GGG TOCT Question for NOC3

[Rootwitch]

I know it's not your pedal, but I read a previous post from you in which you were very helpful to a guy experiencing the same issue as me - The GGG TOCT pedal with the foot switch for the Octave Up effect - Once engaged, drops the volume. You had mentioned wiring in a boost, within the Octave section of the circuit - I was wondering if you could take a look at the circuit and offer up an idea of how to do it. I'm relatively new to this, but logic dictates a boost would take place within the D1/D2 section and be connected to the SW2. Any advice would be helpful. Anyone else - Feel free to chime in too. Thanks in advance.

http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/pdf/ggg_toct_lo_dist_f.pdf

[yeahyeahyeah]

On that layout PDF, the wiring is pretty convoluted. IMO the best way to switch the octave out of the circuit would just be to bypass the transformer and rectifier diodes all together and take the "distortion" output from C6 before it hits the transformer...they are doing something different and funky taking the output from d1 and then switching in the other diode for the octave effect, which makes it harder to just wire a boost after the rectifier section. For the easiest way to do what you want without major surgery, I'd just take the blue output wire of the effect and use the unused pole of the "octave/distortion" 3PDT for an "old school" input bypass of a mosfet boost that would only be on when the octave was engaged. If you got rid of the octave distortion LED you could make it a true hardwired bypass using two poles of the switch, but that shouldn't be necessary given that the mosfet boost shouldn't load anything down enough to change the tone.


For the "old school" bypass:
Cut the blue output wire in half.
Connect the half that goes to the board to the upper left lug on SW2, connect the input of the mosfet boost to this as well.
Connect the blue wire going to Sw1 to the left most center lug on Sw2...this is the "pole" of the switch.
Connect the output of the mosfet boost to the lower left lug on Sw2.

Added perk:
Connect the lower left lug on Sw2 to the top middle lug on Sw2, this will ground the output of the mosfet boost when it is switched off, preventing any bleed through.


With this switching the input of the boost is always connected to the circuit but as I said, it won't load anything down so there won't be any tone suck.

If you wanted to add an extra knob for the mosfet boost it would allow you to set the volume of the octave higher or lower to the distortion of the effect...might be a useful feature to have.

[Rootwitch]

Thanks bro - I knew I could count on you for an informative answer.

So yeah - I like the idea of having a knob which would allow me to boost the output volume of the Octave "channel" - As I'm new to this, I'm going to have to bug you for instructions on that too....sorry....

[yeahyeahyeah]

Just wire the boost PCB to a potentiometer like you would if the boost was going to be its own pedal...follow the instructions above and you'll have it working how you want.

Get a mosfet boost board from AMZ or anywhere else that sells a comparable circuit on a PCB. There are plenty of layouts online showing how to wire a boost.

You should really take some time to learn to read schematics, you don't need to know exactly how everything works yet to make sense of it. Schems are just an easy way to see how things are electronically connected without having to follow traces on a PCB layout. Building pedals from layouts will only get you so far. When you can follow a schem you won't need to ask what wire goes where. It's super simple to learn and if you're going to build a pedal, it should be a prerequisite.

[never-enough]

What an awesome helpful post Nick.

It's great to see a builder loving his craft so much that he helps out guys with pedals that were designed and built by someone else.

By the way, I have an older big box pure-drive and it is nothing short of a masterpiece IMO. Great great great pedal.

[Rootwitch]

I agree. Nick is the man. Thanks for the info. I'll toy with it some this weekend.