Saturday 8 September 2018

EarthQuaker Devices Dunes

"The Dunes, like the Palisades, is a Tube Screamer variant. Yet it goes a step further from the original, adding a few extra features that go a long way to matching your guitar and pickups, to your amp. The knobs are familiar—Tone, Gain and Volume. In addition, there are three toggle switches that really make things interesting:
Voice: Gives you three tonal differences; MOSFET, Silicon and Normal. These options give you different levels of compression when adding gain, and really change the overall character a lot. The Normal setting has little to no compression if that is desired.
Normal/Bright: Works great when using either darker humbuckers—switch to Bright, or if using single coils, keep it normal. Using the master tone control in conjunction with this switch gives you a lot of useful variation.
Bandwidth: What a traditional Tube Screamer lacks—here, the Dunes gives you the option of adding a lot of deep low end—great for single coils, or switch it back to the more traditional screamer mode, accentuating the midrange, with less emphasis on the bottom end."
PCB and schematic available on PedalPCB website here.



23 comments:

  1. Thanks for this. On my to do list!

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  2. I noticed from the schematic that it uses 47uF in power filtering vs. 100uF in this layout. I presume I can use either cap?

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    1. Yes, 47uF or 100uF will be ok.
      The 100uF could be better, theorically. But the 47uf should be enough to filter eventually noise.

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  3. Thank u so much for sharing the article with readers..Do keep sharing such nice posts with readers...!!

    Guitar Tuners for Sale

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  4. Verified! Everything works great. I usually don't love tubescreamers but I'm loving this one. I boxed it up with an AMZ mini boost just because I wanted one of those and had room. The Dunes has a TON of volume on it's own. Great layout!

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  5. First, love this site. You guys are terrific. I have built several pedals (including the triple wreck, which is awesome). But I am having trouble with this one. I am getting very loud hum, getting the stomp switch pop and... most of all... it is incredibly loud. I can’t advance volume past 1.

    Disclosures, which could be causing the problems. First, I used a NE5332 for the IC. Second, I substituted 2n5088’s for the MPSA18’s. Everything else is as specced. I do have voltages if that would help. Thanks in advance.

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  6. Such a juicy circuit! Somehow I squeezed it into a 1590B and it fired up the first time *yeah*.

    All controls work as expected, although I think a A100K pot may work better for volume (as usually). Furthermore I changed the 10uF capacitor at SW 2 - 1 for a 1uF one because the bandwidth switch added a bit too much low end for my taste.

    Thanks again for another great layout! I really like how you arrange the connections for the pots and switches :-)

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Just in case you're still interested in my voltages. All pots at noon and the only difference to the schematic is my 1uF cap instead of the 10uF cap at SW 2-1.

      IC:

      1: 4,66V
      2: 4,66V
      3: 4,67V
      4: 9,39V
      5: 4,67V
      6: 4,88V
      7: 4,52V
      8: 0V

      2N7000 left:

      S: 3,60V
      G: 4,88V
      D: 4,88V

      2N7000 right:

      S: 3,33V
      G: 3,60V
      D: 3,60V

      MPSA18 left:

      C: 9,39V
      B: 2,88V
      E: 3,87V

      MPSA18 right:

      C: 9,39V
      B: 2,90V
      E: 3,85V

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    3. Great! Thanks Eli. For what it’s worth, my ic matches pretty close. One of is counting worn (probably me) but it’s easy enough to figure out. Yours are a little higher than mine but your starting voltage is a bit higher. I think transistors are pretty close as well, although there are some relative differences.

      NE 5532
      1: 4.30
      2: 4.40
      3: 4.37
      4: 0.00
      5 : 4.31
      6: 4.31
      7: 4.31
      8: 8.92

      2n7000 left
      S: 2.93
      G: 4.40
      D: 4.40

      2n7000
      S: 2.98
      G: 2.93
      D: 2.93

      2n5088 left
      C: 8.93
      B: 3.86
      E: 3.49

      2n5088 right

      C:8.93
      B: 3.85
      E: 3.47

      I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just try your audio taper in volume and see. I wasn’t thinking about that correctly, it should help me tame the extreme volume curve. Thanks again.

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    4. Yep. I didn’t have an a100k pot, so I soldered a 22k resistor across lugs 1 and 2. Better. Useable and it does sound really good. The tone switches make a nice difference. I can’t tell a massive difference in the drive switch settings but with more use I’ll see. Still have a big pop and so I will need to fix that. Thanks for your help!

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    5. U soldered 22k resistor in b100k? What does it do? Can u tell me?

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  7. Hi, I'm looking to build this very soon. I'm just wondering what the white dot means in the link to the left of the Red LED (Next to the D of the 2N7000 Transistor)? Is that where it connects to the switch?

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    1. That's a double link, so the 2 wires meet in that hole.

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  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  9. Just build this one, my red led isn't lighting up :S Is this normal?

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    1. taking about the one between the JFETS? Yeah i don't think that one needs to light up - is eveything sounding fine?

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