A couple distortion 3s…

[greysun]

Welcoming to the ever-expanding number of pedals in my arsenal: the Distortion 3 (squared - cause there's 2). Thank you [mention]Bret608 [/mention] for the suggestion.

I really dig this pedal and the possibilities within it - pretty sure this is my first 6 knob circuit in a 1590B, so that was certainly an adventure, but it's all board mounted and not hard at all. I had a lot of the parts on-hand, and had to order only a few - I had to parallel some caps, too, but it's works. You can't see the pots, which I fake-board mounted using lug pots with twisted leads to get everything in line and otherwise used standard 9mm pots cause I had em. I also socketed the 1n34a diodes so I could play a bit - one of these will keep it stock, the other gets D9Vs. It all worked out!

The VFE board was interesting - the pads were slightly smaller than I'm used to and sort of sunken a bit, so I was always paranoid I didn't get great solder contact. While I was originally thinking I'd just go the route of a 3pdt, I decided to go all-in with the switching board, which is certainly cool and definitely silent in the signal, but it was more effort than a standard 3pdt for me. Wiring it to the main board was pretty easy, though, and I like the trimpot for the LED to dial that in perfect. (I think the LED is too close to the knob if you use a bezel, so for future ones I might move that down a little at the expense of not being right above the pads on the board).

With any pedal I've ever made I try to make them look like toys, so I like a colorful, simple enclosure and Davies knobs - I can always figure out what knobs do what later. I miss Mammoth if for no other reason than they had the best powder-coated enclosure colors just ready to go. For one of these, I sprayed a bare enclosure the seafoam green color as best I could (and with really good paint, but we'll see how long it lasts, hehe), and the other is plain white from stomp box parts. The 1510 knobs I had on-hand, and the white ones are modified Davies 1900s I resized, modded the sides to swoop downward and then 3D printed.

Overall, I'm stoked to add it in. It's a cool pedal!

[Bret608]

Glad you like it! Your builds are definitely fun to look at! What I like on my build is full hard clipping (usually germanium) with the soft clipping knob at about 1 or 2 'o clock (usually the asymmetrical silicon, but the mosfet does sound really good with the silicon hard clipping). The fat and filter are really key to getting it to work with your particular amp and guitar. Did I mention that this screams with a wah in front of it??