Smash driveishmaximus

[TimWaldvogel]

Ok so I was looking at the smash drive and the krank distortus maximus, and I just keep getting ideas. My idea is to have a zvex sho at the beginning of a circuit with a 1k trim pot to adjust how much output to give the opomp input in the circuit, leading into a krank dist. Max. Design with a lm386 op amp and a smash drive type gain control and a baxandall tone stack. What do you think? I figure th SHO has a nice high inpediance and nice high end clarity and that would feed the opamp

[tiges_ tendres]

Hope you like hiss!   

[TimWaldvogel]

What causes the hiss? Does the krank dist. Max. Have alot of hiss? Possible mxr or zvex style noise gate at the end? Explain to me, I figured I would use a like a 1k pot in the lm386

[TimWaldvogel]

Oooooo and the point of the trim pot is cause it will act as a sho turned almost all the way down Which sounds great

[tiges_ tendres]

386 Fuzzes by themselves are really high gain, and can be really noisy.  Adding a gain stage like a sho is just going to make all of that noise louder.  A lot louder.  Adding a noise gate is a rather inelegant solution to the problem.  Kind of like spraying air freshener at a sewage plant.  Yes, the immediate area around you smells like a Fjord, but you haven't really solved the constant flow of turds problem.

What you are basically saying is you want one gain stage, into another gain stage, into a noisy distortion.  A better solution might be to breadboard a couple of things:  Implement your Baxandall tonestack idea instead of the current tonestack in the Krank pedal.  Remove the Screaming tree booster that is the front of the Krank and replace it with the SHO.  

Have you looked up The Tufnel distortion?

[TimWaldvogel]

No I have not, I just saw the krank had a gain stage in front of it, low gain stage at that, and if ou have used a sho before you know even on the minimum settings it adds nice high end clarity and just sounds great, i figured it would be more of a buffer than a booster, and I like the krank pedals high gain tone. My main solution is that I don't have the transistor the krank calls for and desire not to buy anymore parts

[tiges_ tendres]

No I have not, I just saw the krank had a gain stage in front of it, low gain stage at that, and if ou have used a sho before you know even on the minimum settings it adds nice high end clarity and just sounds great, i figured it would be more of a buffer than a booster, and I like the krank pedals high gain tone. My main solution is that I don't have the transistor the krank calls for and desire not to buy anymore parts

The krank just uses an npn transistor.  It's probably a 2n5088, but you could use a 2n2222 or a 2n3904, a 2n5089.  You can get them from radio shack in a selection pack ($2.99), or individually (around $0.99).

You probably have one and dont even know it!

[TimWaldvogel]

Haha it seems like people really don't want me using a MOSFET before the 386 lol. O think I might do the beginner project with a trim pot in front of it

[TimWaldvogel]

Would an active or passive tone stack be better for a krank/smashdrive

[tiges_ tendres]

Haha it seems like people really don't want me using a MOSFET before the 386 lol. O think I might do the beginner project with a trim pot in front of it

Well for the beginner project you'll need the transistor that you dont have for the Krank distortion.  May as well bite the bullet and spend the less than $5 for a selection of those transistors.

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[TimWaldvogel]

I have 4401s  and 3904s just dint realized those were substitues for the krank one

[tiges_ tendres]

I have 4401s  and 3904s just dint realized those were substitues for the krank one

Yep!  Away you go!  Get that beginner project under your belt.

[TimWaldvogel]

Haha I am gonna breadboard the zvex sho and and I might just show you guys that this will work with a sho and krank combined, it's the same concept

[anchovie]

Would an active or passive tone stack be better for a krank/smashdrive

Passive. The output from the LM386 will be huge compared to the original signal so it'll be useful to have a passive tone stack attenuating it, otherwise you'll be using hardly any of the volume pot range.

[TimWaldvogel]

Ok awesome. Thanks guys