Dinosaural Tube Bender?

[Mike B.]

Have any of you used or built a clone of a Dinosaural Tube Bender? I built one a while ago using the Sabrotone layout, and I think the circuit has a lot of potential. I found a lot of useful sounds throughout the entire range of the gain pot. The criticisms that I've read about the circuit (and that I agree with) are that it could use more volume and that the sustain on single note lines could be better (though it sustains for a long time with chords). I don't know enough about electronic to improve on the circuit, but I thought some of you might enjoy the build and might be able to make the circuit better. Either way, I still think it's a pedal some of you might like. There's a schematic on FSB with some notes for improvements by Mictester.  I've found the pedal to be quite useful for me and I never see anyone mention it, so I thought I'd recommend it. If anyone builds the circuit and improves it, please let me know what you did.

[KT]

Hi, I also made the one from sabrotone. First I didn't like it that much but actually its a very nice drive pedal. Indeed not that much volume.
I really liked one special sound I got when I used these pedals: 1knobfuzz --> treble boost (from diamond j-drive) --> tubebender. The sound you get I can't reproduce with any other drive pedal i have.

[Frank_NH]

It does look pretty cool.  Not the usual opamp screamer or two transistor fuzz.  Looks like an easy build so I think I'll try it out when I have some time.  Here's the FSB thread:

Tube Bender

There are a couple of different veros in that thread, but the Sabro vero seems the best to me.

So, does this not produce enough volume to get much above unity gain when the level pot is at 100%?

[KT]

It can produce enough volume above unity gain. But not that much more. I made it with mictester mods (included in sabro's)