<[Lonely Star]> Project: A versatile OD / Distortion stompbox

[~arph]

  The high gain settings sound a lot better now, not so gated anymore. good job!

[Auke Haarsma]

First off Great Work!
There seem to be alot of skilled DIY in the Netherlands area.

Thanks!  *blush*

I imagine it took as long to document and share in such a professional presentation as it did to build and debug.

I indeed took some time to prepare this project and present it in a way that would 'promote' building the pedal I enjoyed building and playing this pedal, I hope I can share that joy with this thread.

Would you have any clips of the amp its modeled after?

I do not have any clips myself, since I do not have the amp. And, I'd like to say it again: it is not a simulation of the Mesa Boogie Lonestar amp. It has roughly the same topology. And therefor it has kind of the same responses. I found some clips of the lonestar on youtube, a demo by Andy Timmons. Fun thing is he mentions that for him the Lonestar is 'so warm' sounding that he even turns down the bass... Well that is exactly what I experienced with this pedal. It is 'warm' and/or bassy. I think you will be taming the bass more than boosting it.

Here are the links to the youtube clips by Andy Timmons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Heev2_94A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb4dUNSh1Ac

I am gonna breadboard your pedal when I get a chance.

Have fun! When I breadboarded this pedal I used trimpots instead of real pots. Because of the number of pots. Using trimpots made it much easier to breadboard for me.

ALso be honest-an AC30? with an amp emulator in front of it
Which sounds better the pedal with the amp on clean or the amp cranked up with no pedal?

Well, I do like the Vox clean tones a lot. Especially now that I retubed it completely. And I like effect pedals. A lot! The Vox takes pedals pretty good.
The best tones for the Lonelystar & Vox combo are achieved (for me) with the Vox close to break up, so the clean has a little edge to it. Then the Lonelystar with mid-gain and a volume boost. This mixes nicely and results in very warm, complex tones. I do this mainly on the Normal Vox channel. Topboost is blended in, but not too much. I find the topboost often to bright for my liking.

Again thanx for sharing excellent work!

You're welcome, your comments are much appreciated!

PS do you have any O-scope pics of the clipping at the different stages that would be of intrest to me.

I will take some pics and post them here. I really like to actually see  the sound, helps me a lot to understand a circuit.

The high gain settings sound a lot better now, not so gated anymore. good job!

Thanks!

[Auke Haarsma]

PS do you have any O-scope pics of the clipping at the different stages that would be of intrest to me.

I will take some pics and post them here. I really like to actually see  the sound, helps me a lot to understand a circuit.

Here are the pics. I had some trouble taking those pics with either the flash reflecting too much or without flash the pics being too dark. These pics are the best I could manage ...

Each pic shows two signals. The signal at the top is the original signal, about 100mV p2p (a square is 50mV for this signal).
First four pics are for the normal input. The last four are taken with the Hot input selected. Keep in mind that I had to adjust Volts/Div to keep the full wave on screen.

All Q's measured at the Drain. Gain and Drive are set at max.

The Thicker switch is enabled. I realized this after taking the pics. This causes Q3 to have more gain than it would be without the Thicker switch. I'd say there is now about 20% more gain with the switch enabled at Q3. Especially with the Hot input, at Q3 you will see much rounder clipping without the Thicker switch, because of the reduced gain.

Normal input Q1, 50mV/div


Normal input Q2, 50mV/div


Normal input Q3, 500mV/div


Normal input Q4, 2V/div



Hot input Q1, 500mV/div


Hot input Q2, 500mV/div


Hot input Q3, 2V/div


Hot input Q4, 2V/div



This also shows the difference between the Normal input and the Hot input. With the Hot input you start at the gain-level reached after Q2 of the Normal input.

[Auke Haarsma]

Tasos (kabi on this board) build a very good looking version of the Lonely Star. I also added a pic to the startpost of this thread Thanks for sharing the pics!

Check it out!











Hopefully a soundsample will follow soon.

Any more builds of the Lonely Star out there? We love to see more pics!

[dukie]

Wow this is great overdrive/distortion project that i should build! but i have a question, if i want to use 2N5457/MPF102(i cant find j201 here in indonesia) in all of the transistor instead of J201, do i have to change the bias resistor?with what value?or should i just use trimpot for all of them?


yay thank you for sharing it man!

cheers!

[Auke Haarsma]

Hi Dukie, 2n5457's will work perfectly. No need to change the anything, just use the trimpots to bias the drain.

Good luck!

[kabi]

Hey Auke thanks for posting these, the pedal really sounds as good as it looks  

@dukie:

2N5457's or MPF102's actually may even work better than the j201's, especially on Q3 + Q4 where most of the gain takes place. FYI, this is what i have used:

Q1 J201
Q2 J201
Q3 2N5457
Q4 2N5458

2N5458 on the last stage added a little more presence since 2N5457 sounded fuller but a little dull to my ears, but then again i play with hot pickups and drop  tunings most of the time so i can only speak for my rig

[Ben N]

Wow, nice project, thanks, Auk. I don't know how I missed this one before. The clips sound tome a bit like the Liquid Sunshine (not surprisingly, really) but with the amp-ish controls being a very useful difference. I also like the Timmons comparison/inspiration. I think he gets a great vintage-organic all-the-controls-I-need-are-on-the-guitar-thank-you-very-much tone.

[Georgedepinedo]

Hey guys, I know that this thread is already overdue and old, (although still good), but the problem is that I cannot find any pictures or links about where the schematics of the lonely star did go.
Would any of you please re post it?
Best regards.

[Georgedepinedo]

Hey guys, I know that this thread is already overdue and old, (although still good), but the problem is that I cannot find any pictures or links about where the schematics of the lonely star did go.
Would any of you please re post it?
Best regards.

[micromegas]

Hi, I wonder if someone has the schematic for this project, thought I've find the board I think some arrengement could be done to the gain stage and I think it would be interesting to see the JFET implementation of it...

thanks in advance

[askwho69]

me too the project is gone

[Auke Haarsma]

It has been a while, but every once in a while I receive an email with a request for the schematic. That puts a smile on my face. Great to see the interest in this project is still there!

I had to move my domain, so the original links do not work any more. Sorry for that. The main pics are now hosted at a new location. I anyone wants some of the sound clips etc., let me know, I can upload those again too.

Schematic:


Layout:


PCB image (600dpi) can be downloaded here:
http://pics.toomuchgearfx.com/LonelyStarv11pcb.png

[briandress]

is the schematic for this floating around anywhere?

[Auke Haarsma]

Here it is:


And the pcb layout:


And the pcb:
http://fx.aukehaarsma.nl/img/LonelyStarv11pcb.png

Hope you like it!

[briandress]

omg wow thank you bro. are there any sound clips or videos floating around? I was going to build a carvin legacy driver as my first build but I think this is more the tone that I am looking ffor.

Have you thought about building this with tubes? How do the jfets translate?

[briandress]

that link for the PCB is dead brother

[287m]

that link for the PCB is dead brother

just change the extension to png
http://fx.aukehaarsma.nl/img/LonelyStarv11pcb.png

[briandress]

sweet! thanks!

[briandress]

So since its a PCB its just lead to pad one solder joint? It doesnt look like i would need to jumper anything, just go lead to point on the board as per the layout diagram. nice.