Here is a heavy dirty booster that will melt your Orange, Green or Sunn amp head. And your one knob fuzz will love it.😈. The gain range goes from a fairly clean boost to a hairy and fuzzy overdrive. "Transparent" it is not...
It is a fairly simple circuit that boost the whole sound spectrum and relies on op amp clipping. The most common chip used seens to be the olde LM741 which works great for this application. LM308 and CA3130EZ is used as well, the former sounding pretty close to LM741 while the latter is more high gain and has more high end distortion qualities. Note that LM308 and CA3130EZ requires an external compensation cap (read the notes below the layout).
It has two internal trimpots, one for Gain and one for Tone. The Tone trimpot is quite subtle while the Gain trimpot is worth having as an external potentiometer IMHO.
This one is traced by evilarsen, thank you!
More info on the circuit at Blackhawk Amplifiers.
https://www.pedalpcb.com/docs/PedalPCB-Caesar.pdf
ReplyDeleteCool. Schematic is saved. Not sure when I can draw a layout for it. Will be pretty busy nextcoming months...:-/
Deleteexcelent brother , no rush, best regards
DeleteOoo, nice. Any other Blackhawks in the future?
ReplyDeleteYes! Stay tuned...
DeleteJust put it together. Plenty of dirt on tap in this boost circuit. sounds great. Thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteTalked with Brooks Blackhawk about releasing his designs? He is a small boutique builder. :/ I got schematic for old Valhalla Fuzz, he really does great builds tho - and quality components etc. Hope it is ok for him.
ReplyDeleteBuilt this with UA741, nice nice nice! Thanks for the layout and I am very excited to see more Blackhawk in the future!
ReplyDeleteUsually dont care that much that people trace, since alot of builds are just remakes of other circuits - while i feel Blackhawk is trying really hard to be innovative.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you on this subject. Got a wierd gut feeling after releasing the layout since he seem to be a very hard working and passionate fellow. Just sent Blackhawk a message. We'll see what he says about this.
DeleteYeah he will probably appreciate if asking, also alot of builders would have you pay 150-200usd for a pedal like this while he takes 100usd while being very transparant with gut shots of all his builds. Yeah i have alot of respekt för him.
DeleteGot an answer today and it is all cool beans with Brooks. I will add a disclaimer for all Blackhawk layouts this it is for personal non commercial DIY use only and I wont upload any schematics.
DeleteHe seems to be a really nice and cool dude and appreciated us for asking for his permission. He is all for DIY and was quite humbled about this whole thing.
Glad to hear,😁 yeah he is a awesome dude, i remember being very annoying with questions when buying a pedal once from him - but he answered very clear and always supercool. Huge respect for him. Sad it is expensive with customs when buying from Europe - His Valkyrie that is some sort of rat based circuit with a lm386 at output is just new thinking! Other add some value and diode changes, he adds another opamp to push into new domains.
ReplyDeletehttps://i.ibb.co/b7pjtWD/IMG-20210730-181552.jpg
ReplyDeleteSounds like a absolute beast into a Dirty amp, didnt have the right components at home so tried with a LM308H can, works great but Will try with other chip also.
Here's mine, test with some 741 but found that kind of LM308 sound very good.SFC 2308 with 39pF cap.
ReplyDeletehttps://ibb.co/Njn6V0n
https://ibb.co/g6wt7C9
I change volume pot to log as it's quickly very (very) loud.
ReplyDeleteAny chance of getting the schematic for this one? Would like to expand and mod some stuff.
ReplyDeleteI've gone the external gain pot instead of the trimpot but it appears to be reversed? the clean is CW whilst the gainest gain you could possibly gain is at CCW - was this the same for anyone else?
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, it's an awesome circuit and it's definitely made me check out more of what Blackhawk Amplifiers can do.