This is a library of perfboard and single-sided PCB effect layouts for guitar and bass. I'm not an electrical engineer by any stretch of the imagination, just a DIY'er who likes drawing layouts. It is meant for the hobbyist (so commercial use of any of these layout is not allowed without permission) and as a way to give back to the online DIY community.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Blue Magic

Here's an overdrive I stumbled across while browsing the Free Information Society site. It was designed by Jake Nagy and was quite popular in the DIY world at while back. Here's what he had to say about it:

Blue Magic is a very low to medium grit, tube-like, overdrive pedal that is based on a MOSFET (BS170) pushing a JFET (J201) into distortion. Voltage at the JFET drain should be about 4.7, but tune by ear. [The 22k resistor] smooths out the sound, but at the cost of sounding less “open.” Thus, reduce [it] for a more open sound. Also, experiment with the coupling caps and the source bypass caps.

I've increased the power filter cap and added polarity protection. You can board mount pots using right angle PCB mount pots from the solder-side of the board.



3 comments:

  1. Verified! I had to try it late night but sounds great. The tone pot really darkens the sound, I had to turn it full CW to hear a normal amount of presence. The mid switch is very subtle and works in lower gain settings with the stock values.

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  2. Unable to get 530pF.
    Could be 560pF or 470pF

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