Sunday 25 August 2013

Ibanez Overdrive II / Dirt Box

 


This layout is for the original Overdrive II, not OD-855. The same circuit has been sold as "The Dirt Box" too. More interesting details of the design at Tonemachines blog.


11 comments:

  1. Very nice pedal! I just build it and it's like those old Ibanez pedals, "od" with loads of gain. Just might box this one..

    MH

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    1. Cool. So you verified it already! Cheers.
      +m

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  2. What makes this different from the 855

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    1. It's completely different design. 855 has both, in/out buffers and the topolody is different. The stages here are gain -> clipping -> tone, while the stages on 855 are buffer -> tone -> gain -> clipping -> buffer.
      +m

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    2. Thanks Miro, reason for asking is that what I have read makes the dirt box sound like the precursor to the 855 in 1976. Does anyone know what this sounds like? Thanks again Marc, Miro, and all the contributors for keeping this train rolling!!!

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    3. Dirt Box and original (non 855) Overdrive II are the same circuit. So they should sound 1:1. There are good speculation about the Dirt Box origins on the Tonemachines blog.

      The design here is basically Dist+/OD250 with active tone control after the clipping. Haven't heard the original unit myself, but i suspect it should be very good.
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  3. have built this, but with little mod. change r 4k7 to 2k7 and linked sustain 3 to 1, remove first r 1M with potentio 1M lin for more responsif gain, remove r 200 change with jumper. and the last change 220n with 470n for darker tone. thank's miro for your layout

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  4. Built two boards and the tone was in reverse. Plus i wasn't too happy with the overall output level, so i swapped the bottom 100K for 47K resistor and used 100K lin pot for balance. Much better. Although taking the output higher makes this prone to oscillation when all the knobs are maxed. Nice design. Probably the only one that doesn't suck with Ge diodes :)
    +m

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  6. Does anyone have the original schematic? I see this one has 27 components and I see on the original photo's that there are 25 or sometimes 26 components. What is the difference? Is this maybe a modded version?

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