This is the Aristocrat--analogman's KING OF TONE?? Really?

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

Holy Sh*t!
Sold for about $ 500...... 

Thats a crime!

[Gary_W]

Sorry to dredge up such an old thread but I wanted to share my experience that is relevant to the rest of the thread.  Hope that's OK.

I built the Aristocrat about 6 months ago and I've been trying hard to love it   It's not bad at all, but compared with the other projects I've built from here it didn't really see much use!

After having a trawl through the forums here it reminded me of the build doc's note saying 'for more bass, change the input cap'.

I've just popped in a pair of 47n instead of the stock 10n.  I've also turned the presence contols up to 2/3.  For my rig, this is now a much better pedal!  Sounds like my guitar but more of it.

It's still early days as yet and I need to try it at band practice later this week to see how it copes.  But thanks for the tip on the input cap as it's sounding really promising.  If anyone else is less than impressed with this build this is a dead simple mod that makes a night vs day difference to the sound. 

[gordo]

I was less than impressed as well and it sat in a pile of junk for a while.  Not sure why but when I tried playing in a live setting thru either a Lab Series (solid state) amp, or a Vox Night Train I finally "got" it.  It's my fave overdrive and has been for a while now.  It has whatever mods Brian suggested and I think I monkeyed with a few different op amps (don't recall what I ended up with) but the differences were not very dramatic.  I use the channels independantly but can get a nice crunch sound that cleans up very well, and a great high gain sound.  I've never used them together.  I think the presence pots are turned up a bit and I usually have both tone knobs somewhere in the first quarter rotation otherwise it gets a little too sharp.

[brejna]

Hi everyone.. I am getting low volume with my aristocrat build. I ve used 1N4001 and 1N914, 47n  input caps,and high gain mod 250K pots. Unity gain on distortion is about 9/10. Is it possible to raise volume a bit?

[brejna]

Solved 
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=5217.0

[ichilton]

Specifically, larger input cap, maybe tweaking the tone or presence functions, a higher gain pot, and using different diodes and op-amp on the two channels. It opens up more that way.

Any information on how to tweak the tone or presence functions?

What diodes and op-amps do people like?

I'm also getting switch popping on mine - even after boxing.

Ian

[brejna]

Hi, I've seen people using 1N4148 diodes... I did try few IC's (4580d, lf353 and 4558), and end up with 4580, but lf353 is very close to 4580d.
tweaking is about what you prefer, presence in mine build is around 9-10 o'clock on the trimmer.

[pedrohead]

Solved 
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=5217.0

@brejna what did you do to bump the volume up from that linked post? Having the same issue. Thanks!