Here's a more in depth description from the Lovepedal website:
"The ENGLISHMAN™ simulates the classic AC vintage amplifiers right before the amp fries. I have found these vintage amplifiers sound best CRANKED and on the verge of failure.
The unit will also enhance the sound of any amplifier without altering the tone of your guitar. The ENGLISHMAN™ has the ability to act as a super clean boost, semi clean boost, or with the volume & gain pushed higher it is capable of pushing any amp into beautiful harmonic breakup, overdrive and distortion.
With 3 modes of failure the “FAIL™” switch embarks new worlds of natural overdrive and downright amplifier distortion in a good way.
It flat out screams if you want it to or not. Just like the original English amplifiers of a time gone by."
Here's the ProGuitarShop demo video of the Englishman in action:
[R.E.M! I love R.E.M!]
Sounds nice doesn't it. Well, good news - some good fellow has provided freestompboxes.org with a traced project, so now we can build our own rather than pay the ridiculous after market price.
Here's the goods:
As you can see from the bottom picture the Englishman had to have some minor surgery on the way, but here's the schematic [NOTE - One slight mistake - the diodes marked 1N9148 should read 1N4148 (Although you can use 1N914)]:
As you can see from the schematic it's pretty much what's standard with Lovepedal - transistor booster with post gain diode clipping to ground. It differs slightly from his COT 50 designs with a slightly different bias on the transistor and larger input/output caps but that's about it really. The design is based mainly around the old Electro Harmonix LPB-1 Booster, here's the original schematic:
Here's the freestompboxes.org forum topic for reference: http://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15940
Hello. First, thank for all the great work. I have learned a ton of stuff here. One question - what is the green thing on the extreme left of the vero layout? Is it the LED? I guess I need to learn to read schematics. Thanks again
ReplyDeleteKeith
Yep, that's the LED, it's free leg needs to be connected to ground. NOTE - the resistor labelled "2.2K" is actually 2.2M :-) Glad you enjoy the blog, it's just a collection of things I found really..
ReplyDeleteWell, you provide a valuable service and you have your own designs as well, so there is more to it than compiling. I may try one of the L.O.R.D. drives. I did the COT and it's fantastic. Take care
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it :-) I really like the "Son of a Clay Jones Overdrive": http://revolutiondeux.blogspot.com/2008/03/son-of-clay-jones-overdrive.html I can recommend that one 100% (Even though it is just another Tubescreamer really, it's got it own character and dynamics..)
ReplyDeletePardon my ignorance, but why are D5 and R6 not present on the vero layout?
ReplyDeleteHey there Glen, you're right, the vero is down while I update it. D5 is just a polarity protection diode and it won't make a difference to the tone if you miss it off...
ReplyDelete