Now that I've built a few of these pedals, I wanted to see, not just with my ears, what made them different. So, I ran a pink noise wav through each one and captured the output with a spectrum analyzer plugin. Pretty cool and interesting results I think.

MI Audio Crunch box v2


Xotic EP Booster


Gund Customs FX Feng Drive (Hermida Zen Drive)


Catalinbread Naga Viper


Madbean Slow Loris (ProCo Rat)


Grind Customs FX Catch-22 (Paul Cochrane Timmy)


Silicon Tonebender MKII


General Guitar Gedgets ITS-8 (Ibanez Tubescreamer 808)


Grind Customs FX Ultrastoner Fuzz (Big Muff Style)

Very cool, I noticed the rat doesn't cut any bass at all and it doesn't get fuzzy easily which proves what a cool design it is.

This is fantastic mate. Great job!

I'm curious to know if these results are close to what you've imagined based on what you heard.... is there any surprise?

Interesting. Is this with the gain turned down in all the examples?

Not really any surprise. I was really interested in the Zen Drive, because it's new and I didn't really know what it's best known for. Seems like to have a similar mid-push to the Tubescreamer, but it's lower gain. The Naga Viper is a treble booster, but it was kind off a surprise to see just how pronounced it is.



This is with most everything at noon. The gain/volume is just going to push the levels up/down or distort the signal more, I don't ?think? it would affect the EQ much.

Thanks for taking the time to do this!! Very cool.

One of the main reasons folks use a "Clean Boost" or overdrive with the drive turned down and volume turned up, is to "TIGHTEN" up the sound. This translates to making the gain/dist a bit more articulate and less muddy.

So some pedals, trim off the bass frequencies in an effort to give a very tight sound. Bass frequencies tend to "Bunch up", especially under high gain, which is what makes Orange Amps for example, sound a bit "sludgey"/"Doomy". They have wads of gain, but the definition starts to go at some point as gain goes up. Trim out the bass on input via one of these pedals, and you get killer MESHUGGAH style tone. Super tight

Todd

Distortion generally adds higher frequencies to the signal since it adds inharmonic overtones.

Sure But I"m really talking about tube gain here, not just distortion. As such, Amp gain from tube amps tends to "bunch up" in the bass region, making things "muddy". Thus, why folks use things like tube screamers which act as a high pass filter essentially, letting the highs, pass That way the gain structure sounds more "Tight" and less muddy.

Todd

I think you misunderstood who I was replying to . I was answering Yoncopin's question about whether it matters to his graphs whether the pedal is distorting the signal or not.

That would be my bad Sorry about that.

Todd

I own a real Zen Drive and many a TS (stock, modded, clones). In actual use, most gear behaves very differently in the wild than it does on a scope - especially when one considers varying guitars, amps and a players touch. Also, most (not all but most) clones don't sound like the real thing, especially when you get into the high end esoteric stuff. Close but no banana.
A Zen Drive (a real Hermida Zen Drive) has potentially much more gain than a stock TS - it can almost get into fuzz territory - and it's mids are focused in the lower end of that range (there's also more than one version). They may have evolved from a similar starting point but they're not really similar pedals. Think Robben Ford and the Blue Line.