Wednesday 1 August 2012

Ross Distortion

"Tan" version:







"Black" version:






20 comments:

  1. Tan version verified. Missus clocked me in the spirit of the olympics. 28:21:48 from the second i sat down to build to the first distorted sound out from the test bench to Laney.

    Really nice sounding distortion. Clear, articulate and distorts enough. It's just asking for the tone mod :) If i could change one thing on it, it would be level. It gets nicely above unity, but this here is definitely a distortion, not an overdrive. Really good sounding little circuit for such a small part count.

    I guess i'll need to cook up the black version up soon too..
    +m

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    1. Awesome nice one matey, and the gold medal goes to the Finnish competitor! :o)

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    2. Heh. Probably only medal for finnish team :)
      +m

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  2. Here we go! That's Guild Brian May Treble Booster (buffered bypass) in to tan Ross Distortion. Apparently i'm calling it "80s Metal Choir", as it sounds just like every other metal lead sound from the 80s...

    http://mirosol.kapsi.fi/varasto/boxes/80sMetalChoir.jpg

    +m

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  3. Built the Tan version last night, love it... This is a great sounding distortion. I will agree... very 80's sounding (in the best way possible).

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  4. whats the difference in sound between tan and black???

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  5. I built the Tan a while ago and I like it but I have one weird issue and wanted to see if anyone could tell me what is happening.

    The pedal works fine a gets along with all my other pedals except for the Zendrive( my sons pedal board and mine are connected and probably have about 14 different pedals). The Zendrive is before the Ross tan and any time both pedals are engaged at the same time I get heavy distortion for a second then the volume fades down to nothing over about a 2 second period.

    Keep in mind I have no idea what I am talking about but it sounds like the signal is getting boosted past what the IC in the Ross can handle and it just shuts down. Both pedals are built to spec's listed on this site excpet the Ross's IC is a NJM4558 from Tadya.

    No big thing I chalk it up to just having to know your equipment but curious if any one could explain.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Hi. I've just discovered a problem that could be related.

      Essentially, when I run the Ross into an Anderton frequency boost, and then run *that* into an MXR Micro Amp, the output temporarily goes away when you turn the Micro Amp on or off. For more info, see http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=111278.msg1022779

      I used an op amp from Tayda as well. The baggie is labeled as TJM4558CN, but the chip itself actually says CHN4558C. Strange... I wonder if that could be relevant. I also have the op amp in a baggie labeled NJM4558 (which, again, isn't what the chip says: it says 4558D JRC D224A). Maybe I'll try that one instead...

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    3. Never mind on my previous comment. I realized I simply had a bad connection that was causing my problem. I fixed it, and all is well now.

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  6. Well.... it's got my name on it! Built up the black version. It's a good, basic distortion. Nothing too special.

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    1. Also.... 500k reverse log pot is absolutely mandatory with this. The sweep with a 500K log pot is all wrong. I did a couple mods to make it more bass-friendly (input cap is now 22n, clipping diodes are 3mm red LEDs). It's decent, but my modded Zendrive is infinitely better. I think I've got my high-gain dirt covered, but I'm still trying to find a good low-gain bass overdrive (think Geddy Lee). I might just have to bite the bullet, and buy a Behringer bass driver clone to rehouse.

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    2. I'm sure John K will be able to give you some good recommendations there, he seems to have tried just about everything in the world :o)

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    3. After a ton of experimentation, I've basically created an SVT in a box. I changed most of the values to the Roger Mayer Voodoo Bass (which is pretty much a Ross/Distortion+ gain stage anyway), except with a 56R in place of the 39R, and a 120K in place of the 150K. That tamed the gain a bit, and created this beautiful, thick distortion that blasts through any mix. I'll put a schematic up if anyone wants it.

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  7. Built Mr. Black today, and it's a pretty solid sounding unit. Good sweep from very little distortion to big saturation. Less bluesy than a DOD 250, but nice and Rock.
    Giving it to my buddy who has used a black Ross since the early 90s, and I'll tell you what he thinks.
    Thanks guys!

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  8. I am planning on building this pedal in the next few days, I was wondering if it would be easy to mod this pedal to include a tone knob? Would this be as simple as replacing one of the pots with a variable resistor setup, or would it be more feasible to attach the BMP tone control to this circuit along with maybe an lpb1 to make up for any losses associated with the BMP tone section? Any advice on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.

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  9. just built this it has way more gain than i thought

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  10. I'm new to this site and since there's no schematic that I can find, I have a question...are the red icons capacitors? If so, what type? Electrolytic, film, etc...
    Thanks in advance

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    1. hey man. first off welcome to the community. second, to answer your question those are poly/film caps.

      two other quick things. don't look at the color of the caps on the layout and automatically associate them with a specific type of cap because each of the admins, myself included, dont all use the same color to represent each type of cap, rather look at the value (nF - poly, uF - electrolytic, pF to nF - ceramic). keep in mind for tight spaces you can use ceramics in place of poly, typically you would use a multilayer ceramic instead of regular due to not being prone to microphonics. the other thing is a schematic usually will not tell you want type of caps are what, but will tell you the value, and expect you to know what type of cap you would need based on value.

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