Pedal board volume problems

[BrotherLeech]

Hi,
I've built quite a few pedals from this blog in the past few months. It's an amazing resource and I'm so glad I found it. I've got a few problems with my pedalboard now though. My favourite set up at he moment is a klon into a masthead and then I have a cave dweller. The cave dweller sounds great but it doesn't seem to have the headroom to deal with the meathead, which I like near full volume as its more saturated there.

I'm very wary of putting a volume pedal in between the meathead and cave dweller as I've read they can be a bit tone sucky. Any solutions anybody else has used or can think of?

Thanks

[induction]

The volume control on the meathead is an output voltage divider, so it's tonal impact on output signal should be pretty minimal. I suspect that the saturation you like is coming from some combination of the pedal's coloration, the boost in volume overdriving your amplifier (what amp are you using?), and Fletcher-Munson.

I suggest you try dialing back the volume on the meathead to avoid overdriving the cave dweller, and then adding a clean boost after the cave dweller. This should mimic what you like about the pedal without overdriving the cave dweller.

[Travis]

I don't like the cave dweller because it gets muddy sounding when used with dirt pedals. The dry signal on the cave dweller is pretty degraded and it becomes more apparent when you boost it in my experience.

I would replace it with a delay that has a mix control that doesn't muddy up your dry signal to solve the problem at the source. The deep blue delay is a good one.

[BrotherLeech]

I'm settling for the deep blue delay at the moment actually, I just prefer the sound of the delays on the cave dweller. Thanks for the suggestions though.

[BrotherLeech]

I'll try the clean boost. That could be something.

I'm using a peavey valveking on the clean channel and its in a terraced house so it's quite quiet so yeah, it could be the the speakers just not being driven. I just thought I'd read somewhere that the meathead volume also affected saturation but they must have been referring to their amp rather than the pedal itself.

[Muadzin]

A peavey valveking really is massive overkill for an amp being used on a bedroom level. Better to get something tiny for that.

Maybe you should put an isolation buffer between your dirt and delay?

http://coldcrafteffects.net/blog/ultimate-buffer-system/

So it seems like isolation is a pretty good thing to have when you have multiple effects pedals chained together.  What other places will isolation buffers benefit the performance of your gear?  Take this next example.  Some designers are lazy, and don’t put output buffers last in their circuit.  This could mean that the output impedance is not constant and can actually change with the volume control (usually the last control in the signal path).  Sometimes this can affect their performance with other effects down the line.

[Travis]

Since the problem is a result of the poor sounding dry signal on the Cave Dweller, adjusting your other pedals or switching to a clean boost won't help.

I'm guessing that you prefer the darker repeats of the Cave Dweller over the brighter repeats of the DBD. If that's the case, I would just modify the DBD to have darker repeats. Or maybe try one of the other PT2399 projects on the site here.

If you read madbean's spiel on the Cave Dweller circuit, he briefly mentions how he saved PCB real estate by using one of the PT2399's onboard buffers to handle the dry signal. Whatever is going on there is not worth the saved real estate, because the Cave Dweller is basically useless with dirt or boost pedals. And if you're somewhat picky like me you'll notice that the dry signal sucks even when the Cave Dweller is the only pedal in the chain.

People have added a nicely buffered clean blend to the Cave Dweller, but IMO this is redundant because you probably can't fit the pedal in a 1590A anymore, and then the existing controls become kindof silly anyways. At that point you might as well just build a better designed delay

[BrotherLeech]

Cheers. I'll have a look at modding the dbd. Yesterday I stumbled across geiris mod for modulated repeats which really appealed to me too. I've not seen any mods for darker repeats though but I'll have a look after work.

[BrotherLeech]

I have a little bass amp I use too. The valveking is what it would be used with in a real world setting, if I ever get back to writing songs and gigging. I never seem to have time anymore cause I'm just building pedals

[induction]

Travis wrote

Since the problem is a result of the poor sounding dry signal on the Cave Dweller, adjusting your other pedals or switching to a clean boost won't help.

I thought the problem was lack of headroom on the cave dweller.

[Muadzin]

Personally I think the first order of business of a pedal building guitar player should be to build pedals that help him or her shape their music and be creative musically. To build pedals just for the sake of building pedals, while fun, kinda defeats that purpose. While building pedals just to build pedals is a part of what I do (cause its fun too), my main focus is always on how to improve my rig and to incorporate new and interesting sounds. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

And always try to make some time to just play your guitars and doodle away. While you're watching TV or something. A bit of absent minded distraction whilst playing works great for me to come up with new ideas. Don't forget, when you're in a position to start a new band, or get invited to play in one it's always better to have a lot of ideas for new songs, or complete new songs, then it is to turn up with the biggest pedal board in the world.

[Travis]

It's not only low headroom but also very noticeable loss of high end.

The OP didn't specifically mention that, but having built the Cave Dweller I am aware of it's shortcomings

[BrotherLeech]

Yeah you're right. The cave dweller and clari not both seem to be incapable of any high end which is frustrating as I really like their wet signals.

I tried modding my deep blue delay last night for darker repeats. Put a 47nf instead of a 15nf on the bottom two rows of the layout on the site. I got the darker repeats but the first repeat is noticibly distorted.