Favourite preamp/booster circuit for experimentation

[fuzzmonger]

Hey there, first-time-poster Fuzzmonger here. Just wanted to get your thoughts on which preamp or booster circuit everyone prefers to use as a foundation for designing distortion and overdrive circuits, messing with clipping ideas, trying out diffferent tone stacks etc.

I tend to use the AMZ Muffer minus the diodes for no other reason than it was my first build. Is there any benefit in going for a LPB-1, SHO, Beavis Coloursound Booster or any of the other old standards?

Yours, the freshly-deflowered,
Fuzzmonger

[kingswayguitar]

i love a simple jfet boost, usually j201 with big (0.1uF or bigger) input/output caps

[nocentelli]

I've never been that keen on diode clipping for overdrive/distortion, but I had some good luck with the silicon rangemaster-ish boost that is the Catalinbread Naga Viper: I tried it out with some fancy (pricey) germanium diodes as well as the standard si 1N4148s, and got some nice tones. The advantage for me was the fact that it already has a pre-bass control (in the form of a cap blend pot - I upped the values of both caps to 10n and 680n), a gain control (emitter bypassccap, fuzzface-style) AND an output control. If you just put clipping diodes just before the volume control, the "range" and "heat" controls allow you to dial in degree of clipping nicely.

[fuzzmonger]

Ooh! Interesting idea my full plan is to have a preamp with the Shakah Braddah MOSFET/Ge clipping configuration into a BMP tone stack into a Fetzer Valve - for gain recovery and to get me somewhere in the 'not quite clean, not quite dirty -valvey jangly rhythm tone' ballpark, so I can have my beloved solidstate cleans as well as the more growly valve cleans.

Am I going about it the wrong way, over-thinking it, or even just another fool; chasing the 'valve amp in a box' myth?

-Fuzzmonger

[nocentelli]

I'm not sure, but some great cleanish-but-dirty guiitar tones where done with solidstate - I only recently read that lots of my favourite period Beatles sounds were done with vox transistor amps (BC107 transitors) and they sound pretty good.