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Turning An Amplifier Into A Distortion Box

Sorry for the odd title, I can't think of how to correctly word it. A while back, just as a project to waste some time, I took the amplifier out of a crappy 10watt practice bass amp a few months back, and put the metal frame in a wooden box, just for looks, because I was using it as an easy headphone amp before, but now I really don't use it anymore. I put a bit of work into it, so I thought I could repurpose it as a distortion, since it has a 4-band EQ.

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(I know you can't tell much from the photos, but I thought something of a picture of the circuit might help somehow)

I want to make it true bypass, and put a gain control on it, but keep the volume control, so I can switch it on and off, and have almost no change in volume, just gain. Looking around on the internet, the true bypass seems easy enough, needing only a simple DPDT switch, really. But I don't know how to go about the rest of it, and I'm sure there's a risk of destroying it in the circuit by fooling around with it, but it's goes unused at this point, so I don't mind.

I would like to be able to still use it as a headphone amp later, since I'm looking into buying a good set of 'phones, but if I can't have the distortion capability, and the 'phone amp, it's no biggie.
 

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