Killer DIY Overdrive Pedal Using Turret Board

Killer DIY Overdrive Pedal Using Turret Board

6 Degrees FX SallyDrive

I’ve successfully built 10 pedals so far and I’m getting better with each build. All done using vero-board (strip board). Feeling more and more confident I got curious about a turret board design. I was impressed by 6 Defrees FX SallyDrive pedal and how cool the guts look. These things are a work of art for sure. So I got hold of a couple of turret strips and reworked them into a double row layout and cut them to work for this new pedal. Using the turret board makes the build easy and it looks good, but it does have a down side: to fit it into a smaller enclosure you’re limited to a design with few components. I looked and found one that was not only easy to build, but easy to mod as well. (this is nowhere near on the level of 6 Degrees work, but you gotta start somewhere).

The design is based on a LovePedal Woodrow which itself is based on the venerable Electra Distortion circuit which is a great base to work from. It requires minimal components. Here’s a link to the layout which is actually a tagboard layout but it was easy enough to transpose for the turrets. (No solder bridges on this build woo whooo!).
https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2013/01/lovepedal-woodrow.html

Turretboard layout

Turret-build overdrive

The only change I made was to socket the connections for the diodes to take them off-board. This way I could build a diode switching option for silicon / germanium clipping. I’m a big fan of germanium circuits and asymetrical clipping and I recently came into possession of some vintage 1N541 Germanium diodes that I pulled from an antique radio. Once I had them I couldn’t wait to try them out. And holy crap they sound awesome! I used three 1N541s for germanium clipping then I used three 1n914s for the silicon option (also asym). I couldn’t be happier with the results. I’ve been using a Speaker Cranker clone for awhile now and this newest build is going to replace it because I like the single knob of the SC and this new pedal can do what the SC can do and so much more. The obvious clipping options are great and this thing can also deliver a massive volume boost which I really like (the speaker cranker has a single gain knob where this new one has a single volume knob).

If you prefer using strip boards you will find that layout on the page I linked to above. Turret, tag, or vero, I highly recommend this build if you’re still learning how to build pedals. It’s a great sounding pedal and will be a real confidence booster.

Turret build;(note clipping switch: up for germanium, down for silicon

One other minor detail but I want to mention it: I just got an order from Tayda Electronics that included one of their 1590B powder coated enclosures and it looks great! I love powder coating and this box didn’t let me down. I masked the whole thing and then drilled it out so I wouldn’t scratch it or mark it up and it came out sweet. I’m for sure going to get more of these. They come in black and white. Check them out.

Related articles

• Singular Sound Announces BeatBuddy Mini (synthtopia.com)
• combining 9V guitar pedals with a 12V lead acid battery (forum.allaboutcircuits.com)
• Looking for dark pedal steel guitar (ask.metafilter.com)