MaxMini

Stripped down version of a bigger drive that was designed to get your guitar tone into similar realms to William Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops'. If you're not familiar with that aural delight it's well worth seeking out. The idea is to take a 'normal' overdrive and have it twisted and wrenched into saggy, wheezing break-up or pushed into blown-speaker overload.

This little brother reels in some of the more extreme elements of the elder sibling, but there some great textures to be had.

With everything biased up normally (three internal trimmers at the ready...) you can dial in some really sweet sparkling drive. The circuit is very bass-heavy, but deliberately so to enable some of that extreme drive mentioned above. It's easily tamed with the very effective Bass pot wound back. Treble control is a simple treble bleed to tame the high end.

All the magic happens with the Bias pot, and how scuzzy it gets depends on how you set up the internal trims. Give yourself a range of over and under bias, or tweak them so you have a much more extreme range of over or under. Totally up to you.

Available with through-hole or SMT FETs - careful, the latter aren't for the inexperienced.

The kit is supplied with vertical-mount pots which have round shafts, so you'll need set-screw fitting knobs.

If you want the PCB without parts there's a link for that at the bottom of the page.

Partial kit: PCB, all board-mounted components, pots.

Full kit: As above, plus footswitch and appropriate daughterboard/components for your selected bypass type (see Downloads section for details of those), jack sockets, DC socket, battery snap, hook-up wire, LED.

Enclosure (pre-drilled) is available as an option with full kits, and can take a battery if desired with footswitch positioned 22mm higher, closer to the controls. Knobs are not included.

Inspired by: Mini

Difficulty: Easy

PCB size: 50 x 50mm

Knobs required: 5

Enclosure: 1590B

Direct Connect compatible (4-way)

Download the INSTRUCTION PDF