Friday, 25 September 2009

Blackstone - Mosfet Overdrive


In the realms of solid state overdrive pedals a lot of contenders claim to be "tube like" and have that tone which only a true vacuum tube can provide. However, few actually deliver on that promise. After having played around with the Blackstone Appliances Mosfet Overdrive circuit I can safely say - it sounds damn good! Certainly tube like and very responsive. This is partially to do with the CMOS inverters found in the circuit design (Which is where the mosfets come in, within each inverter stage are two mosfets ;-) For those that were wondering) but is also partially to do with the interesting use of the front end opamp gain stage.

For anyone looking for a different tone than the standard tubescreamer I'd recommend you give one of these things a go! Check out the youtube demo, I love the tone;


Here's a schematic drawn by RipDivot; http://www.mediafire.com/?eqs17owjkdf8kip

And here is RipDivot's excellent vero layout;


For a great PCB layout check out Madbean's Mysterioso ; http://www.madbeanpedals.com/projects/MysteriosoJR/docs/Mysterioso_JR_ver2.pdf

Here are some images of a great build done by MichP -



Wednesday, 16 September 2009

Fred Briggs - Silver Orchid OD/Boost FOR SALE!

Update - Sorry it took this long to put up a SOLD notice, this one went in the first few hours!. I'm sorry if you emailed after it went! I'll be putting up some more of my builds in the future. They are all sold on a first-come-first-serve basis, I don't do auctions (unless the pedal is on ebay of course!).

Hello hello, I have one of these beauties for sale. It's all made up and ready to go, it's the one pictured. It's a low/medium gain OD/booster. Check out the instructions sheet image below for more info. It's a super dynamic pedal capable of tones from bright and light clean boost right through to a sturdy rock 'n roll bark. I'd like to keep it for myself but I need some cash for parts to build up a new mini amp :-) (1.5 Watt Plexi anyone?!)

I'm looking for £75 for this one (approx $125 or 85 euro) Shipping in the UK is £4, shipping to the US is $20 and to 7 euro to Europe. All shipping is first class and fully insured. Send me an email if you're interested/have any other questions :-)