146 PREMIER GUITAR NOVEMBER 2009 www.premierguitar.com
BYOC Overdrive 2
BYOC’s Overdrive 1 was a clone of the original TS808 circuit, considered the Holy Grail
of Tube Screamers by enthusiasts. It was also
one of BYOC’s best selling kits, so it was only
natural when creating a new iteration of the
kit to try and take it a step farther. The OD2
features two separate circuits integrated into
a single box. The overdrive circuit is pretty
much a Tube Screamer with some favorite
mods added in and made switchable. A completely independent clean boost is available
at the stomp of a switch. There is also a kit
available to convert some or all of the circuit
to MOSFET components, which some claim
gives it a more tube-like and natural sounding drive at the expense of sometimes being
noisier. Three internal trimpots allow you to
tweak the min. and max. distortion and loudness. It’s a very flexible pedal.
Having modded some guitars and stompboxes in the past, I felt fairly confident about my
soldering skills, but my grasp of the principles
of electronics is about the same as my grasp
of experimental neurosurgery, which is to say
non-existent, so looking at the schematic at
the end of the manual was useless to me.
Fortunately, the instructions are very much
idiot-friendly, with photographs of the PCB
and colored outlines detailing the locations
of components. Still, for a total newcomer to
the soldering iron, this project might present
a real challenge.
The first thing I did was dump out all the com-
ponents onto a big piece of cardboard, sort
them out, tape them down and write their val-
ues beside them with a sharpie. The parts list
provided in the manual is great for this. I also
used a web-based resistor color code calcula-
tor to provide me with the values for the many
resistors in the kit; a number of such calculators
can be easily found with Google. I did the same
for the MOSFET kit’s components separately.
Except for a mysterious capacitor that didn’t
seem to be listed (but was used later in the
build), and a still-mysterious pot that wasn’t
mentioned anywhere at all, everything was
accounted for. My kit was missing nothing.
The end of the manual covers options for build-
ing the MOSFET conversions. Different stages of
the circuit can be built to standard or MOSFET
specs, and each has its own effect. The boost
and clipping stages I chose to go MOSFET on,
so one of the most challenging aspects of my
build was using the diagrams at the end of the
manual to isolate those stages on the PCB, and
then figuring out which components to swap
out and which not to. Each step in the manual
tells you what to do differently if you’re using the
MOSFET kit, but it assumes that you’re building
everything that way. If you want a more straight-
forward build, the instructions are quite clear,
and it’s fairly simple.
The only moment of ambiguity came when I
was about to solder the footswitch wires to the
PCB. The manual had thus far used the terms
like component side to refer to the sides of the
board, but now simply told me to “load the
wires in from the top and solder on the bottom
side.” To be fair, had I taken a moment to think
about how everything was to fit in the enclosure
I would have made the correct decision. Instead,
I figured the top side of the board must be the
side that will face up when the pedal is completed. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.
It sounds like a good Tube Screamer: the overdrive is great, with that edgy sort of breakup
I love, and the switchable mods allow for the
selection of 3 EQ settings: Normal (the TS’s characteristic midrange hump), Full (a flatter EQ) and
Fat (bass boost). Another switch lets you pick
your clipping mode: silicon diodes or LEDs (or
Based on: Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer
Time to Build: about 8 hours
Tools: Soldering iron w/ pencil tip, solder,
screwdriver, wire clippers (tweezers and/
or needle-nose pliers are helpful).
Price: $94.99; MOSFET conversion kit $7.99
Complexity: 3 (out of 5)
