Friedman BE-OD Pedal [traced]

[GuitarDan]

Anything "Friedman" builds should always be labeled "Custom Audio Electronics", cause that's basically where he stole all his shit, do the research.

[alexradium]

Anything "Friedman" builds should always be labeled "Custom Audio Electronics", cause that's basically where he stole all his shit, do the research.

everybody steals from someone,but Friedman stole CAE products? not at all.
the only thing he stole is the business,but there is a good reason for that,and its called delivering in time for the hard money you spent,for sure.

[caspercody]

I used 1N457 diodes, and they work great.

[Jan1966]

I might try that too.

[Jan1966]

or other diodes. Its a building block to be experimented with.

[GuitarDan]

Anything "Friedman" builds should always be labeled "Custom Audio Electronics", cause that's basically where he stole all his shit, do the research.

everybody steals from someone,but Friedman stole CAE products? not at all.
the only thing he stole is the business,but there is a good reason for that,and its called delivering in time for the hard money you spent,for sure.

No, everybody doesn't steal from somebody. Tell that to BOSS regarding Behringer, lol. You're statement is simply laughable...There's no gray area my friend...Yeah, ummmmm Friedman had NUMEROUS problems with delivery btw, so that's BS right there. Do a search up on HRI.

[Optical]

Ive been using my BE-OD as a booster lately for tube amps. It's pretty great for this apart from the noise floor
Has anyone figured out a way to drop the noise floor down a bit? I'm wondering if a opamp swap might help as a first step

[grrrunge]

Ive been using my BE-OD as a booster lately for tube amps. It's pretty great for this apart from the noise floor
Has anyone figured out a way to drop the noise floor down a bit? I'm wondering if a opamp swap might help as a first step

Is that the original production model you're using, or a clone? I would suspect a lot of other things before resorting to op-amp swapping, when hunting noisemakers

[Optical]

Clone built on the fuzzdog PCB. Actually ive just remembered the internal trimpot, it's at halfway currently and that's probably too high given the gain saturates low in the dial range. I'll try dialing that back and probably try inserting a diode noise gate for lols
Any other suggestions?

[grrrunge]

I could be wrong, but I certainly see a lot of traces and no ground plane on the top side of his PCB. My guess is that a poor grounding scheme and ditto choice of component placement is the major contributor to the noise floor in this case.

[alexradium]

Ive been using my BE-OD as a booster lately for tube amps. It's pretty great for this apart from the noise floor
Has anyone figured out a way to drop the noise floor down a bit? I'm wondering if a opamp swap might help as a first step

i made it with a layout in this thread and i can say it worked right from the beginning with basically no noise unboxed,which is remarkable with that amount of gain,but using it as a booster? i'd use the Buxom boost or something less gainy and scooped.
anyway TL072s are pretty noisy,i'd try 082 or others with lower noise figure

[bajaman]

TL072 is supposedly the lowest noise device in the old TL0** series
If you want a lower noise device, there are many newer generation devices to choose from - LM833, OPA2604, OPA2134 etc, but sometimes it is the resistor values and gain structure that dominate the noise performance Many folks have stated that the original Friedman BE-OD is a noisy pedal and very prone to high frequency oscillation when gain is increased - perhaps it was intended - perhaps not!
OR - you could try building my project instead - the Baja BEO pedal
cheers
bajaman

[bmxguitarsbmx]

... Many folks have stated that the original Friedman BE-OD is a noisy pedal and very prone to high frequency oscillation when gain is increased...

Is this true? I had a BE-od pedal and it was very low noise and without oscillation. Additionally, I built my own clone that is low noise and does not oscillate. I did read those posts about oscillation, but I assume they were talking about their personal builds.

[sixthfloor]

I breadboarded the BE-OD with JRC4580D op amps and it was very silent. I then ordered and built pedalPCB's dirty sanchez, tried different op amps (OPA2134, TL072, LM833, LM1458, ...), same result. The internal trimmer was set to pretty high gain. Just my two cents

[phatt]

Saying that a particular circuit is noisy is kinda meaningless unless there is a common reference point.
Everyone that builds this unit will have quite different outcomes as far as noise goes.
Why? Because you all have different amplifiers.
And one Amplifier might be a simple clean Amp with little gain while another Amp user will have a multi gain circuit which is alreay hot so any noise may well be quite a problem.

A had a chap wanting to use his acoustic through his Crate V30 which is a very HOT preamp circuit even on clean. So it squealed like a pig and was very noisy because the input of the V30 was way too sensitive and a powered acoustic as well as a couple of FX pedals and it was unusable.
Meanwhile He purchased another amp and Had Zero noise or FB problems.
Why?? Because I choose an amp for him that had way less gain at the input stage.
Phil.

[alexradium]

not much sense here,you have to test a distortion pedal in a totally clean amp with no noise at all,and then compare other things and components using that same reference.
no point at all inserting a dist pedal in a plexi with a 4n7 bright cap.

[sixthfloor]

Because you all have different amplifiers.

Good point Phil !

I plug my pedals directly to mixer then to headphones, so the only noise I perceive is the one produced by the pedals. I reckon that's as good a reference as any

[bmxguitarsbmx]

It's subjective if you don't have a simple test setup. Subjectively, The BE-OD wasn't noisy compared to any of my other distortion stompboxes. My amp is the constant, so that doesn't matter. My point is that it seems people tend to get noisy builds and blame friedman or Diezel(Vh4 pedal builds are also noisy apparently). In real life neither of these pedals are noisy.

For non-subjective noise measurements, almost everyone has an audio interface these days. Use a level meter to compare bypassed vs non-bypassed levels.

[alexradium]

Single sided layout for Dirty Shirley+Friedman BeOd in a box, this layout has the best of both worlds, there are 7 pcb mounted pots so you can build a BeOD with a mid control, or a DS with a tight knob, as said before the only notable difference is R16 in my schematic (10k for BEOD, 27k for DS).

I used through hole ICs this time, but i kept the smd diodes (BAV99). If somebody is interested i can post the same layout with normal diodes.
Board dimensions are 115x40mm, it should fit in a hammond bb enclosure.
Layout still unverified but it should work.

If you build it please report if everything is working as intended.

Good DIY!

i'm reviewing this project and found in your schematic C17 as 22n,while in the Bugg's schem is 2n2( last stage).
the rest seems the same,i will build it and report results.

[Frabbio]

Single sided layout for Dirty Shirley+Friedman BeOd in a box, this layout has the best of both worlds, there are 7 pcb mounted pots so you can build a BeOD with a mid control, or a DS with a tight knob, as said before the only notable difference is R16 in my schematic (10k for BEOD, 27k for DS).

I used through hole ICs this time, but i kept the smd diodes (BAV99). If somebody is interested i can post the same layout with normal diodes.
Board dimensions are 115x40mm, it should fit in a hammond bb enclosure.
Layout still unverified but it should work.

If you build it please report if everything is working as intended.

Good DIY!

i'm reviewing this project and found in your schematic C17 as 22n,while in the Bugg's schem is 2n2( last stage).
the rest seems the same,i will build it and report results.

Thanks for the heads up, let us know if everything works as intended.