Bearfoot BlueBerry OD

[rocket88]

For those that have been following the thread under "Open Chat" section, silver and i had been working on this one for awhile, and thankfully with a little help we got a schematic and a working layout. to all the bass players, i think silver put it best, "start your irons."

[piltdownman]

Thanks for the layout.  Has this been verified, by any chance?

[rocket88]

Not yet, but it's the same as the bearfoot honeybee, but different values. I used marks verified honeybee layout and corrects the values to match the bbbod, and ran an additional link for ground rather then have a second ground wire off the board, so it should be good to go. It you want to wait for someone else to build it, I should be able to friday after I move and give 100% confirmation.

[negativefx]

I've been following that thread.  Y'all are awesome.  Big thanks to rocket, silver, and johnk for the gutshots!

[rocket88]

Haha. No prob. I've been dying for the real thing for so long, and was glad that silver was in on trying to figure it out without having a real circuit, so getting to make the next best thing from the actual circuit is phenomenal to say the least.  

[piltdownman]

I want to take a stab at it,  but I haven't had any time for "extra" stuff lately since I'm always at gd work.   Maybe during Christmas week.  

[negativefx]

I built a pile of pedals this weekend and plan to continue through the end of November.  This one is around #4 on the list at the moment.  I should be able to verify within a week if nobody else has by then.

[Silver Blues]

Yeah sorry I won't be much help in verifying because I'll probably etch up a PCB for mine. Bought the bottle of acid already But like Rocket said, it's the same layout as the Honey Bee, so as long as that's verified this is too.

[rocket88]

Boo PCB.  Lol

[Silver Blues]

 Yeah it's unusual I know. I've got some other things to etch though so I thought I might as well do this one at the same time.

[rocket88]

Other things? Do tell buddy, you got me curious.

[Silver Blues]

Haha it's not much, really. I really like electronic relay-controlled bypass, and would love to have one in every decent build, but until recently the only simple way I knew of implementing it was with AMZs boards. Jack used to sell a kit specifically for this (I have one in my Really Cheap Compressor) and now he's downsized to just the general DPDT switching board (of which I have one ready to go in an unfinished pedal). Both have a really high final cost (cost me $15 just to get the kit (or now just the bare board and microcontroller) to my door), and aren't practical for me to put in essentially everything. I did some searching and found a 40106-based switching system that's a little larger than the microcontroller-based version but far, far cheaper (about $6 per instead of ~$20); it's supposed to be good, and I want to try it, so I'm etching some boards for two or three of these. One will be boxed up with the Blueberry. I'm also building a 12AU7-based headphone amp to use with my computer, which is just much easier on PCB than trying to get it on vero (even though it isn't that many parts), so I'm etching up one of those as well. Should fill the rest of the space on a 4x6" presensitized board pretty well, I want to waste as little as possible.  

[rocket88]

btw, i just built this today, and it works perfectly, so...............VERIFIED!!!

also, i was playing with the diodes on the bottom, not the LED's, to see the variation in sound you can get by changing diodes, specifically Ge diodes , and it really warms things up and has a real nice breakup, but you look a lot of volume the more they're engaged. with the volume dimed and nature fully engaging the Ge diodes the output is just a hair over the bypassed volume.

[Silver Blues]

Hah yeah I'm thinking I should just build this one on vero myself. I'm never going to get a chance to etch

[Silver Blues]

Oh a question for you Rocket... where did you manage to find 2K64 resistors? Can't find anything on eBay and if I know my local stores they won't have them either.

[rocket88]

well you see silver......i sat and measure all of my carbon film 2.7k until i found 2 that were 2.64k. i think the ones i used were 2.645k and 2.643k but i can't remember.

also, I feel that there's either a midrange bump or some low end loss when it's engaged. Now, I'm saying this because I like massive, and I mean massive low end, and when this's is engaged you get much more string definition, as in you actually hear the things being hit, as opposed to it being in the background. I was able to get it to sound more to my liking by switching the Si diodes for some russian d9 diodes,but I took them out, and I'm looking to see if I have a solder bridge somewhere causing an issue. I also, tried a different ca3130ez and 2n5952, but the sound stayed the same. I'm thinking maybe playing around with some of the values and the JFET to see what happens.

But heard the interesting thing, I watched 2 different demo videos of this and one sounds like my build, the other is warmer or darker sounding if you will. So, it may not be an issue with the layout, build, or values, but how this thing responds to your amp and gear. Also, it could be all the hype around the thing that I built it up that it would be the end-all of bass OD's, but it's good. Funny enough, the bearfoot honeybee that I built seems to be more transparent and retain the whole sound of my bass, compared to the bbbod.

let me know how you're build turns out and if you notice the same thing.

videos for comparison:

[Silver Blues]

Ah I see  I think that I only have metal films left in that value, I used to have a bunch of carbon films but the odder values got used up a long time ago... and 2.64 isn't within 1% of 2.7...

Sure I'll let you know. I'm just waiting on some stuff from eBay before I get cracking on this one.

[rocket88]

Haha. I went through like 50-100 before I found 2. Lol. I'm pretty sure if you put in 2.7k you'ld be fine. But am I crazy about it sounding different between in the two videos?

[Silver Blues]

It sounds a little different, but remember too that the first one is a Jazz with presumably pretty new strings while Burgs is playing a P clone with strings as old as time  They both sound good to me though, I'd likely be happy with either tone.

[rocket88]

You're killing me. Lol. It does sound very different with my jaguar, pj, and my jazz. The jaguar does seem to have more midboost compared to my jazz. Like I said its not bad, I just hear the treble while hitting the strings. I wonder if it's cause I have older strings on my basses.