BTW, I found I was getting nowhere near the gain range I heard from ROG's demo (sustainy-Santana violin style sort of gain) with this circuit. Changed the J201's JFET's a few times, checked all the voltages, still a mid-gainer at best (think Wampler Plexi Drive gain range - I have to say I'm using single coils, not humbuckers though). Then it dawned on me that I could defeat the 10pf/3.3M filter because that seemed to cut a lot of signal below 4K or so - Wow, it sounds just like the demo now. The filter really cuts a lot of signal. Remove that and sub it for a link and you get much more thickness/gain. Really Santana-like even with a Strat.
This is the third layout of this pedal I have tried and I cannot get it to work. Every J201 build I have tried will not produce sound. There is power and i can bias the J201s to 4.5 ish. I've used J201s from mouser and pedalpcb - both standard and smd. Am I doing something wrong? Anyone have any tips for working with J201s?
Coming late...but I'm almost sure it's the Jfets, considering you used new parts for each of those 3 builds. Jfets have been mostly trash for me for the last few years, unfortunately. I started getting batch after batch of poorly to fully non-working Jfets from different sellers (even from the same ones I used to get good ones)... just lost my patience with those transistors. Glad I got to build a bunch of JFET ODs that I really like love while they lasted.
I ended up biasing each JFET in order by ear with an audio probe instead of by voltage. I am also pretty sure the voltage meter I was using at the time was trash also. It sounds great now and especially good boosted with a DS-1/MXR Custom Badass '78
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ReplyDeleteThanks Lago!
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Welcome! I'm loving the blog!
DeleteBTW, I found I was getting nowhere near the gain range I heard from ROG's demo (sustainy-Santana violin style sort of gain) with this circuit. Changed the J201's JFET's a few times, checked all the voltages, still a mid-gainer at best (think Wampler Plexi Drive gain range - I have to say I'm using single coils, not humbuckers though). Then it dawned on me that I could defeat the 10pf/3.3M filter because that seemed to cut a lot of signal below 4K or so - Wow, it sounds just like the demo now. The filter really cuts a lot of signal. Remove that and sub it for a link and you get much more thickness/gain. Really Santana-like even with a Strat.
This is the third layout of this pedal I have tried and I cannot get it to work. Every J201 build I have tried will not produce sound. There is power and i can bias the J201s to 4.5 ish. I've used J201s from mouser and pedalpcb - both standard and smd. Am I doing something wrong? Anyone have any tips for working with J201s?
ReplyDeleteComing late...but I'm almost sure it's the Jfets, considering you used new parts for each of those 3 builds. Jfets have been mostly trash for me for the last few years, unfortunately. I started getting batch after batch of poorly to fully non-working Jfets from different sellers (even from the same ones I used to get good ones)... just lost my patience with those transistors. Glad I got to build a bunch of JFET ODs that I really like love while they lasted.
DeleteI ended up biasing each JFET in order by ear with an audio probe instead of by voltage. I am also pretty sure the voltage meter I was using at the time was trash also. It sounds great now and especially good boosted with a DS-1/MXR Custom Badass '78
DeleteVery good sounding emulator, too! Even for clean!
ReplyDeleteThank you a lot, fuzzhead!