Tube Screaming Ultra Experiment

[Chuck]

In my long history of “hey, what’s that do?” I’ve never managed to build a Tube Screamer that I really liked, but I keep trying.  After looking at and listening to several modded versions I got interested in changing the tone setup and running the pedal at higher voltage.  Since stuff is getting expensive and takes a long time to get I decided to use stuff in my partially complete/lost interest in/junk pile.  When I fired this one up last night I was very pleased with the results despite some boneheaded stumbles.  Lets take a look at what we got first:

Pretty ugly right?  The spray can top looked nothing like what hit the box.  Not my first choice but I said ‘experiment’ didn’t I.

Here’s the insides:

As you can see from some of the scorching this board has been messed with. First attempt (using a Road Rage to bump the voltage to 18v) failed not because of the Road Rage but because I failed to note the little ‘T’ on the In and Out on the board. While the experiment languished in the Chuck’s a Dumba** bin I scrounged the chip from the Road Rage for another project.  While rewiring the power I noted the readily visible ‘T’s and corrected the In and Out wiring – the 18v will have to wait.  For the Tone/Voice mod I replaced C6 with a 330n, R10 with a 330r, Pot 2 with a B5k, and added a switch with a 68n on one side and a 150n on the other in place of C5. After trying out a bunch ICs I landed in an OP275G that was originally used in a buffer. With the lower toggle to the left the sound is much brighter than the typical TS and to the right it’s a touch darker.

Rather than beating up this poor abused board anymore I’m going to order another to push the experiment a little further.

Chuck

[Author]

Posts