The Best Bluesbreaker Overdrive Ever? *shrug*

In the previous entry I talked mostly about a Bluesbreaker circuit I had built which was inspired by a post I found on Reddit. Thanks to that post I used 2N5457 JFETs as clipping diodes, and it sounds really good. I have since done a few further mods, the first of which was swapping the 220k resistor for a 330k, which should add more gain. I'm not sure I like it. The gain increase is negligible to my ears, but there also seems to be a loss of touch sensitively. At first I thought it was just a placebo effect where my brain knew something had changed, so I became overly sensitive about the outcome. After taking a break from the circuit, I later cranked it up and tried it again. At least on mine there certainly is less dynamic range, but it's not completely gone. Whether this mod will stay in the final form is up for debate. I do have 300k resistors, which may give a slight increase in gain and bring back some touch sensitivity. We'll see.

Another mod I did was adding a presence control, which is inspired by the King of Tone's internal trimpot for presence, sometimes also called the treble adjustment. The Bluesbreaker already has a tone control, but adding a little more treble on top of that gives it more tonal options. It's simply taking a B50k potentiometer and placing it between the 6.8k resistor and 10nf capacitor that connect at volume lug 3. This is a very simple mod, and helps it sound and feel a little more like a King of Tone/Prince of Tone. I don't like how it works counter-intuitively, but at least it works. This mod absolutely will be making it to the final form.

The layout I used came from the tagboard effects website, which used the GGG schematic for their layout's base. This is (at least) the second time I've used this layout, as my very first Bluesbreaker circuit was born from the very same. The volume seems sufficient, so I assume any volume mod is already done in the GGG schematic. I did use a B100k for the volume, instead of Log, and the sweep works just fine. I've built quite a few Bluesbreaker clones and they've all been pretty good, but there just seems to be something special, to my ears, about this build. For the most part it sustains the Bluesbreaker tone while offering added versatility.