Midway Fair | 1 decade ago
This is a Madbean Lavache squeezed into a 1590a. If you're interested in the build, Madbean sells the board and I highly recommend it - it's a very easy build and there's a lot of experimentation to be done with the diode choices.
I wanted a big range of shapes for the shape switch, so I used the 1N914s in the center position (symmetric clipping) and a BAT41 in the up position (asymmetric clipping, and these diodes sound very bright and uncompressed). The down position is two Ge diodes (Smallbear's generic 1N34a work-alike). It's symmetric clipping, but it reacts a lot like asymmetric to pick attack, and the tonality is totally different from the other two settings.
One thing I should have done in this video is turned on the compressor with the Germanium setting - part of the reason it's my favorite setting is that it sounds a lot like an old cranked deluxe (a specific one I've played at Invisible Sound Studios) with the compressor on. Without the compressor, the Ge setting sounds a little dark and less "alive".
