Choob Dreamer

An overdrive in Tube Screamer and SD-1 territory, with three additions that make it more flexible than another clone.

Bite voices the bass roll-off and treble boost ahead of the gain stage. The corner moves from about 150 Hz (woody, fuzzy) to 3.4 kHz (biting, aggressive), passing about 750 Hz, where the Tube Screamer and SD-1 sit, in the middle of its C-taper pot. Symmetry adds a second diode in one polarity. Presence changes the top end from a low-pass roll-off to a shelf.

The circuit. The clipping diodes go to ground rather than in the op amp's feedback loop, which gives two stages of clipping, the diodes and then the op amp, and more current through the diodes; it sounds richer. The idea came from preferring a Tube Screamer in front of a Fender and an SD-1 in front of a Marshall, sometimes with an EQ boosting treble ahead of either; the Bite control rolls those into one. Simple to build, with no special parts or matching.