Monday, 11 March 2013

Mr Black Boost Tiger

Info about the original:

Young grasshopper: to feel the boost, you must learn the way of the tiger.  To feel the tiger, you must learn the way of the boost.

Roaring out over +20dB of powerful, clean tiger-boost, the Boost Tiger breathes life, vigor and super-tiger-powers into your tone.

WARNING:  This pedal is extremely powerful.  Mr. Black is not responsible for any damage to other pedals, amps, guitars, ears, people or medium to large prey affected by its use.


Geiri's demo of his build







New version, revision B1 from schematic provided by Jack Deville



36 comments:

  1. Woah, has anyone even gotten this yet? That's freakin' quick!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is this close to something that you've seen before Mark? Just wondering because Jack is a brilliant pedal designer. I'll probably verify this tomorrow morning if someone doesn't beat me to it.

      Delete
    2. It's fairly generic I would say, one opamp channel is the boost circuit, the other is just used for the half supply reference voltage. The booster is a non-inverting gain stage with the boost pot simply varying the resistance in the feedback loop, like many other pedals like such as tubescreamers, but without the clipping diodes to keep it cleaner. So fairly simple stuff but I'll be interested to hear how it sounds because as you say, Jack knows his stuff.

      Delete
    3. Thanks for the info! I'm building it early tomorrow morning and you'll get a video clip once it's finished!

      Delete
  2. Verified. Without bothering checking the time difference to be sure, I suspected I could catch you guys in the bed over there and hurriedly threw this one together. I like it better into a clean amp (as I do most boosters), but tried it into a Mayo (pink), Green Russian and the Classic 30's dirty side. About 9-10 o'clock provides a nice, just-gettin'-dirty boost to goose the front end....halfway and up is a nice, raw dirt, able to stand on its own (IMO)

    Vid uploading

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent stuff, thanks for verifying Brent. And yes I am up later than I should be! :o)

      Delete
  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfWiVQcD5uE&feature=youtu.be

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a great vid, especially showing how it interacts with other pedals. Thanks for this!

      Delete
  4. yeah, i was super curious about this. jack doesn't usually produce something that's generic. i'm still curious about this...maybe i'll mock one up tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think it sounds pretty good.simple and elegant, not over the top, like the SHO, and not narrow like Rangemaster clones. Thanks for the layout, Mark.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Works and it does fine. I did some mods on mine: changed the input capacitor to 10nf and put BEFORE this circuit the Jack Orman passive tone stack you can find it here as the "better version"
    http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/BigMuffToneControl/
    so I've got a three knobs pedal : Boost - Body - Tone and I really like it now. BTW did someone try another (better or worse) IC? I'm running the JRC4558P. @Ivlark: thank you so much for this layout, it works very fine as I put it before the Centaur, another great pedal I've built following your layout too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Does the tone control cut out much of the boost?

      Delete
    2. You can save the boost quite loud if you don't cut at maximum, the passive tone stack is very progressive.

      Delete
  7. Mine sounds great, used an old rc4558 I pulled from old equipment.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Just built this. Sounds great. Its clean and neutral! Thanks for a great layout!

    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-q44XNLCrETo/UhqL-I21jmI/AAAAAAAAAhY/S_BAjHpBKq4/s512/Boost.jpg

    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_1zKc45--Sg/UhqL9XgQguI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/7k9BSHZv8Jw/s512/BoostGuts.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  9. Just built this guy and it sounds great! I had a few issues (as I am an amateur builder). I wired the LED according to the Offboard wiring found on this site, and when I powered it up the LED lit up then went out...but the pedal still works.

    The 3pdt switch pops super loud and makes the signal cut out for .2 seconds before it comes on. Theeeeeen it randomly went quiet.

    When it's on it sounds amazing though! I was super surprised with this. One of the best OD sounds I've heard. I ran it through a Jackson Britain and a Tele. mmmm....

    Any suggestions would be appreciated.

    thanks guys.

    joel

    ReplyDelete
  10. Replies
    1. It depends what method of bypass you choose to use, it could be used with true or buffered bypass switching.

      Delete
    2. Thanks!
      so how do I make it true bypass?
      I just wipe the link LED + and do a true bypass with LED indicator and grounded input?

      Delete
    3. Wire it to a switch as shown here.

      Delete
    4. ok.
      I follow the scheme of the true bypass you posted and then the link "LED +" will not have to plug it in, right?
      thank you very much for your time

      Delete
    5. yes. if you look at the vero layout you build, the "led+"wire goes to a 4.7k resistor, which goes to 9v. so it's like the offboard wiring but in place of 2.2k you have a 4.7k which only affect the brightness of the led.mark does this when there is place in the veroboard so we won't have a resistor floating in the box.
      hope it helped...

      Delete
    6. I'm stupid ... now I understand!
      Thanks to all for the help! you are very kind.
      this is the second pedal I build, the first one is a clone of the Riot (very very cool)
      http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.it/2013/01/suhr-riot-fixed.html

      Delete
  11. How can I mod this boost so that the first half of the pot is always on and switch the second half of the pot .In other words a 2 stage boost

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hey Ivlark, Will the Mr Black overdriver return? I noticed it's gone from the site... I still have the first version from your site which doesn't work. Tx

    ReplyDelete
  13. Okay, so I made another one of these and put it in a box with an overdrive. Everything sounded great, then the next day, the boost sounded terrible. Gated and farty. Could not find anything wrong, so I finally swapped out the pot for a new one. Sprung back to life. The strange thing is that 5 min later, the boost died again. Change the pot again to a new one, and the same thing happened...it worked for a few min beautifully, then fried. WTF is going on here? The pots don't get hot or even warm, but they are clearly getting fried.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, I gave up and build another one, and it works just as it should. Who knows what was wrong with the other one. Faulty part somewhere I'm guessing. That one will go directly to the "drawer of fail."

      Delete
  14. I see a double wing thing but I don't know what to lead you supposed be going in there I don't see any leads going

    ReplyDelete
  15. Replies
    1. what do you mean double wing?

      Delete
    2. he means double link i believe.
      Jesse:
      there is nothing going there. you just have to push 2 links in that hole. links are those black wires. they suppose to connect 2 lines on the stripboard. with that double link, you have 3 lines connected.
      hope i helped

      Delete
  16. Finish this one today. Just what i was looking for. used a 25k pot for better suiting my needs. tks

    ReplyDelete
  17. I dont have any 51k rasistor what value of resistor do you guys sugest I could replace with ?

    ReplyDelete
  18. You got something close? 47k? 56k?

    ReplyDelete
  19. finished without a problem, i will add a volumen pot in the output, 3 to pcb output, 1 to gnd , 2 the new output, tnx for the project, i really enjoy it !!!

    ReplyDelete