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Friday, 7 September 2012

Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive

Another request from quite a few people and I suspect this will be another of those pedals which is equally popular with the bass guitarist.  Info from the manufacturer about their original:

Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive is an overdrive pedal featuring a unique “clean” control. Its overdrive circuit provides the same tone as a vintage ‘808. Then the clean control blends back in a boosted direct signal. This restores the attack and feel which is lost in a highly compressed overdrive circuit.
The Sparkle Drive utilizes the same concept as layering two amps, one clean and the other saturated. Of course with the clean control turned down, you get a classic overdrive tone. All the way up, it provides a super transparent, 100% clean boost.


Modded version with clipping switch:
I don't know exactly what the official "Mod" version is, but this offers a 3 position switch to choose between stock setting with the 1N4148's, a more compressed setting with the LEDs (or try germanium diodes if you prefer), or the centre off position to give you a clean boost "diode lift". 


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78 comments:

  1. MAndrews7 September 2012 at 16:50

    Hi Mark. Do you know how to add to this to make it the MOD version? http://youtu.be/h6q5rfA3O94

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    1. IvIark7 September 2012 at 17:00

      I'm not sure exactly what it is, although it's probably switchable diodes or maybe input caps? I'll have a look and see if I can find a scheme.

      Can't remember whether I've asked you this before, but where are you from? I used to go to school with someone called MAndrews and although I haven't seen him for many years I know he plays in a band and so would be interested in something like this. Long shot of course! :o)

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    2. MAndrews7 September 2012 at 17:15

      It sounds to me that the clipping is changing so I thought diodes. Knowing which particular ones would speed things up though.

      You haven't asked before. The Internet so vast and then bumping into people you used to know seems high odds. I'm a Mark as well, from Luton and still (sometimes unfortunately) live there. The right one?

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    3. IvIark7 September 2012 at 17:22

      It may be worth just adding a 3 position DPDT clipping switch with silicon one side, LEDs or germanium the other and the centre position would be a diode lift clean boost setting.

      No this was a Martin from Manchester but living now in Oxford I think. Never mind I thought it would have been too much of a bizarre coincidence. :o)

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    4. MAndrews10 September 2012 at 21:35

      Thanks for the modded layout addition. I think I'm considering a rotary switch similar to the DAM Ezekiel 25-17 with lots of options. How would you consider the best way of doing this? A little daughter board?

      Delete
    5. IvIark10 September 2012 at 21:55

      Or even easier, use a 6 position double pole switch, solder the diode pairs across the switched lugs (using the pair that are switched simultaneously in each position such as 1 & 7, 2 & 8 etc), and then just take the two commons to the board.

      Delete
  2. Unknown7 September 2012 at 17:28

    Thank you for posting this! I've been looking for this vero for a while. Time to put in an parts order...

    -Kris

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  3. rudeez7 September 2012 at 18:50

    Hmm, the sparkle drive! Was it the OCD that was done from this one or?
    Will prob do this during the weekend! Thanks mark as always!

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    1. IvIark7 September 2012 at 18:53

      No that's the Voodoo Lab Overdrive, there's a layout on here for that too.

      Delete
  4. johnk8 September 2012 at 09:17

    thanks for posting this one Mark. i'm going to try and build it this weekend.

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  5. JaviCAP8 September 2012 at 15:43

    Hello,

    I've been offered a pack of AA143 germanium diodes at a very good price on my local store. Don't know very much about them, just that they are used mainly as am/fm detectors and have a low voltage drop between 0,29 and 0,33, maximum 0,50v at 15 mA. Would be of use in this kind of circuits / stompboxes? Thank you!

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    1. IvIark10 September 2012 at 20:34

      Yes they'd be useful in a lot of things, anything that has germanium diodes could use them, or you could also experiment with replacing silicon diodes in any of these layouts or maybe putting in a diode switch to choose between silicon or germanium.

      It's always worth getting anything in like that.

      Delete
    2. JaviCAP10 September 2012 at 23:52

      Thanks Mark,

      So, tomorrow afternoon will go to the store and get it. I've been offered a pack of 100 units at 5 cents each (NOS, but I wanted to be sure first that they would be of any use.

      Delete
  6. jojokeo10 September 2012 at 08:45

    Would prefer to also see schematic. I often use it for changes, checking against mistakes, altering/modding if necessary, etc. Can you provide? thx-

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    1. IvIark10 September 2012 at 09:08

      I would like to post the schematics along with the layout, but unfortunately they're not my property to share and so I may not have permission to post them. But with very few exceptions, the layouts I do are based on schematics found at freestompboxes.org, and so you can get them from there if you do a search including this one.

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    2. johnk10 September 2012 at 11:05

      i used the schematic along with Brian Wampler's recommendations for modding a tubescreamer so that mine will work a bit better with my basses. just about every mod for a TS808 will apply to this pedal.

      Delete
  7. johnk10 September 2012 at 20:19

    I Just tested mine and it works PERFECT so you can verify this one Mark. the only thing you'll want to correct on it is that GAIN 3 should go to GAIN 1, and GAIN 1&2 should go to GAIN 2&3 so that the gain is increased as you turn the control clockwise. i used a 1M audio pot on mine to give it a little more gain (distortion), but the A500K works well too.

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    1. IvIark10 September 2012 at 20:27

      Brilliant, thanks for that John

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    2. MAndrews10 September 2012 at 21:38

      Hi John. How would you say this compares on bass with the DAM Ezekiel 25-17?

      Delete
    3. johnk10 September 2012 at 21:49

      IMO, they're two completely different sounding pedals. to me, the sparkledrive is smoother. i modded my sparkledrive more to my liking for use with a bass. by changing a few caps, adding more bottom end and flatter mids, and extended transparent highs. the nice thing is, with the three clipping options, i can still have plenty of mids if i want it.

      Delete
  8. johnk11 September 2012 at 21:13

    here's a couple of pics of my Sparkle Drive build (modded for bass). IMO, this is an awesome sounding pedal! Thanks for posting it Mark!

    http://johnkvintageguitars.homestead.com/Effects/Fuzz-ODs/SparkleDrive/SparkleDrive-01.jpg

    http://johnkvintageguitars.homestead.com/Effects/Fuzz-ODs/SparkleDrive/SparkleDrive-02.jpg

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    1. IvIark11 September 2012 at 21:15

      Excellent, thanks for these and the Fuzz Head pics John. Great job as usual.

      Delete
    2. MAndrews14 September 2012 at 21:52

      Great looking build John. HOW have the two (looks like from pic) 330n caps made the pedal better for bass from stock?

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    3. johnk15 September 2012 at 00:02

      i really think that raising the values of the caps helped it ALOT. when i want an overdrive for use with a bass, it has to maintain the low end and i found the stock circuit to be just a litte bit lacking in that respect.

      Delete
    4. Tac Dibar20 September 2012 at 07:45

      Hey John, a dumb question maybe: How do you make the stickers for your pedals? What do you print them on and how?

      Delete
    5. johnk20 September 2012 at 08:27

      i use a brother P-touch 2100 and use the software to make them.

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    6. Tac Dibar20 September 2012 at 10:53

      Thank's for the info! Though I don't think I will be getting myself one of those. I'm thinking of going to some printshop to get my stickers printed...

      Delete
  9. Unknown18 October 2012 at 18:45

    hi people this is my first build and its turned out great, but when i turn down the clean i lose almost all the signal to my amp even with the gain and volume turned right up any ideas as to why this is happening would be great cheers

    Ben

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    1. IvIark18 October 2012 at 19:21

      The Clean control pans between two separate paths in the circuit. One goes through the dirt section where the clipping diodes are, the other just goes through an additional buffer and so the signal remains clean. So you either have:

      Transistor Buffer > Dirt section > Tone stack > Volume control > output
      or
      Transistor Buffer > IC Buffer > Volume control > output

      or of course a mix of the two if the Clean pot is set somewhere in the middle. So if your dirt side seems to be working ok (and assuming the Clean pot is wired up correctly) the problem will most likely be around the right hand side of IC2. Either the link between pins 6 and 7 under the IC, the 13K3 resistor from pin 7, or the link on the left hand side of IC2 going up from the bottom of the 13K3 to pin 2 and the 100K on the same row. Check for an unwanted bridge somewhere around there, or maybe a cold solder joint or something.

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    2. Unknown25 October 2012 at 17:57

      thanks very much for the advice, its working great now, i realised im an idiot and used the wrong resistors, put 15k's in insted of 10k's. should have read the colour coding rather than trusting the makings on the box i took them out of! now moving on to the biff muff civil war.

      thanks again

      Delete
  10. hangingmonkey11 December 2012 at 19:40

    Whats the 3k01 resistor, is it supposed to be 3k1? Or is it a 3010R resistor?

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  11. johnk11 December 2012 at 19:43

    it would be a 3010R but a 3K is fine.

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    1. hangingmonkey12 December 2012 at 00:18

      Thanks, didnt realise such a thing existed

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    2. Olav18 December 2012 at 16:19

      Built this today. Great sounding crisp od. Thanks for the layout Mark!

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    3. Olav18 December 2012 at 16:19

      This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    4. hangingmonkey23 December 2012 at 21:23

      Im just starting to stock up on parts to build this one. Theres a few uncommon resistor values and i was wondering how important it is to be exact or can i round up some of them or are a few of them important to be the specified value?

      Thanks

      Delete
    5. IvIark24 December 2012 at 01:24

      I don't think any of them are particularly important. A lot of builders seem to use unusual values but every time I've compared the difference between something like a 4K7 and a 4K99 I haven't noticed anything more discernible than usual differences in tolerance. And as this is all subjective who's to say that the value used provides the best sound anyway? Maybe with your gear a 4K7 would sound marginally better that the stock value.

      Just use the closest value you have and don't worry too much about the minutiae.

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    6. Robert Marbun4 November 2015 at 00:31

      Thank you Mark.
      But now I am on my half way to get the more precise values by measuring each resistor I have with digital multimeter which give me larger pain. Nothing but human curiosity LOL

      Great post.

      Delete
  12. Unknown20 January 2013 at 10:09

    This looks awesome! I'm about to start this whole DIY pedal thing! As a result I'm having trouble working out all the parts I need to order. Is anyone able to put together a parts list or something? I'm unsure on what type.of capacitors, diodes and what q1 is and the component "c b e ". I know this is all prob noob stuff but was hoping to get.some.help anyway
    Thanks guys

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    1. Madferret20 January 2013 at 11:25

      If this is your first build I'd maybe go for something a little easier unless you're pretty confident with soldering/electronics etc. Maybe try this:

      http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lovepedal-woodrow.html

      Otherwise for this pedal, Q1 is the transistor - an MPSA18 and it's the same as the CBE componenet, CBE just refers to which leg of the transistor is which. For the capacitors I'd use polybox ones, resistors I'd go for Metal Film and the diodes are 1n4148's. The only stuff you won't be able to get from a regular electronics store are: IC1 which you can probably use a TL072 for and Q1 which you could use a 2n5088 for. Hope this helps.

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    2. Unknown21 January 2013 at 07:43

      thanks mate, I'm gonna try a simple boost and then a ts808 first, but this is the pedal I really want to build.

      I have got most of the parts, but I cant find 49k9 and 3k01 resistors. am i correct in saying that they are 49.9 k ohms and 3.01 k ohms respectively? i just cant seem to find any online that are exactly those values. would a 50k and a 3k work fine?

      Thanks again.

      Delete
    3. mirosol21 January 2013 at 07:47

      Yup. Just use the closest values - I bet you don't hear anything different.
      +m

      Delete
  13. ichilton30 January 2013 at 22:06

    Anyone compared the sound from one of these builds side by side with a real one? - how close is it?

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  14. ichilton31 January 2013 at 21:01

    I can't seem to source the NE55532 - is there an equivalent?

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    1. IvIark31 January 2013 at 21:37

      You've put too many 5's in. Search for NE5532, they are available very cheaply on eBay. Any dual opamp with the same pin config could be used, TL062, TL072, TL082, JRC4558, RC4558, LF353, LM1458, LM358, LM833, OP275, OPA2134, OPA2604, TLC262, TLC272 and so on and so on

      Delete
    2. ichilton2 February 2013 at 09:30

      That list fo op-amps.....are they all pin compatible? - so you can just drop them in to any of the circuits?

      Delete
    3. IvIark2 February 2013 at 11:37

      Yes they all share the common dual opamp pinout. Some are rated for a higher voltage than others but they're all ok with 9V circuits

      Delete
  15. ichilton1 February 2013 at 16:49

    Oops - i'm not sure where I got that from!! :)

    Thanks for the list - that's really helpful.

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  16. Mike24 February 2013 at 18:28

    Would using a 200k clean knob be the end of the world?

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  17. Mike24 February 2013 at 21:29

    Awesome, I was all stoked to build this and then saw that I had no dual gang pots, then saw the 200k and thought I would ask. Seems like a great pedal for bass players!

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  18. Unknown9 August 2013 at 11:17

    Hi,
    Built it for myself:
    http://imageshack.us/a/img855/8167/fq41.jpg
    Hope I can convince my bass player to have me build one for him, with John Kallas' mods for bass... :)
    Thanks for the layout!

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  19. Unknown22 September 2013 at 22:59

    On the dual pot, is A the group of tabs closer or further away from the shaft?

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    1. Dave23 September 2013 at 08:38

      It doesn't really matter which set is a or b, the key thing is to make sure all the b's are on the same set of lugs and the same with the a's. The reason it doesn't matter is that essentially the same thing is happening simultaneously on each set of lugs so it doesn't matter which set you use for a or b.
      Hope that helps
      Thanks
      Dave

      Delete
    2. Unknown23 September 2013 at 14:53

      Thank you, Dave!

      Delete
  20. Unknown4 November 2013 at 19:24

    One more question, if I wanted to add tantalums for the .22mf caps, how should I orient them?

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  21. Unknown6 November 2013 at 12:28

    Yeah! I have indeed convinced my bass player and built one for him, including John Kallas' mods.
    To know what each knob does, you'll have to learn how to read Klingon... ^^

    http://imageshack.us/a/img513/1172/xkhp.jpg
    http://imageshack.us/a/img51/2901/uawh.jpg

    Thanks again, IvIark, for the layout, and John Kallas, for sharing your mods for bass. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  22. Ncuab and Pajntsa19 December 2013 at 20:38

    How do I modify this pedal to TS-808 specs? According to singlecoil.com (http://www.singlecoil.com/docs/tubescreamer.pdf), I just need to have the proper IC chip, which the vero board layout already has shown.

    Then I need to change two of the output resistors to preferably 5% comp resisters but which two? I changed the 475R to 100R and the 100K, near the 475R resistor, to 10K. It definitely does sound warmer and rounder in the bass but I just wanted to check with all of you guys to see if I'm right. Thanks guys!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Tronc.the.cube8 February 2014 at 01:49

    Can someone post a board that can be added on to an existing ts type circuit to replicate the blend function of the sparkle drive?
    I've added a poodle parts blender to an overdrive, but instead of a buffer I'd like it to be a jet boost that has a shared volume control with the overdrive.

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  24. Unknown13 February 2014 at 13:10

    Built this and it's very nice. A much better Tubescreamer in my opinion and a very good, transparent clean boost when set to clean. I might try a reverse taper for the tone though as it seems to bunch up a little at the end of the rotation.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Tronc.the.cube1 March 2014 at 11:22

    Can I use tantalum caps for 47n,220n and100n? If so which way to insert for positive leg?

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    1. IvIark1 March 2014 at 13:44

      I'd suggest getting some multilayer ceramics, which you can get off eBay cheap as chips, but if you really want to:

      100n at input - negative down
      220n at emitter - negative up
      47n - negative down
      220n at Tone 1 - negative down
      100n at Tone 2 - negative up

      Delete
  26. Unknown7 April 2014 at 15:17

    Im confused about the LED+ do i wire the led to the 3pdt switch as normal and take the + from the board? Or are there two LED's in this circuit? Struggling to get mine to work. Thanks

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    1. IvIark7 April 2014 at 15:19

      LED+ connects to the LED anode, the cathode then goes to the stomp where it is switched to ground to turn it on.

      Delete
  27. Unknown10 April 2014 at 18:10

    Hi pedal still not working. It now makes like a crackling noise when i strum really hard. I can hear the signal but it breaks up quite heavilly and is faint. What can cause this?

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  28. Unknown7 September 2014 at 06:15

    I'm getting overall low volume but the signal makes sense. I have used my audio probe and I'm getting proper loud output from the pots except for the 'volume' pot. Any ideas? I can't find an original schematic that matches this one to compare to! Thanks :)

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    1. IvIark7 September 2014 at 12:51

      Is the signal loud on the Volume 3 lug and quiet on the Volume 2 lug?

      Delete
    2. Unknown7 September 2014 at 14:27

      Hey Mark, the 'Vol 2&3' are both a lot quieter than the Clean A3, B2, A2 and B1. The Clean control seems to work properly, but something is happening after that that is attenuating the signal somehow..!

      Delete
    3. Unknown7 September 2014 at 14:45

      My IC voltages all seem ok, if that's any help.

      Delete
    4. IvIark7 September 2014 at 18:58

      Is the sound quiet at pin 2 of IC2?

      Delete
    5. Unknown10 September 2014 at 04:45

      Hey Mark,

      Yeah I'm getting no signal at IC2 pin 2 or 3, and clean signal on IC2 pin 5, 6 and 7. Hm.

      Delete
    6. Unknown15 September 2014 at 13:48

      Dang, I don't know what I did but it works. Lol. I LOVE YOU GUYS.

      Delete
  29. Unknown8 September 2014 at 00:21

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  30. pearl blues11 December 2014 at 12:21

    Hi I finished this one today and it's a cool sounding pedal, but it has three problems: when I turn the clean knob down the volume goes down, the tone control does nothing and the gain control doesn't do anything either. I've checked and double checked component placement/orientation, links, cuts, checked for solder bridges, swapped out IC's, trannies and diodes, I've even double checked my wiring to the pots and everything looks right, but still these problems :( All that's left is to re-flow all my solder joints and check for faulty components. Question is, are there any particular components I should check that might cause these problems? Anyway thanks for your help and for you great site :)

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    1. pearl blues16 December 2014 at 12:33

      I got it to work in the end. I'd left out the 47pf cap, (thinking it wouldn't make much difference) and just put a wire there to link the two points. Well, this morning I found a 47pf cap and put it in, and it solved all the problems. It sounds fantastic! It gives a very good SRV live at the El Macombo style tone, and also a good Band of Gypsys clean/cruch tone. I thinks it's because the blend function simulates a multi-amp set up. This is definitely by far the best Tube Screamer type pedal I have personally played, I'm very happy with it. Thank you for your great site, and I wish you the blessings of the season :)

      Delete
  31. Unknown9 June 2016 at 02:16

    LED＋ on the board means anode of an indicater LED……???
    Why do you need it?
    Do I have to use it?

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    1. ξεναγός νεκρόπολης9 June 2016 at 08:53

      yeap that's right. it helps you know when the effect is on and off.
      you don't HAVE to use it.(but why not really?)

      Delete
    2. Unknown9 June 2016 at 09:52

      i'm sorry for my poor English.
      i always link indicaters to DC jacks directly.

      Delete