Guitar / bass dual distortion

A distortion pedal that doesn't work and doesn't sound like any other. It distorts low and high frequencies separately, then blends both distorted signals. It gives a high amount of "punch" to your low end without sacrificing high end details. At extreme mixing positions, it sounds like a normal distortion or a fat fuzz.

Building the pedal

Build a 6-pin "Dupont" connector as following:

1. VEE = chassis ground
2. Vin = +9V or higher
3. LED = connect to ground to power the LED (connect to the foot switch)
4. Output = connect to bypass footswitch
5. In = connect to input jack (or bypass footswitch for true bypass)
6. Bypass = connect to bypass footswitch if you want buffered bypass

Notes:

• Buffered bypass does a very soft clipping to about +-2.5V peak voltage, which is very useful for bass pickups with too much dynamics when slapping.
• Power (Vin) is filtered as much as a small PCB like this allows, but the device highly benefits from a clean power supply because of the very high gain.
• When assembling, the main filtering capacitor (C2) has to be mounted vertically to fit.
• You can substitute the 220uF filtering capacitor with 3 1206 100uF caps.
• If powering with higher voltages, make sure that capacitors allow the voltage.
• Powering with higher voltages doesn't bring higher dynamics as everything is soft clipped by zener diodes.
• 2.0V zener diodes are selected for their very soft knee. For a harsher sound, D3 (high frequency distortion) can be increased to 3.3V.
• The PCB fits nicely vertically in standard "hammond" cases, held by the 3 potentiometers.