypass box lets you use any 2 gain devices in series as one, and that is great bang for buck, you can get a "do most things" rig out of that. I have a 20$ Behringer  Preamp Booster and a bypass device which solves this kind of problem.

[mnordbye]

Cool, thanks. I'll definately try this.

I've tried a booster in front, yes. It worked pretty well, but i was just looking to mod the circuit itself, so i don't have to crank the booster.

Magnus N

[96ecss]

MarkM has a MayQueen layout in his gallery with a gain control http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/v/MarkMs-Gallery/album15/album76/May_Queen_LAYOUT.gif.html

I haven't built it yet, but I've been considering it recently.

Dave

[Valoosj]

Damn, why wasn't this posted earlier? I made my own layout of the thing with gain control.
It is smaller than MarkM's, but the wiring is the same.

[mnordbye]

Thanks for both links!

Magnus N