PROTO TYPE V2 // Black Steel Inverted
The bass overdrive for players that didn't like overdrive before
STORY
Designed to work with most basses, from clean to medium-heavy distortion.
the circuit is based on a CMOS inverter chip, like the ones found in the Way Huge Red LLama (R). I've been building pedals based on this chip and love the touch sensitivity and the slightly fuzzy character of the drive.
The signal is split at the input, one side is distorted and the other one is a fully-transparent clean path. Both signals are then mixed toward the end of the circuit, right before the TREBLE control. I've decided to not include a BLEND pot, as I often find there is only a small sweet spot where I like the sound, so I chose a blend percentage where you mostly feel the added clean signal, adding weight to the driven tone while still mostly hearing the overdrive circuit.
This is Version 2 of the circuit, with several refinements
CONTROLS
LOW CUT
filters the low frequencies before the drive circuit. the clean signal is not affected. this focuses the low-end when the gain is turned up
CONTOUR
scoops the low-mids around 500Hz before the drive circuit, like the LOW CUT filter, the clean signal remains unaffected. cutting those frequencies helps rounding out the tone for some basses. V2: deeper mid cut when maxed out
NOSE
narrow midrange boost centered at 1Khz. this is also going only to the DRIVE circuit. this shapes the tone from flat to very colored.
FEATURES
V2:Internal voltage booster for more headroom to handle high output instruments.
V2: Added polarity protection for the Power supply
Relay-based true bypass with MUTE circuit to mimize switching noise. FLEX Bypass option, to allow momentary operation when footswitch is pressed for a longer period of time.
Custom made enclosure with long lasting UV printed labels.
Made in Belgium.