I finally just finished up this one, a Realtube bluetube 903 designed by BK Butler. i made my own vero for it and made a separate board for the 12VAC filtering (otherwise this circuit will hum!). the originals are buffered but I chose to make mine true bypass.
I haven't labeled the enclosure yet but here's a pic of the internals with an RCA 7025 in it:
Damn, do you live on a planet with 48 hours per day?? Your pedal production is astonishing.
got the 903 tubedriver boxed up and labeled. I made a couple of tone stack cap changes to it to make it even a bit more suitable for bass. I went with a 'utilitarian look' kind of like the original ones.
I built quite a few that haven't been put in an enclosure yet so today I finally got this one completely finished:
it's basically a big muff but with more low end, an added treble control, a switch to pad the input (for cleaner tones) and selectable silicon (symmetrical 1N4001's) or Germanium ( asymmetrical 1N34A) diodes.
Does the Real Tube sound like the Blue Tube with a lower gain setting?
I had some vague memory that the blue tube was designed for bass and am curious if the real tube passes low fequency like the other
I thought it sounds very good although after listening to your sound clips about 100 times I'm really starting to like The Timmy as #1 and the Barbershop as #2; there is a certain amount of cool factor having a tube in a pedal though!
Does the Real Tube sound like the Blue Tube with a lower gain setting?
I had some vague memory that the blue tube was designed for bass and am curious if the real tube passes low fequency like the other.
both the real tube and bluetube have the same tone stack and coupling caps so they both have the same frequency response. the bluetube just has less gain (dirt).
I just finished building the circuit board for this one. it's a pretty crazy build for a veroboard with 53 resistors, 38 capacitors, 6 transistors (two of them are germanium 2N1306's) and four dual opamps (OPA2604's) . I mean, I've built complete amplifiers that have less components and gain stages that this.
it may be a little while before I wire it all up since I have other commitments, but I can't wait to try it now.
I almost can't believe that I could fit this one in a 1590 enclosure. I was a tight fit but it works perfectly. I also modded it for more low end, as well as more top end. another mod was to add a trimpot so I could adjust the midrange frequencies internally.
IMO, it's a really nice sounding high gain distortion for bass now.
now that I got this pedal to sound the way that I want it, I made a quick (& sloppy ) 2 minute clip of it. a lot of the clip is with the higher gain settings (to me, it gets almost hypnotic)...... and yeah, I really should've tuned my bass before I made it.
