Electra Distortion Circuit Testing - Pt. 1 | Schematic Review & Mods

[@daviddelossantos6075]

Built one of these on breadboard today. Great circuit! Sounds nice with a Ge transistor too.

[@mrrootytooty5797]

I've been building pedals for three years now and my main topology types have been fuzzs, treble boosts, percolators, clean boosts and various ods. Its only recently i heard Cortez the Killer, then bumped into the Les Lius pedal, which i learn is an electra topology....never heard that term before prior to a few months back! Great sounding little circuit! Thanks for this :)

[@MetatronsTube777]

Part2?

[@mctweddle]

This was fascinating. Did you end up making the part 2? I can't seem to find it.

[@mikelee1906]

Looking also. Was their a part 2?

[@Skman22]

Did you ever follow up on the breadboarding of this video? I found it truly educational and informative but to have seen int in action in the form of a breadboard build would have really helped and I was extremely interested in how you were going to approach it. Thanks for your work, it's a fantastic resource.

[@tobyk_8045]

Please do more of these pedal schematic analysises, yours are the best on KZbin. Catalinbread Formula 55 would be nice, for example.

[@lichen8855]

I'm not that knowledgeable about electronics or electricity so I'm willing to be corrected. But to try and answer your question in the most basic sense about how a wire or path can carry both AC and DC signals at the same time, DC is like that more constant level of voltage and AC will be present if you take that constant level and wiggle it as in the case of amplifying an audio signal. The center point of that "waveform" will be at the DC level, which is which is why we use decoupling caps to basically move that to 0 volts and then we are left with pure AC. Again, I could be incorrect but this is how I've understood it for a while. Thanks for the dive into this circuit! It's one of my favorites and IMO outdoes most other drive circuits for it's natural sound and response.

[@lanceg1312]

the forward voltage of diodes in series are added together, so two silicon diodes like that would be around 1.4V

[@brentstewart59]

Very cool Kley I'm geeking out hard right now but I'm definitely gonna build this tomorrow and see what I can come up with. Thanks for sharing this

[@rocanrolafx2179]

Hello! I made a tremolo circuit with an lm555 and an 817 optocoupler and then I added an electra circuit and I have to tell you that it is wonderful, a kind of harmonic electra tremolo

[@jasonreinecke6842]

Really enjoyed the video , Thank you 😎

[@majordabalert]

Awesome video. Thanks

[@stelleratorsuprise8185]

It seems the connection of the collector of Q1 to R1 is missing, just a missing point in the schematic where to connection Q1-R1 is crossing R1-C2, strangely a lot of schematics for this circuit are missing it, other schematics for a single stage transistor amplifier have it.

[@justinhoffman1111]

was thinking that when he got to that an said feedback loop I figured there was a connection point missing

[@mitchellrosen1890]

Really good explanations and just what I was looking for. Thanks!

[@iblesbosuok]

Down to earth explanation. Salute

[@memorypalace8009]

Been experimenting with this circuit for a while and really enjoy the sound. Started messing with the eqd speaker/special cranker values and have developed something I really like. I don’t find value in the high volume of the special cranker and prefer to use the extra gain stage (compared to speaker cranker) with a switch going into the circuit rather than after.. so the result is less volume but optionally more gain.

[@KleyDeJong]

Nice! That's the beauty of this circuit is in how it can be easily digested and tailored to your preferences.

[@mallreverb]

This stuff is very useful for beginners. I've been building pedals for 6 or 7 years now, there weren't as many videos like this back then to help explain things. I still like playing with these simple circuits, it never gets old and there's always someone who needs a pedal to give it to.

[@DVincentW]

I love this stuff. Best regards 👍.

[@fabianreyes237]

I want to integrate this circuit on a guitar, how well does it clean up with the volume knob?

[@fullbodyunibrow7383]

You'd be surprised how little components are explained in the way you are doing here. There is a whole lot of explaining what a transistor does and mathematical explication, but not what is happening within the transistor which is essential for someone trying to move beyond paint by numbers building. A lot of the functions are either glossed over or explained in non-analogous non-mechanical ways. Its been awhile but I hope you do more like this video. Its a hole in the community as far as i can tell.

[@ric8248]

Hi Kley, great video! I have a question: At the collector there's going to be a DC biasing voltage (of around +3.3V assuming the transistor BETA to be 100 if l did the maths right), so that the amplified signal has headroom and not clip just yet. But then the signal will be almost completely positive in voltage. Is the decoupling capacitor going to literally subtract this 3.3V from the signal or something like that? I get the feeling that the diodes are going to absolutely crush the signal otherwise.

[@KleyDeJong]

@@ric8248 The decoupling cap blocks the DC voltage used to power the transistor, but does not affect the AC audio signal. The diodes will clip the ac wave form. One on the positive swing. One on the negative swing.

[@ric8248]

@@KleyDeJong oh l understand.. thanks!

[@michaelsgizmos]

What is the use/point of that 2.2m resistor? It seems like that will just stop nearly all flow through it anyways, so why not remove it all together?

[@KleyDeJong]

I discuss it at 5:19. More in depth explanation on what it means to 'bias the transistor' here: www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=110302.0

[@GEOGigalot]

2.2m resistor used to set a "working point" to transistor's output.

[@dazzlenconfused]

i would go over to JSH Pedals he has a whole series on bread boarding the electra circuit he teaches what all the compoents are for and in real time i built a pedal with what i learned from josh on veroboard

[@robinjgill]

Very good. Thanks.

[@therealdjryan]

Shouldn’t there be a connection between the R1/R3 junction and Q1?

[@pirhala]

Does symmetrical versus asymmetrical affect bass frequencies?

[@silkysmoof5697]

Isn't R2 and R3 supposed to match on a magnitude of 10-1 ? Also if so what are tolerances and effect?

[@majordabalert]

Hey kley and everybody. Does anyone know of a good forum where I could ask for help on a build?

[@Harzurner]

QSPICE?

[@aidankraft7351]

Video idea: midi controller made from guitar hero controller.

[@franciscomenezes1117]

Genius! Perfect explanation, could have watched hours of your class.