DIRTY BOOTS V6

so i finally got my buddy's dirty boots finished.  it's going to be used on guitar and organ, so i added a couple extra controls.  a pre-bass and post-treble tone control combo work great together.  this is the main recipe for filtering distortion pedals, so it's no surprise.  i plan on doing a full overhaul of this design in the future, to see if i can optimize it any further, but until then, this one sounds great.  here's the schematic i ended up with.

and some gut shots.

 unfortunately i ran out of alpha pots in the values i needed, but the ones i ended up using are of decent quality.  here's a couple clips i made of the harder fuzz that this pedal can do.  the first is the DB by itself, the second is boosted. disregard the titles. it was 5:30 am when i got this thing finished last night.

DIRTY BOOTS TRANSISTOR OPTIONS

ok, when jamming with my buddy who is a keyboard player a while back, I brought my DB prototype along. I kept telling the guy his organ sound needed some grit, and he kept telling me his Nord synth had distortion built in, no need for a pedal. (wha??) i finally convince him to plug in the DB, and holy shit- perfect Hammond organ overdrive. smooths out the digital top end and everything. sounds fantastic! so now of course he wants one. I slapped one together with some GT313s I picked up a while back, and I realized jus how noisy these things are. they have a great smooth top end- I think due to their very low frequency response, but man do they hiss. I can see why I wput such large Miller Effect caps in the original. so I tried some others- for Q1, I put in the lowest noise devices I have- an American made 2N1307. it was untested, but these have low leakage, and usually have gains somewhere around 100-120. I found that Q2 is much more critical. GT308s to work fine, but didn't have the right overdrive sound- more of a fuzzy distortion. I found an MP16 with a gain of about 50, and that was very nice sounding, but it was the only one in the batch that i had that had that sound. there was a strange "3" stamped on the top of the can in red. probably some sort of sorting mark. to get the classic dark and full DB sound, I think a 313 in that position is still the best. nice smooth sound. higher gained transistors like the 308 and 1307 provided an excellent fuzz sound, but the lower gain models really work well in the second position for a germanium overdrive. now, I didn't tweak any values at all, just swapping trannies in sockets. I had collector resistors of 100R, so by raising those, and adjusting collector biasing you could probably make others work as well.

so just because you don't have the exact transistors, you can still build a Dirty Boots! just experiment, and find a use for those low gain Ge's!!

DIRTY BOOTS SOUND CLIP

someone asked for a clip of the Dirty Boots, so I dug one up. HERE is a soundclick page by danielzink where you can hear it. if you go to the second song down, it's in the micro pedal demo. you'll hear a phaser first, then the DB. I haven't listened to the clip in a while, so I'm not sure how accurate of a representation it is, but I'm sure it's close. thanks, Dan!

MILITARY DIRTY BOOTS PICS

here's a Dirty Boots I built up in an old tank communication control box. it's got some serious mojo(just for fun;))components, a switch for hi and lo gain, and a single volume knob. I like the idea of repurposing death machines for rock and roll. I should've bought more of these boxes when I had the chance! I've got one more, if anyone is interested.

DIRTY BOOTS TWEAKS

jrod over at FSB is planning on building a DIRTY BOOTS, and asked me what kind of tweaks could be made.  it's really a highly variable circuit, and can be tailored to your specific tone very easily.  here's what i wrote to him-


there is a lot of tweaking that can be done to the DB.  you might want to lower the collector resistor on Q2 as it is a bit voltage starved.  if you want less drive, increase the resistor in between stages, or take out the bypass caps on the emitters.  also, you might want to increase the collector resistor on Q2 as it is kicking out pretty much full gain, and that can make it a bit noisy.  maybe try 1K.  it all depends on what you want.  if you want it brighter, lower the value of the compensation cap from C to B on Q1 or put a 47K resistor in series with the input.  adjust the in and out caps for low end.  it's a really easy circuit to tweak, so i would just put it on the breadboard, and figure out what you like for your amp.

ELEKTRATONE'S DIRTY BOOTS

FSB forumite elektratone built up this cool rust finished version of the dirty boots a while ago.  i thought it was about time he got some fame on the blog.  it definitely looks like this thing's been through the apocalypse and back!

2, NO, 3! NEW DIRTY BOOTS VEROS!

dudes! made up a few new veros for the db. the first one is a small layout for box caps and radial electros for you guys that like those little baby boxes. the second one is for axial caps vintage style and specifies the specific type of caps that i have been using for my builds. of course, sprinkle your mojo to taste. i'm callin this on v5.2 because of the added reverse polarity protection diode as well as a limiting resistor for the pre control. haven't decided at the exact value for that one, most likely around 50-100K, or just put lug one straight to ground like before. the third one is just stupid small. i call it rev2. good luck you masochists! take er easy!

DIRTY BOOTS GERMANIUM OVERDRIVE

this little circuit is really what got me started in the whole DIY effects design process. i needed something that i could use to dirty up a loud, clean amp just enough to where it would have a touch of grit. it's a great little overdrive that can be used as a germanium booster as well as a fuzz if your pickups are hot enough.

it all started when i decided to breadboard the Trotsky Drive by Beavis Audio, which is basically a GE version of the Electra Distortion with a bias adjustment pot. using a russian GT313A transistor, i was fooling around with it, messing with values and such, when i remembered that the Bazz Fuss uses a diode in the C to B position instead of a resistor like the Trotsky/Electra. so i tried it out, and i got an excellently biased gain stage with just a bit of compression. then i realized that the circuit i was working on was PNP, where the BF is NPN. so the diode configuration is actually reversed. eventually i came to learn, with the help of many generous folks in the DIY community, that the GE diode that i was using was leaky, all of them are leaky, and it is this leakage that is actually acting as a large resistor and biasing the transistor. cool,huh? along with that, i'm sure that the diode is adding it's own little stamp on the situation with a bit of compression an break up.

after messing about with a ton of diodes this way and that, with filtering, in series, etc., i decided that i'm just not that big of a fan of diode clippers. i find them unnatural sounding, and their clipping just sound too "obvious" to me for some reason. so i ditched the clippers, added a small cap from C to B to roll off a bit of highs, and just put a whole nother stage in series with the first.

Lo! the Dirty Boots was born.

eventually i ended up trying a bias pot on the second stage and some different switching options for changing gain and tone, etc., but ended up with a normal emmitter controlled gain stage, a pregain control, and a volume pot. the latest mod was the series resistance between stages and ditching the cap from C to B on the second stage to open it up a bit.

it's really a great sounding little circuit using ge trannies which can be found on the bay for dirt cheap. the basic gain stage can be used for other things as well- it became the basis for The Toecutter.


give it a try sometime, or i'll send my band of mutated hobbit rat people to dig you out of your bomb shelter and eat you for second breakfast.

the thread at FSB about the Dirty Boots can be found HERE.

many thanks go out to Martin Chittum, Marcelo "Mac" Tripodi, and others that helped me understand along the way!



here is a layout using common sized parts. i have another for use with the extra mojo axial caps and such that i will post later.





daniel zink made this great version of the Dirty Boots in a Hammond 1590A box. a little killer!







here's another one from mr. zink- very stylish!