After finally having some success with my “Mastodon Dave” guitar distortion pedal, I’ve been wanting to make a few more. I’m continually amazed, however, at how many different electronics parts there are out there… I’ve got coffee tins full, rubbermaid organizers full, and I STILL hardly ever have the parts on hand I need to make one of practically anything. So I was looking around for a pedal circuit I could build without waiting around for parts to show up, and I found the Trotsky Drive. After digging around to see what diodes I had, BINGO! So tonight I threw it all together on the breadboard.
It sounds pretty good too, but it’s a little hummy – which I think is probably the breadboard. A very simple circuit, but has a couple options for modding. There’s a low-pass switch you can throw, and you can swap out the capacitor for different amounts of low-pass. And you can mess with the kinds of diodes you use, and whatnot. Fun project, with a Russian name, so I’m going to have fun painting this one.
Most of the trouble with this project was hacking through the various electronics components grab bags I bought to find the right parts. The numbering schemes on the caps in particular are tricky. I got a few that I think are caps, but I’m still not sure. And how do I tell what kind a random diode is? If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.
