Ramblings of a mad musician

Every guitarist has their own little struggle with this never ending quest.  Every guitarist has his or her own ideas on what pure, clear and concise tone is and how to achieve it.  Every guitarist has their own idea on what is a warm tone and what is not.

I am, no different!

Ive been bombarded with emails, messages and what not about ideas for tone but all those aside, it only ever comes down to one thing:  What ever it is you want in tone, only YOU can decide.

SO, A few months back i started on this quest we guitarists head down in search for what is our own complete and perfect tone.  After spending a lot of time reading and experimenting with electronics learning the ways of guitar special effects designing and implementation, i have finally created my first analog pedal that has added a great deal to my tonal options.

My Own Custom DIY Clean Boost Version 1

Basically all it is, is a boost pedal based on the Ibanez Tube Screamer.

There are a couple of design changes that I made by reading articles in books and on websites and lots of tinkering.

All that aside it still is a chopped down version of the Tube Screamer with a few mods.

First off, there is no tone knob.  The reason is that I didn’t want to have my guitar signal attenuated by the pedal at any stage nor have the ability to do that.  If i want to change my overall tone, ill use the amplifiers settings.  I want a clear full unaltered signal being sent to the amp.

Secondly, i reduced the opamp’s gain to about +15db or by a factor of eight.  I didnt want any clipping of the signal so I decided to use just enough boost from the opamp to give me a nice big clean signal.

Thirdly i replaced the input buffer BJT with a FET buffer with a high input impedance of 1Mohm and a number of changes to the capacitors and resistors to have as little frequency roll off as possible especially the bass.  A nice lift on the bottom end to keep it FAT sounding plus as little high frequency roll off so as to keep as much of that Marshall sizzle as possible.

And that is all it really is.  Fairly simple eh ?

Well at a gig a number of weeks back which was going to be the first real test of it, the pedal failed due to a resistor in the voltage divider almost touching and causing a short.  I pulled it apart and tested the other components and they all are working fine, so i fixed the short and re-boxed the electronics and tried again and all turned out fine.

So today the 22nd of August, rehearsal rolls around   Time to give the booster a run at rehearsal volume.

My score? 10/10.

I was impressed! The pedal did exactly what i wanted it to do and MORE!  I mean this thing really pushed my tone above and beyond what i expected.

I tried a number of different tonal options with it while playing such as pedal on with Marshall Ultra gain channel on and guitar volume down to about one quarter and was blown away!  I was able to use my guitar plectrum on different angles (ala Paul Gilbert, Vinne Moore etc..) and could hear every little change.  That is one thing i could not adequately achieve with a digitally altered signal.

When the pedal was on for leads, the OD1 channel just lapped it up and saturated so much more than i expected.  Every single little nuance could be heard right down to the plectrum attack angle.

On the Marshall Clean channel, i was equally impressed!  There was (as expected) a large volume boost as opposed to the OD channel with more saturation, but never the less, the clean channel showed its own characteristics clearly and concisely!  Once again i could every little pick direction and touch.  Every time the pedal was on, OD or clean, it literally changed the way i played!  That was NOT what i expected.  Headroom had opened up so much that i was able to use my other pickups with a far greater level of satisfaction.

To say the least, i have made significant changes to my own tone over the past 3 – 6 months and extremely happy with the results thus far.  Ive ditched the use of digital effects (with the exception of a few others like Chorus and Delay) for my playing as they just cannot keep up with tone i want.

I look back on my use of digital gear like amp modelers etc, as an experiment that just would not and could not succeed…

Time has come to build my own pedal board to accommodate my new pedal and my return to individual effect units, so that will be the next project me thinks then another clean booster project but with a slight difference.  Basically it will be the same thing but i will use it as a volume cut instead of a boost, to save me having to use the volume knob when needed where i don’t have the time to pull back the volume control.

The quest for my ultimate in guitar tone continues!  The race that never ends is at least heading where i want it to go, to guitar tube tone bliss