Busting the myth of magical op-amps and diodes...?

got a special gift for you today I've had a few people ask me about op amps and how op amps make a difference so I breadboard a small circuit for you overdrive circuit and I figured you know what just swap some out and see what you guys think so let's get to it okay I have a jrc 4580 in this circuit right now and I have a gain control which is dimed I have a very simple tone control volume control obviously diodes are in the soft clipping basically they're in the loop so a bunch of gain to it and soft clipping like just a normal overdrive 4580 chip now this is a breadboard so with that mine when I turn everything on its going to be a little bit louder you're going to hear some hum just cuz all the crap associated with breadboards like wires going everywhere that creates all these little antennas basically so it's gonna be a little bit loud that's just part of breadboard here that doesn't mean so 4580 chip you ah and okay let's try the TLC 2262 let's try that next let's go from that to the Opie 275 let's go for TLO 62 all right that's the o-62 let's go fourarms you know what let's take a little venture somewhere else over in that one this that little uh a cha got some different chips in that I think I'm going to throw in an LM eight three three it's kind of a popular chip think it's in like the Shred Matt Matt Streb master what was it uh my audio distortion crutch box there you go that's what it's called and here we go with the 833 and on to the next one so this is the jrc 45:58 this is the chip that makes it sound like a tube screamer you'll notice it doesn't by the way you a and that's the 45:58 on to the next so this is the LM three five eight man all right how about I think we should do I got it yeah I do 45:59 so it's good you're going to notice this is that well you may notice you may not notice this is going to be a little bit higher gain compared to some of the other ones yeah here we go Oh and not quite the drastic difference is it alright and moving on so let's get into some more the some more the expensive chips you know the eight dollar ones five to eight dollar ones you those uh elusive no special sprinkle with fairy dust type of chips let's see how about the how about the OPA 2604 that's expensive one and let's do another expensive one the 8712 that's ad not 80 the OPA 21:34 another fairly expensive IC chip do a lot these are all do allah Pam's case you're wondering I know you're sitting there asking yourself are those dual op amps or single op amps yep they're all duals see because if they weren't I wouldn't be able to just swap them out that quickly all right good 21:34 over the OPA yeah that's the 21:34 what else can we do let's see okay one more we have one more this actually is a pretty good sounding chip um as far as you know op amps Co and the difference is it ran the jrc to 0 for 3 double D and so there you have it I mean personally I don't I mean there is a difference I do hear a difference but it's not a dramatic difference so hopefully this puts to rest the if it's got a 45 58 chip that it's a tube screamer thought so it's not the way it works 45 th is a very very very very very very very very very very common op-amp IC chip so yeah I mean you may notice like a little bit of differences it is harder when it's on the breadboard just simply because you do have other noise stuff going on and it's not really a good way around that when it's on the breadboard especially with big long wires and like crap so one more thing right now like I said I have the diodes between the between the inverting pins so it's soft clipping why don't we take those same diodes and run them to ground and so you can see what the difference is between soft clipping and hard clipping that'd be fun right everybody wants to know that and we'll probably hear an increase in volume the clipping structure is going to be totally different and keep in mind like I know this isn't the greatest circuit in the world it's a very simple circuit that I came up with pretty much just for this test so oh yeah here we go hard clipping the ground and and while we're here I guess we could ask ourselves how did different diodes sound like oh I dunno but let's see those were 4148 let's see here okay what do I got oh yeah oh I got some fancy pants ones so these are 1 in 1 9 2 s fancy schmancy 's oh man these are a little expensive as well and the hard clipping position can't turn the volume up loud as it goes you now if you're wondering why it's not quite as loud that's because uh let's see the easiest way to put it is more signal is getting kind of compressed and clipped and so therefore it's not as loud well here's some good ones the bat 46 I recall sometimes these were used in a very expensive agraphia at the bat 40 ones are 46 s forget up top my head bat 46 is hard clipping yeah and man that's the bat 46s so just your fun let's see what the bat 41 do NIMS the forty-ones let's see let's throw spell Eady's in here alright I'm going to have to compensate for the volume on this guy because the LEDs are going to clip less let more signal through and as a result the op-amp is actually going to clip a little more Oh those are blue LEDs I know what you're thinking Ryan why don't you try the yellow LEDs with orange LEDs or the red LEDs that's a good question let's see how much of difference a different color makes orange jeez those are the oranges and I see the snow Pink's in there all right pink LEDs all right red ones you all right whilst we got uh you know what we have some germanium one in 34 A's yeah dig him out of here real quick mmm good assembly already mate all right here goes the germanium one in 34 Wow okay dramatic difference of course it's clipping more signal so that makes sense all right final thing just for the fun of it let's see what the op-amp sounds like just clipping itself no diodes at all I have to turn the volume down actually think in some applications op-amps can sound good clipping you know just hitting the rails and clipping themselves so yeah I think that's a cool sound too now you get a whole different thing we're from a boost you can get a whole different sound whenever you run you know another clean boost into that and get the op-amp to break up even more so let's try that just for fun while we're doing caution to the wind here okay so I just I basically just have a decibel + or DB + and it's just a straight up full frequency op-amp booster so let's turn this mug up turn it on see what kind of clipping action we get first off now hitting that op-amp with a boost pedal you put it off again and on so I kind of dig it it's almost like a fuzzy sort of thing you know so you know that's you're like a Tweaker like meaning like the tweet stuff might be something to experiment less create a new type of fuzz run a couple op amps into each other and see what happens tweak the values in-between get what you want put a cool tone control on it and yeah might be something cool so anyways I know this may be a fairly dull to some of my audience I apologize hopefully at least got a little bit of knowledge of just how much op amps do or do not make a difference how the diodes do or do not make a difference I really think they do make a big difference and yeah so you know hope it hope you got something out of it if you have any questions or comments make sure you comment below I love hearing from you guys if you think this is of any value if you like this video if you anything out of it make sure you share it with people uh you know I do this for you guys I really I like I don't I'm not selling any Wampler pedals here I'm purely doing this to help you guys out answer the questions with idea so feel look if you liked it share it and we'll see in a couple days love yeah you

Channel: Wampler Pedals

Views: 202,285

Rating: 4.9455338 out of 5

Keywords: guitar, pedal, effects, diodes, op-amp, opamp, 4558, jrc4558, burr-brown, DIY, pedalboard, tubescreamer, ts808, ts-808, tube screamer, overdrive, distortion, breadboard, bread board, germanium, 1n4148, 1n4001, effect pedals, fx pedals, op amp, wampler pedals, brian wampler, clipping diodes, mythical overdrive, op amp distortion, op amps, op amp clipping, op amp overdrive, diode clipping, op amp fuzz, op-amps, wampler op amp, wampler op amps, op amp pedal, wampler opamp, wampler diodes

Id: PH2uj9bWfM4

Length: 19min 4sec (1144 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2016