Distortion pedal designed and built by Manny Silverstein and Michael Prosinski. Write-up by Manny Silverstein.

Not included in the schematic: 3PDT bypass switch and status LED.

Design Process: Before we fully designed our own distortion circuit, we wanted to start by building extremely simple circuits so we understood every stage of our design. The only spec we started with was that we wanted our distortion to come from diode clipping and that the circuit would run on one 9V battery, so every op-amp had to be half supplied. We wanted to start extremely simple, even just a circuit that had two diodes to ground to provide the most basic kind of diode distortion, sending any part of the signal over 700mV to ground. Our first initial issue became clear, most guitar signals are around 100mV (peak), so any instrument that doesnt put out a much hotter output (we found by using an active bass) will go straight through the circuit without any effect. Though we knew this to be true, on our first few simple builds we found the voltage coming into the circuit to be much less. Ultimately we determined the problem to be a matter of loading, we had to increase the input impedance. While we could have just used a large resistor to ground at the input, the op-amp package we used was a double package so we decided to use the second op-amp as a buffer. After adding the buffer we tried a simple circuit with the two diodes in the feedback path in parallel with a drive-pot. With the added gain of the op-amp, the diodes just started kicking in towards the top of the pot. We decided that we needed a gain stage before the op-amp distortion. We made this with a simple 4 resistor BJT amplifier, designed to amplify a signal of100mV to 600mV so it would be just under the 700mV threshold with the pot turned all the way down. The final mod we made to the distortion stage was to have the wiper pin of the pot go to the diodes instead of having them in parallel. This was decided based on sound; we heard a more intense and saturated effect in this configuration. On the opposite end of the diodes we had another 4.5V point so the diodes would activate the proper way with the signal running through the op-amp biased up 4.5V. The last section is a variable high shelving filter. Initially we made a traditional simple tone circuit, a variable low pass filter. We found that without the tone circuit we wanted the sound to be brighter, so instead of the variable low pass that could only cut high end, we wanted a filter that could boost high end as well as cut it. We based the circuit off a classic passive shelving filter, picked our capacitor values based on the component we had, and then played with the resistors values until we liked the sound of the filter. After the pedal was already completely built, I realized that the 10F coupling capacitor before that tone stage is likely not necessary because 4.5V DC couldnt enter the 0.01F capacitor, but that coupling capacitor is large enough that it doesnt negatively affect the tone circuit. The final step to the circuit build was adding the bypass switch and status LED (with 680 resistor). We used a standard 3PDT stomp switch with the input, output and power wires connected to the correct pins. One issue we noticed after this was when the circuit was initialized by the switch, there was a loud pop. We fixed this be placing a 1M resistor between the input and ground. The final mod to the circuit was to connect the batteries cold wire to the ring lug of the input jack. As this is for guitar/bass, input wires used will be standard unbalanced tip-sleeve cables. This last mod makes it so the circuit can only be powered on when there is a cable plugged into the input jack.

While the circuit has not yet been put into an enclosure, it completely works. With a typical guitar, the drive control all the way down has the signal fairly clean, all the way up has it extremely saturated, and somewhere around 11 oclock gives it a nice bluesy crunch. With a much higher output active bass, the circuit already distorts a bit with distortion down, and at max it sounds like a heavily saturated synth bass. I also found with the distortion knob turned all the way down, you could play soft notes on bass without distortion, and then play a loud low note and have it distort, which I thought was a cool effect. The tone knob gives a nice way to boost up the high end a little bit, which we felt was necessary on guitar. We also tried running an electric piano through it, which turned out to be one of our favorite sounds. Once we get this into an enclosure I plan on adding it to my bass pedal board as well as using it on other instruments for recordings.

Here is the pedal built before we added the bypass switch

The final circuit including the bypass switch.