# DOD250/Dist+ (Gray Box-ish): Update



## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

*Update: Kindly Remember that the negative and underwhelming comments made in this first post are entirely of my own making and idiocy. I'm leaving it here as a record of my faux pas and would like to add that as you read on this lengthy thread that I've done a complete 180 on this pedal and have really started to fall in love with it all over again, like I did when I was 16 and bought my first one.*

It's not often I build a pedal that I'm just completely underwhelmed with. Only a handful since  I started this pedal building journey.
I might build something (often actually) that may not be a sound I will ever use but I can usually appreciate what a pedal is designed to do.

This pedal was not any of that, I'm just "meh" about it because it sounds "meh".

Might be my expectations simmered a little too much and I'd forgotten what a Dist+ actually sounded like and how many bazillions of much better overdrives have come along since then.

I really built this for the sake of nostalgia. The orange MXR Distortion+ was my first and only dirt pedal during my most active years of playing in a band in my High school years. I mowed a lot of lawns to buy it and I used the snot out of it.

When I started building pedals and saw that PPCB had this board I snagged it. This was many many months ago.
When I started looking into the build I discovered there's about a bazillion variants of this pedal. And I went into analysis paralysis so the project kept getting pushed back.

Then I guess around that time was when JHS came out with their DOD250 with all the hoopla and the whole thing kinda left a sour taste in my mouth for some reason. So I lost interest. Well, recently @steviejr92 built his Dist+ and talking with him about got me interested again.

Again with the analysis paralysis, which version to build? I think I may have gotten a bit too clever for myself and tried in incorporate too many things. Essentially, this is a DOD250 built to Gray Box spec's (not sure which year, I got the mod values from a post @Robert made in some thread and saved them off). But it's housed in a classic MXR Orange Dist+ enclosure, this is one of those Small Bear $3.75 crappy enclosures but for some reason the orange ones are pretty nice. And I think it nails the old MXR orange.

Anyway, aside from building to Gray Box spec's I also wanted to still make it a Hybrid Dist+ but having a toggle-able Ge clippers.

For the DOD setting I started out with the prescribed 4148's, didn't like how they sounded, tried some 914's, didn't like those either, tried BAT41's and finally landed on BAT46's. Still don't like it much but I'm really not sure which way to go next. The Bat46's compress and clip the fastest of any of the diodes I have, yet it still doesn't sound quite right, the saturation just isn't very smooth.

On the GE side, I started with the ITT Red Band Ge's one of my new faves. It was "meh". Way too much volume loss too, I mean I have to dime both the volume and gain to get it usable. Or put a boost after it.

I went through a bunch of other Ge's including my fancy schmancy NOS Mullards and Phillips....slightly better than "meh", but not gonna waste a set of those premium Ge diodes for "meh". Finally ended up the night with a pair of 1N192's that measured right at 400 Vf on my Tester. They sound the best, definitely what I remember with the creamy saturated Dist+ thing going on. But just not enough volume without running a clean boost after it.

In retrospect I probably should have just built a Distortion+ and forget about all the variants. Which I may yet do. I don't relish the notion of pulling resistors and caps out of this one to revert it back to stock values but on the other hand, it's not got a lot of components. I may wind up doing that.

I used a UA741, did not try an LM741 but I don't anticipate much difference, I might, just for giggles throw an LF351N in there tomorrow and see how it sounds.

I used an A100k pot for the volume  instead of an A10, as one of the mods.
I used a C500k Pot for the gain as per the mods. But I started with a B1M. Not a lot of difference either, still need to dime the gain on both settings.

Here are the values I used for the Gray Box, I can't remember who's build report I copied this from but I pasted it into my build docs version.
Whoever it was THANK YOU! These came from @Robert originally.

****************************
Add 25pF cap across R2 (Didn't have a 25pf so I used a 22pf)

R3 47K
R5 470K
R6 20K
R7 20K

C1 2n2
C4 22u (positive lead in left pad)
C5 2n2
C6 10u

D1 1N4148
D2 1N4148

Gain C500K
Volume A10K *I used an A100k here*
**********************************
I used a GuitarPCB mod board for a DPDT toggle. Cool little boards, this is my last one, I need to order a few more from Barry, but there's some other stuff I want that seems to be permanently out of stock. (In particular, the Silent Tuner Send Buffer board).

This board is so tiny and everything fit in there, but not so tiny that did have to resort to using a set of Lumberg jacks to avoid grounding out.

Having said all the above, I love the way the pedal looks, definitely brings back some memories and for the sake of nostalgia, I'm happy.
Although it's probably going to wind up on the shelf. There are so many much better pedals in the same vein that are much more nuanced and sophisticated sounding, didn't help that in my pedal chain at the moment are the Tellurian and Chauffer, they both smoke this pedal in terms how good they sound, yet they share some distant common ancestry with the Dist+.

I may try this build again, but go the other direction, meaning build it to stock Distortion+ specs then add an Si clipping option.

Anyway, it was a fun build and since I had a pretty busy day of meetings yesterday and getting some deliverables out ahead of today's storm, (Hurricane Nicole)  it was nice to chill for a couple hours in the afternoon at my bench with a quick build.


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## steviejr92 (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> It's not often I build a pedal that I'm just completely underwhelmed with. Only a handful since  I started this pedal building journey.
> I might build something (often actually) that may not be a sound I will ever use but I can usually appreciate what a pedal is designed to do.
> 
> This pedal was not any of that, I'm just "meh" about it because it sounds "meh".
> ...


Sorry for the unimpressive outcome for you! Dont do any rework i have another board ill send to you this time build the distortion+ i think itll cure the aches you have with this version. Or maybe not you seem pretty uninterested with the way it sounds   All in all it still looks awesome and you still did a great job dude!


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## Dan M (Nov 10, 2022)

You lost me at:



MichaelW said:


> It's not often I build a pedal



Just kidding.  Your builds are so tidy, mine typically look like a fast food restaurant dumpster fire.

For the “meh” reasons, I’ve started breadboarding most dirt pedals before I invest in a pcb and enclosure.  

I breadboarded (I guess that’s a verb) the System Overdrive and FreakZEQ, and immediately ordered the pcbs.  But some others, I thought “this sounds like something I won’t use.”

On the 250 style pedals, I built the BAT Quantum Mystic on a gpcbmania board and it is very good.  I don’t have a vanilla 250 or dist+ to compare it, so it might be “meh” for your taste too.  I expect it’s quite different since the active eq can add a f-ton of gain and it’s got a clipping switch for Ge/LED/Off.  I seem to like silicon, led, and opamp clipping more than Ge.


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## Coda (Nov 10, 2022)

I have breadboarded a Distortion +/250 several times, and have never gone beyond that. I end up adding so many mods to make is sound how I want it that it kind of defeats the purpose. I would love to build three in a big box: Distortion +, 250, and the Ross (Black). I'm sure I'd be underwhelmed, though...


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

Coda said:


> I have breadboarded a Distortion +/250 several times, and have never gone beyond that. I end up adding so many mods to make is sound how I want it that it kind of defeats the purpose. I would love to build three in a big box: Distortion +, 250, and the Ross (Black). I'm sure I'd be underwhelmed, though...


Yah, it's a bit of a primitive sound I guess, but then, when I was 16 yrs old, it was so long ago most things were "primitive".....


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## Coda (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> Yah, it's a bit of a primitive sound I guess, but then, when I was 16 yrs old, it was so long ago most things were "primitive".....


It helps to think of it as a boost pedal, not a distortion. It's designed to push an amp, which is already running full bore, into distortion. Same thing with the DS-1. Most people (myself included) use them on a clean platform. It's interesting: these early distortion pedals were designed for that "edge of break up" tone, but most people use them for the entire distortion sound, where as the Fuzz Face was a primitive fuzz, designed with clean amps in mind, and a large portion of the internet is convinced that FF and dirty amps are the only option...

Granted, what do I know? I run my tremolo before my reverb...


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## Route14 (Nov 10, 2022)

I built those specs a while ago and ended up reverting it to stock. Maybe I did something wrong but it sounded really anemic to me. The stock version is what it is. It has it's place in pedal history, just not on my pedal board.


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## steviejr92 (Nov 10, 2022)

Coda said:


> Granted, what do I know? I run my tremolo before my reverb...


What’s wrong with that?


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## Route14 (Nov 10, 2022)

Coda said:


> It helps to think of it as a boost pedal, not a distortion. It's designed to push an amp, which is already running full bore, into distortion. Same thing with the DS-1. Most people (myself included) use them on a clean platform. It's interesting: these early distortion pedals were designed for that "edge of break up" tone, but most people use them for the entire distortion sound, where as the Fuzz Face was a primitive fuzz, designed with clean amps in mind, and a large portion of the internet is convinced that FF and dirty amps are the only option...
> 
> Granted, what do I know? I run my tremolo before my reverb...


I agree. Slammed in front of a pushed amp it does a thing. Definitely not great on "pedal platform" amp.


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

*Update:*

I should probably just keep my mouth shut instead of proving how boneheaded I can be. Of all the bonehead moves I've pulled this week, this one might be the most boneheaded. 

Sigh.....found out why I don't like how this pedal sounds. Turns out the amp model I was using had the amp _*turned off *_so basically I've been testing the pedal Direct in. No WONDER it sounded like crap!

I've just been running it again through my Dirty Shirley and Buxom Betty amps and it sounds really good, exactly what I remember my old one sounding like......heh. Also, running the Clandestine before it helps warm and thicken it up.

Sorry for all my "meh" comments........another unforced error.......


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## Feral Feline (Nov 10, 2022)

Great build, cool mods and of course I love the colour!

Build report was a good read, even if (or perhaps because of) you being unimpressed by the circuit.


Perhaps the Dist+ is so ingrained in your auditory-DNA from your youth that the DOD 250 just won't ever sound right.

At least the Schottky diodes will have a closer volume to the Ge, though as noted behave differently. Did you have an on-off-on for no-clipping option?


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## steviejr92 (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> *Update:*
> 
> I should probably just keep my mouth shut instead of proving how boneheaded I can be. Of all the bonehead moves I've pulled this week, this one might be the most boneheaded.
> 
> ...


I think im just glad you like it after all!


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

Feral Feline said:


> Great build, cool mods and of course I love the colour!
> 
> Build report was a good read, even if (or perhaps because of) you being unimpressed by the circuit.
> 
> ...


Ya, I may go pop the 4148's back in and see how they sound now....


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## Feral Feline (Nov 10, 2022)

Coda said:


> I have breadboarded a Distortion +/250 several times, and have never gone beyond that. I end up adding so many mods to make is sound how I want it that it kind of defeats the purpose. I would love to build three in a big box: Distortion +, 250, and the Ross (Black). I'm sure I'd be underwhelmed, though...


What if you built all three, cascaded, with one stomper to rule them all?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, I now see I missed the MichaelW's post about the amp modeller being off.



steviejr92 said:


> What’s wrong with that?


I know you know the answer to that... Just gonna state it outright for any new-to-FX builders that may happen upon the thread: Tremolo before Reverb?

Nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with that.


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## jimilee (Nov 10, 2022)

The EQD gray channel is a great iteration of that circuit.


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

OK, 4148'S back in place of the Bat46's it sounds "right" on the Si side now. The BAT's are a little too compressed, especially the 46's. 
Man, I feel so stupid. This sounds pretty dang good now for a Dist+ hahah.....


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## spi (Nov 10, 2022)

I wonder if using a 1uF in C5 might also liven the pedal up a bit for you.  There's various specs for grey spec floating around, but I usually see 1uF there.


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

spi said:


> I wonder if using a 1uF in C5 might also liven the pedal up a bit for you.  There's various specs for grey spec floating around, but I usually see 1uF there.


Yah, I found like 3 of them. 78, 79, and the one Robert posted. I just picked one.


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

Wow this is interesting, I just discovered on ALL my UAD Apollo presets the amps have been turned off by default. Must have been in the last software update. I've had to go back in, open all my presets, turn the amp on and re-save. Good thing I don't have too many presets.


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## szukalski (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> Wow this is interesting, I just discovered on ALL my UAD Apollo presets the amps have been turned off by default. Must have been in the last software update. I've had to go back in, open all my presets, turn the amp on and re-save. Good thing I don't have too many presets.


Is this why your Jump drive sounded like ass? 😭

I view the DOD250 in light of it's place in history. There's a roughness to the edges, but it's still enjoyable. Just don't do a side-by-side comparison


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

szukalski said:


> Is this why your Jump drive sounded like ass? 😭
> 
> I view the DOD250 in light of it's place in history. There's a roughness to the edges, but it's still enjoyable. Just don't do a side-by-side comparison


Hahahaha....no, this just happened when I installed an update either yesterday or the day before. And looks like there's yet another update....sigh.....wonder what it will break this time......


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## Locrian99 (Nov 10, 2022)

Coda said:


> I have breadboarded a Distortion +/250 several times, and have never gone beyond that. I end up adding so many mods to make is sound how I want it that it kind of defeats the purpose. I would love to build three in a big box: Distortion +, 250, and the Ross (Black). I'm sure I'd be underwhelmed, though...






I was just playing around when one of the black Ross the other day I really liked it.   Thinking I might toss one in strip board.    I kind of like the raw no frills design, when I want to crank the distortion knob to 11 and just make some noise.


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## Route14 (Nov 10, 2022)

@MichaelW Do you use pre wired LEDs? If so do they come with a CLR?


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

Route14 said:


> @MichaelW Do you use pre wired LEDs? If so do they come with a CLR?


No, I just use some 24awg black/red stuff I got off Amazon just for LED's and solder them on myself with some heatshrink. I wanted something thin, flexible to snake through the pots and also 2pc ribbon so I only have to deal with "one" wire.

It connects to the LED pads on the board and uses the CLR on the board, which is almost always 4k7 for me. I've tried some other values but 4k7 seems to work the best EXCEPT when I use water clear LED's, those suckers are are like High Beams.....and blind me hahaha.....


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## Route14 (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> No, I just use some 24awg black/red stuff I got off Amazon just for LED's and solder them on myself with some heatshrink. I wanted something thin, flexible to snake through the pots and also 2pc ribbon so I only have to deal with "one" wire.
> 
> It connects to the LED pads on the board and uses the CLR on the board, which is almost always 4k7 for me. I've tried some other values but 4k7 seems to work the best EXCEPT when I use water clear LED's, those suckers are are like High Beams.....and blind me hahaha.....


Ah, you are a better person than me. Soldering wire on LEDs is one of my least favorite things.  I've see the pre wired ones but they always have a resistor already. I worry those won't be flexible enough to sneak into some places I might want to put an LED. It makes your builds look tidy and professional.


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

Route14 said:


> Ah, you are a better person than me. Soldering wire on LEDs is one of my least favorite things.  I've see the pre wired ones but they always have a resistor already. I worry those won't be flexible enough to sneak into some places I might want to put an LED. It makes your builds look tidy and professional.


Thank you for the kind words, I'm so professional that I leave out components on builds and forget to turn my amp on then bitch about how bad the pedal sounds...........


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## Dan M (Nov 10, 2022)




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## Route14 (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> Thank you for the kind words, I'm so professional that I leave out components on builds and forget to turn my amp on then bitch about how bad the pedal sounds...........


Hey... I only said they "look" professional. I made no assessments on your ability to use an amp modeler...


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## steviejr92 (Nov 10, 2022)

Dan M said:


> View attachment 35727


I can hear the voice still 🤙


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## Locrian99 (Nov 10, 2022)

Route14 said:


> Ah, you are a better person than me. Soldering wire on LEDs is one of my least favorite things.  I've see the pre wired ones but they always have a resistor already. I worry those won't be flexible enough to sneak into some places I might want to put an LED. It makes your builds look tidy and professional.


Love switches has prewired leds that do not include the resistor.   Little on the pricey side but they look good.


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## cdwillis (Nov 10, 2022)

I don't know if you've seen this. I came across this chart looking up different versions of the 250. Seems like they sorta used what they could get like EHX in the 70s and 80s.


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## cdwillis (Nov 10, 2022)

I really want that EQD Gray Channel until I realized that you couldn't stack both sides together. You had a bypass footswitch then a channel footswitch to switch between channel A and B.


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## owlexifry (Nov 10, 2022)

if you haven’t tried a pair of green or red LEDs for the clippers…. you’re missing out


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## MichaelW (Nov 10, 2022)

owlexifry said:


> if you haven’t tried a pair of green or red LEDs for the clippers…. you’re missing out


Hmmmmm, that's an awesome freaking idea. I'm loving how the Ge side sounds, just like my old Dist+ (except for the volume loss).
But maybe tomorrow I'll try some LED's on the Si side. What size LEDs have you used? 3mm or 5mm? Any guidance of Vf I should be looking for?


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## Coda (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> Hmmmmm, that's an awesome freaking idea. I'm loving how the Ge side sounds, just like my old Dist+ (except for the volume loss).
> But maybe tomorrow I'll try some LED's on the Si side. What size LEDs have you used? 3mm or 5mm? Any guidance of Vf I should be looking for?



Size doesn’t matter…for clipping LED’s, at least. Green or red, thats about it. I tried blue a few times, and I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between blue red or green. Honestly, between LED’s and no diodes, I can’t hear the difference…


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## owlexifry (Nov 10, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> Hmmmmm, that's an awesome freaking idea. I'm loving how the Ge side sounds, just like my old Dist+ (except for the volume loss).
> But maybe tomorrow I'll try some LED's on the Si side. What size LEDs have you used? 3mm or 5mm? Any guidance of Vf I should be looking for?


ive only ever tried 3mm.
green is noticeably brighter than red, despite the mild differences in Vf.

don’t stress too hard about Vf numbers - if it sounds good, it is good

generally speaking, LEDs, with a larger Vf than Si diodes, will clip at a higher threshold, giving you a hotter output, and the gain pot would need to be turned up higher to achieve an equivalent amount of clipping (vs. Si diodes with lower Vf).


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## Feral Feline (Nov 11, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> Hmmmmm, that's an awesome freaking idea. I'm loving how the Ge side sounds, just like my old Dist+ (except for the volume loss).
> But maybe tomorrow I'll try some LED's on the Si side. What size LEDs have you used? 3mm or 5mm? Any guidance of Vf I should be looking for?


 
With an on-off-on you could have Ge/LED/4148 
(I don't know if I missed it or if that question was left — what switch do you have in there?)


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## MichaelW (Nov 11, 2022)

Feral Feline said:


> With an on-off-on you could have Ge/LED/4148
> (I don't know if I missed it or if that question was left — what switch do you have in there?)


It's an On-On. Not sure that board I used will support 3 different flavors of clippers. I'd have to hack something for that.


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## Feral Feline (Nov 11, 2022)

MichaelW said:


> It's an On-On. Not sure that board I used will support 3 different flavors of clippers. I'd have to hack something for that.



You just solder the LEDs anti-parallel across the middle lugs, their higher voltage gets ignored (for the most part) when the lower-voltage Ge or Sili diodes are switched on. 

Or leave off the LEDs and have Ge/no-diode/sili for some op-amp-only clipping in the middle position (if the gain is pushed and rails start to get hit with it). 

For some builds, on-on is surely the way to go, though.


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## MichaelW (Nov 11, 2022)

Feral Feline said:


> You just solder the LEDs anti-parallel across the middle lugs, their higher voltage gets ignored (for the most part) when the lower-voltage Ge or Sili diodes are switched on.
> 
> Or leave off the LEDs and have Ge/no-diode/sili for some op-amp-only clipping in the middle position (if the gain is pushed and rails start to get hit with it).
> 
> For some builds, on-on is surely the way to go, though.


Thanks for reminding me! I knew this at one point hahahah. (This tidbit probably came from you to begin with..) I may try adding the led's via some jumper leads to the ground lugs today and see how it does.


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## MichaelW (Nov 14, 2022)

*Update:*

Yes, another update, well, as I've been telling @steviejr92 offline, I've done a complete 180 on this pedal and have fallen in love it it all over again. Somehow it makes me feel like a kid again, which I'm sure has less to do with "toanz" and more to do with nostalgia. Brings me back to the days when I didn't know I couldn't play any Jeff Beck and went for it anyways (we covered a couple of tunes from Blow By Blow and Wired in my band)

Still feeling the sting of shame of my own stupidity of my initial reaction to this pedal, I decided I liked it enough to experiment a bit more with the diodes.....so basically I went diode diving today pretty deep down the rabbit hole.

I think I probably tried 10 different kinds of Ge diodes and 10 different type of Si diodes. 
One very interesting discovery I made is that Bat46 diodes sound an awful lot like Ge Diodes. The Vf on the ST Micro 46's I have in my stash are all in the mid 300's. When I used that combination of Bat46 on the Si side of the clipping toggle it was (almost) indistinguihsable from the Ge side. Nice little nugget of info to tuck away for me to forget hahaha.

On the Ge side, I have to admit I am still quite enamored with the Mullards/Phillips NOS diodes that I recently got from SmallBear. So much so that I ordered some more while they're still quite cheap. I see these (OA9 and OA10) going for a LOT more where they can be found (eBay). Anyway, I started out with the 1N192's I had in there which sounded pretty good already. They measured in low 400's on my CCT. I decided to go the both directions on the Vf scale, I tried a set of 1N34A's that measured in the 900's . I have yet to find a good use for these high Vf Ge's but they actually sounded pretty good, but as expected a lot less saturation and later breakup.

Then I went the other direction with a pair of Amperex OF129's that measure in the low 200's on my CCT. They behaved as expected as well. After trying a bunch in between I finally landed on the Phillips OA9's. This is the 3rd pedal I've put them in recently. I just absolutely love how they sound, a unique sound to them. I think this pair clocked in right around ~320. Which is a bit on the high side for these diodes from what I've tested so far.

On the Si side, the venerable 4148's really held their own against a bunch of challengers. I went through all the BAT series, as well as some oddballs like the 1SS133's which sounded pretty unique and cool.
But after a bunch of different diodes all across the Vf spectrum I landed at using a pair of ginoooowine 1S1588's that I got from Retroampolis. I recently gave a couple to Chuck D. Bones and he gave them the thumbs down, they're out of spec, or "almost" out of spec. This is the first time I've used these (I've used the fake ones I had all this time in a lot of pedals hahahaha). I think they tested around ~630 on my tester and they're the ones that stayed.

After all that diode tasting I committed and soldered them in. 

So in the end I have a totally bastardized DOD+ (Or Distortion250, or 250+, or whatever....)
All other components are built to Gray Box spec, the diodes are a somewhat flight of fancy to what sounded good to me.

But I am digging it. I pretty much have the vol and gain dimed in the Ge setting. This pedal could definitely benefit from having another gain stage or an "Afterblaster" board or something like that. But no way all that can fit in my MXR Orange 1590B. I think I may just run a clean boost after it. I was also messing with boosting it with the Powersound Boost I just built. It can add some cool gnarlyness to all that saturation on the Ge setting. Very happy with how this turned out and surprised that it's still a relevant sounding pedal.

Hmmm, just noticed I wrote "OA10" on the lid. That should be "OA9" Gonna need to change that.


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## steviejr92 (Nov 14, 2022)

Those oA10s look so awesome in there! I vote demo! 😁


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