As they say in business, where there's uncertainty there is profit. (Largely with regards being vague when quoting but equally it applies to purportedly magical anonymous diodes :) )
An oscilloscope with a sine wave on vertical and horizontal used to be called an octopus circuit. A fast diode on the vertical will show a sharp bend at the zero volt a "softer" diode would show a more rounded line at cut off. With no diode (just a short circuit) you get a diagonal line. That might show the difference in those Germanium diodes, but I couldn't tell by hearing.
At First I thought they all sounded the same apart from 6 and 8 I thought maybe 4 sounded different then on the last riff I decided they all sound different my favourite is 6 it had more tone. I like the sound of 4 also reminded me most of old transistor amps.
Thanks for watching! And thank you for sharing your thoughts and impression! It's really interesting what everyone is hearing and the tones they prefer :)
Nifty ! I did similar experiments LONG ago. My hands down favorite distortion effect box had always been the MXR Distortion / Distortion +(Dunlop I think). I had copied them a few times. It is such a clever & quite simple circuit. Just one op-amp(an OG 741 I think) & only about half the components(at most). At the time, It was before I ever even studied EE, so I really had very little Idea of what I was doing. But aside from cap types & values, I do indeed remember experimenting with the "2 clipping diodes" & the big clear glass Germaniums Vs. silicon made a pretty clear audible difference(in that circuit anyway). Odd you would even test fuzz/overdrive/distortion on just single coils though. Cool vid though, total Deja vu. 👍
Thanks for watching and welcome to the channel! Yes, the Distortion + is a great pedal, both in its simple beauty and tone! And as you mentioned, in a pedal like that, silicon vs germanium diodes would make a significant difference! I used single coils in this video because a humbucker or P90 would start clipping the op amp early on, and I wanted to make sure that the op amp stays clean. 😃
Germanium is so wildly inconsistent trying to manufacture with them must have been hell. For modding you can pick and choose. How asymmetric do you want it? On which part of the wave?
Hi Justin! Thanks for watching! It would be fascinating to interview or hear stories from people involved with those early electronic component manufacturing!
Thanks for great video. Should be cool to measure and show complete VA characteristics, as Vf is really only one point of it, and the whole curve matters.
Thanks for watching! You are absolutely right! (by VA character, I'm guessing you are talking about the I-V curve) But, it would be soo much work to test, measure and plot the I-V curve for all 9 diodes... Also, I don't want to go too deep into electrical engineering, as I am definitely not an EE, and want my videos to be more about guitar tones. 😊
@@arito there are testers, like Peak DCA75, measuring it in one shot. It's on my wishlist still 🤩 But I'll probably never be able to collect diodes you have available. Anyway, thanks a lot again.
I'm going with 10; they sound identical. I really believe it was frequency shaping that made the difference in both those classic pedals, and today's clones of those classic pedals. All of the circuits were virtually identical. What made the difference was how sensitive the tone, gain, and other frequency controls were.
The ED60 and SD46 were my favorites. The tone differences between all the Diodes were small, and I would consider them relatively inconsequential. Guitar pick material and thickness make a difference orders of magnitude bigger. Very well constructed test, comparison, and demo. I'm a first time viewer of your Channel, and will be watching more of your videos. Good job. 👍 Thanks
Thanks for watching, and welcome to the channel! And thank you for sharing your favorites! Yes, absolutely as you mention, there are so many more things that would make a huge difference in tone. The pick is a great one, as it is sometimes overlooked, but influences the guitar tone so much. My uploads are somewhat spaced out, but please check out my other videos if you liked this one! 😃
At ten minutes in, you mention that the clipping diodes HAVE to go to reference ground, as opposed to 0V ground. Why is that? I hear this stated often and (other than as a bias) I don’t understand the logic. Great video!!!
Your signal is an AC voltage swinging back and forth around some reference. If you clip to below your 0v point or "reference" (0v is always relative) you're biasing the signal towards the negative side. Same for the other way. Voltage is all about difference (potential.) Having a signal swing between 498v and 502v carries the same information as -2 to +2.
@@justovision That all makes sense and thanks for the quick answer! I guess the part that still doesn't totally add up for me is this- In a lot of pedal designs using 9V DC power, the hard clipping diodes DO go to 0V ground, but sometimes it is 4.5V reference- what am I missing? Is it because in certain cases, the opamap/transistor/jfet was biased to 4.5V and there is no DC-blocking cap before said clipping diodes? or...would it be safer to say that when there is a reference voltage, other than 0V in the circuit, use the ref voltage?...Thanks for your patience in advance!
@@jonweil4493 Just to add to Justin's reply, in most pedals we are running the signal between 0 to 9Volts. So in order to keep the signal swinging up and down between that "floor" and "ceiling," we "raise" it's center by +4.5v. Which is why "reference voltage" is often referred to as "virtual ground." And yes, as you have guessed, when you see hard clipping diodes go to "true ground" it is because it has passed through a capacitor. That topology would most likely happen when the diodes come towards the end of the circuit and there is no further amplification stage after it. Hope this helps, and thanks for watching!
The switching frequency between diodes was excellent! I was able to comprehend much more. Another excellent video. I can see your videos are going to be stealing time from many other things...
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