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Tuesday, 24 June 2014

Green Wizard Guitar Overdrive Distortion Stripboard Layout


I've been working on this for quite some time. I've always wanted to design my own distortion pedal and finally I have.
I used 2 main parts for this - one is a TL081 general purpose J-FET op-amp and the other is a more special LT1037 op-amp - I chose this for the high-end clarity and low end solidness... haha not really (I don't believe that crap) no, I chose this because it is a very fast and low noise op-amp. it also has input current limiting diodes which affect the type of distortion this pedal gives you. it is also quite low power (in the order of about 2.5 mA)

I did a quick video demonstrating how it sounds which I will attach below.

the name comes from my favourite cartoon growing up - "the flight of dragons"  hopefully I will make 3 more of my own stompboxes for the other 3 wizards in that film.

NB - I put germanium diodes in this and it improved it drastically 





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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous10 August 2014 at 03:15

    Hi Paul,

    I just wanted to let you know that you can see pics of my Green Wizard in your original thread on the Tagboard Effects board: http://www.tagboardeffects.blogspot.ca/p/forum.html

    Thanks a lot for a great design!

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    Replies
    1. DrStevenson10 August 2014 at 12:49

      that's great dude. I'm glad you like the design! if you want to make it the "deluxe" take out the TL081 and put in a INA106 - very bloody expensive!

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  2. Anonymous11 August 2014 at 19:43

    Good to know, I'll have to check if I can get some samples for that one too!

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  3. Bohemian H12 January 2015 at 08:00

    Hi, Paul,

    I've had this one on my "to do" list and finally got to it a couple of days ago. I built it with the diodes socketed and initially put red LEDs in to get a sort of "baseline" before trying some germanium diodes. You're dead on. With the LEDs it was a decent overdrive but did not blow me away. I auditioned the germanium diodes I had on hand and after settling on a pair of Russian D310s this is one of my favorites ODs. TONS of character!

    I actually had a lot more to say on this but the character limit on comments cut me off. I left the full review here: http://guitar-fx-layouts.42897.x6.nabble.com/Green-Wizard-Overdrive-distortion-Stripboard-td10941i20.html#a16450

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  4. Unknown8 October 2015 at 10:06

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