Thursday 5 October 2017

EWS Little Brute Drive

From the source:

Following the very well received Brute Drive, we are proud to introduce the newest pedal from EWS, the Little Brute Drive (LBD). From its small body, jumps out an intense distortion similar to its big brother, the Brute Drive.

Its compact design takes us very little real estate. It will fit anywhere you desire on your pedal board. But don't let the small size fool you. This simple one-knob powerhouse produces heavy crunch to fiery distortion sounds. Output level and treble control can be adjusted with 2 trimmers located on the PC board inside the pedal.


This is an overdrive/distortion pedal that is compact in size, user-friendly and surely to become your work-ready weapon! And of course, it's true-bypass.


 I took the liberty to make some modifications from the schematic. Like many of us I like having the ability to make changes on the fly, so I changed the trimpots to external pots.






For those that want the stock version with trimmers




29 comments:

  1. 400k resistor is with both terminals connected to the transistor collector, is this correct? I believe the jumper should go down some more to the base of the same transistor, anyway, thanks for your work!

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  2. I also think the 33nF should go to the collector?

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    1. yea. good catches. when i was working on shrinking the board i didn't realize that those components were misplaced. layout has been updated.

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  3. Isn't the point of the "little" version the convenience of having the trimmers rather than external pots? Many of us prefer to find the "right" settings then leave it be :)

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  4. Hey thanks for the layout, but I see it has 15x16 above it and I count 17x16. I cut and started to drill my last big scrap piece of Vero when I realized I effed it up Hahahha. Thanks for the work y'all do for the community.

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    1. man, sometimes i can't count. fixed, and updated.

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  5. I think its a reverse current protection diode! The other way round and it would be a dead short to ground.

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  6. This is a great layout, well done.

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  7. Sounds great! more a distortion then a drive. Only gain connection is reversed. Gain B1 should go to the 20K, and B2&3 to leg1 from 4558, and gain A1 to the 2.2UF and B2&3 to the 510R.
    I used 2 pots for the gain like the Caline CP16 mark4, but this one sounds way better to me.
    Tone control goes a bit to dark, so I need to change the 1UF?

    Thanks!

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    1. i would socket the 100nF from tone 1 to ground and play with it to alter the tone control. i took a look at the schematic again. there was a mistake with the gain b pot, it should be gain b 2 & 3 are connected not gain b 1 & 2, and they were flipped. but this switch can't be correct gain A1 to the 2.2UF and B2&3 to the 510R.

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    2. yes, you are right, it's A2&3 to the 510R, correct?

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    3. yep. gain A is setup correctly. simply put gain A affects the 1st opamp while gain b affects the 2nd

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  8. Zach I believe the 2nd layout, the stock/trimmer version, needs an extra cut around E7. Otherwise, nice layout and as always thanks for posting it!

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  9. test message , please ignore

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  10. Great…up and running.:)
    As a first posting I would like to say a big thanks to you for all the great projects posted here.

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  11. Still not convinced about the gain A side, (using a B50K dual) and is the Q1 pinout correct? When I have the emitter to the 33nf, I have more control of the gaining. Maybe I'm doing something really stupid here...

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    1. putting this together for my first build, not sure about the 560pF and 150pF caps, does the 560 run between I & L or j & K?

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    2. Think I've found the answer, I found a scematic showing the 560pF between pins 1 & 2 on IC1, so that would be tracks J & K, and K & L for the 150pF

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    3. both caps span 2 rows. so the 560pf spans j to k, and 150pf spans k to l.

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  12. Excuse my ignorance, but why is there a 10uF and a 100uF cap in parallel on the 9V?

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    1. That's something that's seen quite often - To have multiple filter caps in parallel. I personally like to go with >100µ + 100p. With this board i'd probably just use one 220µ in place of the two.
      +m

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  13. All built and mostly working well except for the gain control. I get max gain at full counter clockwise, and nothing at all from 12 o'clock upwards. I'm guessing I've wired the gain pot wrong. I've stuck with the conventions in the offboard wiring guide, and used the terminals nearest the knob as A and the terminals nearest the base as B, is this correct? If so, I've gone wrong somewhere else!

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    1. I have the same problem right now. Did you manage to fix it?
      If so, would you mind telling me what you did?

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  14. hi dude, gain for the first stage is a 100kA (Log) and gain for the second stage is a 100kB (linear). Look at this https://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/jynry401_01/11063769.html

    sorry for my bad english, congratulations from Brazil!

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  15. Look at this https://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/jynry401_01/11086195.html , about curve of the potentiometer Gain

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