#BLUES DRIVER CLONE MODS#

The BD-2 has two discrete ‘opamps’ in it, the first made up of Q9-Q11 and the second of Q12-Q14. In short: clipping doesn’t primarily happen at the shunt diode clipper (D7-D10). Sometimes you’ll see recommendations for changing diodes to other types, but in most cases this doesn’t work either.

#BLUES DRIVER CLONE MODS#

And here’s a cleaner one that leaves out the wire routing and bypassing.Ī lot of mods for this pedal basically amount to “upgrading” capacitors (worthless) and swapping values in the tone stack (will only change the tone control’s behavior). I wanted to be able to use the same 2:00 / 10:00 / 10:00 knob settings that I already liked for transparently overdriving small, squishy combo amps or other mellower drive pedals, but I also wanted the BD-2 to sound good on its own with a variety of instruments and amps. My goal with this circuit: to leave the boost-style settings/sound totally untouched, but improve the distortion character so that it’s actually usable. And (along with the Klon) it’s one of the best at that job that you’ll find anywhere.

Frankly, the distortion sounds kinda terrible, which is why most people use it as a frequency-shaped booster. It’s very obviously a design-precursor to the OD-3 (which is much more polished-sounding, and IMO the best distortion box Boss has ever made), and has an extremely bright, ratty sound that goes from completely clean to full-on swarm of bees. The BD-2 is Boss’s best-selling stompbox of all time, and also one of the most frequently DIY-modded pedals around.

Blues driver clone