Joe- I like the looks of your preamp. How do you think it would sound run at a lower voltage? say 20 or 30v? What's the (-30v) notation in the upper left about?

I think your schematic will work well as a rough perf layout, so the build should be pretty straight foward. Thanks.

Oh, and your build looks pretty good to me!

I don't think you should hear anything when there's no power! It sounds like something's connected that shouldn't be... (extra solder blob or something). The apollo should have LOTS of boost and I imagine it'll be fairly clean until you really crank it up so yours is not working right.

Well, those are silicon transistors, so they're pretty consistent in gain so you shouldn't have any problems. You can always use sockets and try several different transistors in there.

I totally agree! I really like my old l5 for most things, but sometimes tubes are the right thing for the project. It's the light (and bright) break up that I'm never satisfied with when I use SS.

Trimpot!: http://www.smallbearelec.com/Detail.bok?no=160

Yeah, it's a small pot that you can put on your circuit board... for infrequent adjustments (set and forget).

I see... go here: http://www.geofex.com/ and look for the rangemaster in the 'schematics and more' section. There's a 'technical discription and how to build one' link... under that download the how to build one pdf. You should read the whole thing (the apollo is basically a rangemaster with a 'tone' pot on the front end, instead of a volume pot at the end), but in particular the 'turn on, tune in' section talks about biasing the transistor. Germanium transistors vary a lot in their qualities (gain, leakage)... I'm actually surprised you were able to buy one from an electronics store. I ordered a butt load of Ge transistors from eastern europe and, although all of them 'worked' in the rangemaster and the orange t/b booster I made, only a few sounded really good.

but back to the biasing at hand, you can also use 100k trim pot instead of the fixed 80k resistor to bias the transistor... it'll be a bit noisier in the end, but I did that on my rangemaster and it doesn't bother me (of course other people really want it to be very quiet... i'm not that picky). Actually, I've never noticed it being particularly noisey at all... granted it amplifies treble, so it will be a bit hissy no matter what...

But let's not get ahead of ourselves... as I've tried to hint at, if you're using the stock resistor values and your transistor isn't totally fried, then you should probably be getting something out of your circuit.

Are you using a bypass switch? Does it pass the guitar signal when you have the effect 'off'? If not, it's wired wrong. Try retracing your layout against the schematic to make sure there isn't anything shorting or connected wrong. Also make sure you have the battery hooked up properly. Most effects are negative ground, this one's positive.

You know what, I actually made the orange treble and bass booster! I forgot... but they're basically the same thing with slightly different values. I didn't add or change anything on the schematic. I think I used this veroboard layout and schematic:

http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album18/orange_tb_boost

I believe you have the 5uf electrolytic cap right.  If you look at the schematic I linked to above, it just has a nonpolarized .1uf cap instead. Also, you might have to bias the circuit to get the Ge trannie to work... did you read the article on the rangemaster over there at Geo, too? RG tells you how to select a good transistor and bias it, etc. in that article. Although if you bought 'preselected' Ge it should work even if the bias is off (but might not sound as good as it could).

What layout did you use? Did you make your own?

yeah, SS does not clip or sag like tubes. All the distortion should probably come from the preamp or pedals.

is the princeton solid state or tube? I don't think there's a good sounding overdriven solid state power amp...

Hey egrubbs,

I usually use small bear (http://www.smallbearelec.com/home.html) for stompbox parts. He might be a little more expensive (sometimes not), but he specializes in stompbox parts. That way there's less chance you'll order the wrong thing. (I'd say the ruby qualifies as a stompbox of sorts). So I'd order resistors from this list, http://www.smallbearelec.com/Categories.bok?category=Resistors

and caps from this list, http://www.smallbearelec.com/Categories.bok?category=Capacitors%2C+Low+Voltage+Poly+Film

He's got jacks, enclosures, battery clips, etc., too.

The first pic you posted is the perf board layout... so it's more-or-less a pic of the circuit board if you use perf. Put the components where it shows and connect the wires where the lines are. Make sense?

Someone might have posted some pics of their guts over at the diystompboxes.com site... you could do a search...

try socketing the transistor... then you can try putting it in there anyway you want (hopefully you'll find the right way!). In any case, when I'm putting together a pedal and it doesn't work it's usually because I either 1) miswired a pot, jack, or switch, or 2) managed to make a very small solder bridge somewhere on the board (vero, perf, whatever). You can just take a hobby knife or exacto knife and make sure there's no unintended connections.

You probably know about this, but diystompboxes.com has a lot of great info for beginners (check out the faq, wiki, debugging thread, beginners project, search function, etc.), and a lot of extremely helpful and knowledgable people.

I've made the apollo before. I liked it and used it for a while, but decided that either a rangemaster or mosfet booster did what I needed better (depending on amp and guitar).

yeah, a three band would be better than a one knobber... I gotta finish my poweramp before I can start experimenting, though... wish I had more time!

Let us know what you come with.

Are you planning to stick this in front of your poweramp/chipamp, joe? I'm curious to know how it turns out. I was thinking of making dan-o's noisey cricket anyways, but it might make for a slightly more flexible and certainly a little different preamp... hmmm... I could make it easily detachable (could just sit on top) and then I'd have both a practice amp and a gigging volume amp sort of in one... just thinking here.

Well, it's usually some weird ground issue that causes equipment to shock me... try plugging it into a different outlet, that usually works for me (although I'm not exactly sure why). I suppose it could be some sort of loop with the poweramp, guitar... etc. Are the preamp and poweramp grounded (three prong plug) and/or have polarity switches?

How's that tube cricket coming along, dan-o? I'm curious to see what you put together... and how it sounds!