Mods to a Russian Big Muff

[Jhouse]

I recently built a russian big muff with the schematics from tonepad (except for c5 and c8 which I switched out for .033 uf caps). I was looking at Robert Keeley's effects pedal website and stumbled upon a mod for a Boss DS-1 known as the [a href=http://www.diystompboxes.com/DIYFiles/up/Build_Your_Own_DS-1_Distortion.pdf"]"Ultra Diode Mod". (it's page nine in that .pdf)[/a href] If I decided to do that mod to my big muff, what exactly would it do? You may ask, "why would you want to add something if you don't even know what it does for sure?" Well, I accidentally cut an extra hole in the enclosure that is just big enough for a spdt switch. I figure it would be nice to make it look like it was on purpose.

This is the mod that i'm proposing. It's kind of confusing, but i'm not good with paint. The orange lines are connected to the red lines for the record.

[3080]

http://rkerkhof.ruhosting.nl/Taas/Mods/Big%20Muff.htm

[Jhouse]

I was reading about the Noise Gate mod on that website. Has anyone tried it and seen if it really works well?

Also, I'm having difficulty wrapping my mind around this mod (probably because I have the schematic reading prowess of a small sea turtle). Would I wire the trimmer as a variable resistor to the resistor and then to the ground. I'm using the layout from tonepad.com (http://tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=94) for this. I just am not exactly sure what it is proposing.

[Earthscum]

Your best bet (and to illustrate it for ya) is to 1) yes, wire the trimmer as a var resistor, wiper to one of the legs, and 2) leave the 100k (R8 in the Tonepad layout) and just solder the trimmer to the backside (trace side) of the board where the R8 leads come through. This puts them parallel to each other. When you have 2 resistors parallel, of course your resistance drops. In this case, it will effectively be a 50k resistor when the trimmer is at full resistance, about 33k at half turn, 20k at 3/4 (log taper... Secret Life of Pots)

Haven't tried it myself, but I have had the effect a couple times with other similar amp stages while screwing around with bias. I didn't care much for the sound, but it's probably totally different with the BMP having another clipping stage right afterwards, plus tone and recovery stages, compared to the single and dual stages I was playing with at the time.

[Jhouse]

You're the man! Thanks for all of the info.