Russian Diode chart

[iggy]

Just got a hold of a color code chart for Russian diodes. I know all their diodes are coded with colored bands. And no writing. Not sure if anyone could use this to identify Russian diodes.

I'll try to attach it. Hopefully this helps someone.

[JaviCAP]

Correct :) This is a very easy way to identify russian diodes, and to know that you have not been fooled now that the D9E are getting very expensive :P



J.

[rocket88]

agreed javi. i grab a like 200 for $14usd a month ago now they're 2x the price for 100 or i've seen them sold for $9usd for 10. it's getting crazy. just glad i started to be like mark and some of the other guys and stock up while they're cheap. btw, i think the D9V's are better then the D9E's. almost identical tonally, but break up easier, especially when you really dig into the strings, and at the moment they're still cheap. just my 2cents, cause i know the price increase is due to people wanting them for Klones. i some of pretty much all of them, like 100-200, but D9A, for cheap.

[JaviCAP]

Sure, Rocket. I purchased 200x D9E and 200x D9K for a dime when my stock of germanium diodes  started to show the red light a few months ago.

Now the K are still cheap, but the E are reaching for the sky, so, surely after summer, the prices will be sheer madness.

J.

[Frank_NH]

Yes, I just paid $9 for 10 D9Es, but then that's probably a lifetime supply for me.      However, compared to guitar building, materials for pedal building are dirt cheap (example - try sourcing a good quality rosewood back and sides set for a dreadnought...).

[Geiri]

I purchased 900 of them, thinking I got the last available on eBay but then the Bulgarian seller posted more and I bought 3000x more just to be safe for some time

[JaviCAP]

Funny thing is that, used in the Klon, they're "one more" diode, nothing special, better or worse  about them, but hype is hype every fucking where :P

J.

[inefficiency]

You're right there Frank. You can build a pedal for like £12, but see how much decent timber you can get for that kind of cash!

I'm liking this chart. All I need now is a Cyrillic alphabet guide/key and I can figure out what the hell those freebie diodes were that I got from the chap in Bulgaria.

[rocket88]

holy shit geiri, 900? god it must be going into some of your production pedals. did you go and by the other 3000? cause you might be the reason for the skyrocket in price

javi, got to say i agree with you. some parts people go nuts over certain things because they hear they're good. to be honest, i'm not crazy about the Klon. it's ok, but there's so much hype around it that it's made out to be the best OD ever, but i think there are a lot that are better, and a hell of a lot cheaper. i think the same hold true for some Ge transistors, people say you need the have NKT275 in a fuzzface, or OC___ in a rangemaster or tonebender to sound good, and it's simply not true. some diodes sound better than others, but it depends on the circuit. sorry for the rant, i think i'm just venting about an arguement i had with a buddy about the same thing, and he brought in POI caps too, sigh.

inefficiency, i got a baggie of electrolyic caps, that i know what some are, but others are encased in metal with no markings or anything, kind of afraid of what they may be, they may not even be caps, they could be a recording device from the cold war. lol

[dbat69]

Inefficiency

The Cyrillic conversion for the table reading from top to bottom are:

D9B,  D9V,  D9G,  D9D,  D9E,  D9J,  D9i,  D9K,  D9L,  D9M

I think I got those right (at least that is what I deduced when I saw the chart on the ebay seller 'elecments13' whom I got some diodes off and tried to work it out for future reference)

I'm not sure if those double yellow stipe diodes from Bulgaria are a SFDxxx version.  I haven't got any d9i ones to compare yet


Rocket - I can agree with you about the hype - sometimes wonder if it is a deliberate move by 'the business' to get prices inflated, probably after they have depleted the world stock of good items, leaving the "new to DIY" like me and others in the future to curse not finding this hobby sooner and missing out on the 'best bits'.  I know I've succumbed to paying over the odds for parts in case they are the important ingredient to a sound (only to find that most are crap or not useful for what I wanted them for).  When I have more time, more pennies and more experience, I really want to suss out this 'mojo' business.  Oooh you got me going too

[JaviCAP]

Hehehehehehehe Rocket, in Spain we say that people suffer "marquitis" (adiction to some brands or models).

I decided nearly a year ago to stop building pedals on demmand, because I ended up fed to the teeth of stupid clients. "I want a Tonebender, but the trannies have to be OC85, mandatory, because they're the best sounding ones".

Wait a minute, have you listened to an original one? Have you just listened to Youtube demos? Have you tried the orriginal JMI to be so sure that this tranny is he best sounding one?. No, you have no fucking idea about what you're looking for, and moreover, you think that the pedal will make you sound like Jimy Page, but don't get fooled: you don't have his hands or techique.

I remember a guy who asked me for a fuzz face "with nos AC128 because they're the original ones and the best sounding" Did you know, ASSHOLE that the original were NKT275? and that nowadays some of the best fuzz faces you can build use russian transistors that cost peanuts?

With the D9E is the same. Someone made the bell toll, and now, everybody wants these diodes on the Klon, when nearly nobody could tell in the past if the pedal had germanium diodes or BAT46 :P

Don't get ,me wrong, the D9E are great diodes for building pedals, but, the difference is not great,  barely noticeable from a 1N270 or a 1N34.

Somehow it's ok, now if someone wants me to put D93 diodes in his Klon, I'll charge him 75 euros for doing so, it's the price of the hype XDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

J.

[rocket88]

javi, can't agree more. i've had people ask my to build certain pedals for them, like a fuzzface, and they were adamant that it needed _______ transistor, and has to have POI caps, and carbon comp resistors, yada, yada. i told them straight out they didn't know what they were talking about and i could prove it. i had 2 different fuzzfaces i built sitting around, one had low gain russians, metal film resistors, and normal panasonic caps, while the other was full on mojo with real NOS high gain nkt275's, POI caps, carbon comp resistors (i built just for the hell of it), and without fail he said the one with the russians, and more normal parts sounded better and swore that was the mojo pedal. in fact he complained that the  "russian one" was too noisey, too bright, and didn't sound the way a "real" fuzzface should.

needless to say when i opened them both up he was shocked . then i told him for me to build a mojo one with real nkt275's would cost him well over $300usd and that's if i could get more real NOS ones, cause the sets i have are just for me for some special builds i have planned, and i could build exactly what he was looking for with russians for like $150-200usd depending on transistor choice and other things he wanted. he told me to just build what i thought it should be and said that he trusted my judgement. i mean really, i thought we who build and mess with circuits are supposed to know what we're doing, but it seems some people think we just propagate boards. and what annoys me is you don't hear people telling the big companies that they don't know what they're doing.

it makes me want to not do custom work for people. i want to build and sell what i like, not do something because someone tells me it needs __________. but you do have the point, i could charge more for mojo, which would just give me more cash to get the parts i want.....i think you're on to something......

in the end every part in a circuit plays a part, and its the way they interact with each other that makes them sound the way they do. some circuits i notice a huge difference with different transistors, even if the hfe is the same, others i don't. and just like transistors clipping diodes each have a unique voice, and to be honest there are a lot of people that swear by certain diodes because they are told you need ______ clipping diodes, but when i here them i just think they're meh..... but then again, i have my own biases and swear by certain ones too, but that's cause tonally it gets me where i want to be.

btw, in my neck of the woods we call them fanboys, or brand whores. i got into an argument with a guy at guitarcenter, it's a chain guitar store here, that was telling me that the best fuzzface you could get was the dunlop hendrix version, his only reason was because it's dunlop. i just rolled my eyes.

[Vince]

Those Russian trannies are the best I've tried in Fuzz faces!....

The best one I've had is from someone asking me to build a Maxon OD820 in a 1590BB as opposed to the 1590B as he 'heard' it sounds better in the bigger enclosure?!.... I shit you not.... I re-read it three times and then fell on the floor laughing.....

[IvIark]

Well if he wants to pay a £20 premium to improve box size related tonez, who are we to argue?

[Beaker]

That's priceless Vince. Someone had better tell Geiri not to bother trying to shoehorn the Maxon into a 1590A. Not only will it undoubtedly sound crap, but if the word is out, he won't get any takers!

Every couple of months I get a phone call that starts:
"I've just bought / I want to buy a Jaguar/Jazzmaster"

My heart sinks as I know EXACTLY what's coming next.

"How much would you change to saddles/bridge etc, as I read on the internet/someone told me that they are crap."

I now tell them I won't charge them anything, as I refuse to do it!

[rocket88]

hahahaha, that's by far the greatest, an effect sounds better because it's in a larger enclosure. you know, that might be the secret we all miss when making a klon, and why the klon has such a massive enclosure. it makes it sound better. i think i'm going to start making all my builds in 1790ns boxes just to make it sound better.

beaker, i won't even touch that stuff anymore. i'll do pickup swaps, pre-amp installs, and other upgrades & custom work. but i've blatantly turn people away when they start with the "can you do _______, i read that it is the best thing." so many people don't get that it comes down to what you want and like. once i hear that crap, i just tell them i'm not the guy for the job. especially when they tell me that need __________ pickups because it will make them sound like _________ artist.

i mean i have a badass bridge on my real fender jazz and the one i built from scratch, and my fender jaguar has a hipshot a-style bridge. there's a tonal reason i use them rather than the stock bent metal fender bridge, and people argue how bad the stock one is, but look at how many profession musicians have use them since they were first made. for me the stock bridge isn't good, but it doesn't mean it's total crap. i also changed out all the pickups in my fenders too, but again it's because the stock parts didn't accomplish what i really wanted as time went on, meanwhile all of my g&l basses have stayed stock because what i have are rare and vintage, but more importantly tonally they are exactly like i want them to be, so i have no reason to change parts.

people need to learn for themselves and have their own opinion whether or not people online agree. they need to listen with their ears first, then decide if they need/want the change. more importantly i think its the idea that because they spend $X on an instrument that makes them a better player.

biggest pet pev, i had a kid i went to high school with that had a $1500 warwick bass, then got a $2500 zon bass while he waited for a $6500 fodera bass. not one of them made him play or sound better, but he would swear that each more expensive bass made his playing better. once again pardon my rant.

[inefficiency]

Oh man. I had to convince a friend to buy a new amp a while ago. He had 4 guitars all valued at around £1000-£1500 and was playing through a Line6 Spider.

To top it off, he went and bought a Suhr Shiba Drive to use as a boost. Trying to explain to him that he really needs some tubes for that to work properly was a bit of a task.

Still, he took my advice and now the guy has a killer rig with a killer sound. So there's a happy ending.

I think I'm going to start building my effects in a wooden enclosure with x-bracing. About the size of an acoustic guitar. Should help with the acoustics
Maybe one the size of a double bass for the bass effects. Gotta get that low end resonance, ya know.

[JaviCAP]

Sadly, I know LOTS of people who owns extremely expensive gear: great (modified, of course) guitars, incredible amps, tons of pedals.. but don't know how to play a simple fuckin' pentatonic or play something different than a power chord.

This people, besides, use to be the one that  asks for OC85 and AC128 plus carbon comp resistors on their builds :P

J.

[rocket88]

i don't know about you, but it's those people that drive me nuts.

but, on another note. i've got a few more of the D9 series diodes, and i noticed there are 2 different versions. one that is exactly the same as iggy posted, and the other which always has 2 bands (one on top, one on bottom). the second style always has a single grey band on one end of the diode, and a color on the other that matched exactly what is in the chart. it appears that either the second style was made in a different part of the USSR, Ukraine?, or at some point they changed the banding.

i figured that it would be a good idea to point this out, because i just want to make sure that no one thinks they got shafted if they get the second style.

example: both of these are D9E diodes. notice they both have the blue band on one side. it seems that its that color that denotes what diode it is

[inefficiency]

Here are the freebies I got from Bulgaria.