diode question

[Brammibal]

Well I have a modded Boss BassOverdrive or more accurately a distortion, the stock diodes LED's have been swapped with 1n914's, this makes for a more natural sound but it is still a bit to much in my ears, since Si diodes have a lower forward voltage than LED's the clipping part of the unit is lower in volume than the non clipping part and because these can be blended the clipped sound is more or less under the dry sound. Not so nice actually, also I still find that the 1n914 clip to hard, to buzzy not like an overdrive is supposed to.

My idea was that changing the diodes to Germanium ones should give more subtle clipping and hence more of an overdriven sound, the problem with this is that Ge diodes have an even lower forward voltage and hence the clipped side of the circuit will have an even lower volume. By placing diodes in series you get an higher forward voltage but 4 Germanium diodes which would equal 1 LED take a lot of space, which there isn't much of.

So a Ge plus a Si diode on each side would give a little less forward voltage than a LED but I wonder if it will have a different clipping characteristic than 3 Ge in series or is the clipping characteristic determent by which diodes comes first?
Also I'm right that Ge diodes produce a softer clipping, or at least one that turns on softer a softer clipping knee?
Thank you

[Caferacernoc]

"Also I'm right that Ge diodes produce a softer clipping, or at least one that turns on softer a softer clipping knee?"

Correct. You could also try a resistor inline with the GE diode to raise the clipping threshold and actually add to the softness of the clipping. Somewhere between 1K and 10K or use a 10K pot.

[Brammibal]

mhmh, interesting I will give it a try soon and post my findings

[WGTP]

http://www.muzique.com/news/?p=84  Looks like this is it.