BossAreaForum

Nice. Getting some SD-2 GAS ....

Great little box indeed, lately I'm using it for bass, the lead channel gets me a really nice overdriven tone without losing (much) low end. My clean tone is pretty midrangey anyway, so sounds great with the SD-2.

I should try my SD-2 with bass then.

Joske Turbo wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 08, 2022 1:55 pm

Great little box indeed, lately I'm using it for bass, the lead channel gets me a really nice overdriven tone without losing (much) low end. My clean tone is pretty midrangey anyway, so sounds great with the SD-2.

Pepe wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 08, 2022 2:00 pm

I should try my SD-2 with bass then.

Red mode does get noticeably more low end as the gain increases. I should try it with bass, too, however, it might be too dirty for my tastes.
I do have a 90s ODB3 and a BB1X on other boards, both set for a medium-low gain crunch with no low end loss.

So I spent a little time playing bass through the SD2. Gotta say, it works rather well!

LOVE the Red mode, but Green mode is just OK. Anyone have any good mod suggestions for the green mode that won't effect red?

To add to the SD2-ness.
Several months ago, I picked up another SD2 for $30. It had a couple of holes drilled into the sides, a much bigger LED, and the foot pad/lid paint didn't match the body paint very well. It clearly had a history, but it did pass signal and work, but sounded very different. Since it worked, it went home. My plan was to see how useful/toneful those mods are and maybe reverse some back as I love the stock sounds, but would be open to just back tracking it somewhere between stock and where it stands now. There are no notes or clues to what the mods are or who did them. It's just simple, look and compare to the schematic.
What's interesting, is after all these months and comparing it to other drives I have, I think I'm going to leave it. It has two pretty useful modes.
--Green mode sounds very similar to the drive side of my Han-Taun (fat voiced Klone), even down to the amount of gain and voicing of the treble/tone knob. It doesn't get that transparent/clean Klon thing, but the overdrive texture and tone is certainly in the wheelhouse of the Klones. It's also great for pushing a crunchy amp.
--Red mode has less bass than stock and the mids and upper mids are sculpted differently. Pretty much the same amount of gain as stock. The two drives that sound close are my Wampler Plexi Drive and DS1 with the Wampler JCM800 mod, though the red mode has much more gain. So, red mode is a MIAB, but perhaps more like a JCM900 or JCM2000 type mod as it's not medium gain at it's highest settings. Cool!

Where I really like the stock SD2 a lot (and honestly prefer it to the modded one), having a switchable fat Klone and MIAB in a small format pedal is pretty cool. Having both of these on the board would provide a really wide range of dirt. I can see using the stock one for my two primary rhythm settings, have the modded green mode to boost those, and have modded red mode as an alternate/solo type setting.

Niiice!

On the left, the stock one that looks real nice is from 11/1994.
On the right, the modded one with some miles on it from 06/1993.
Here's some gut shots.
You can see that a lot of the electrolytic caps were changed out, a resistor or cap value change here and there and some diodes replaced some LEDs. There is also a cap/resistor parallel piggyback happening right where the two chips meet at the bottom of the board.
If you look closely, the older/modded one is a different circuit from the stock one. The first thing I noticed on the modded one was R100 (located at the left of that chip pair on the bottom of the board. This component location is not present on the newer, stock board. When I looked at the traces on the back, there were a couple small variances, too. From what I have gathered, the SD2 hit the market around 04/1993, so the modded one is the original design, and the stock one is a revision of some sort.
A closer look at the LEDs on the stock one vs the diodes on the mod.
I did find this note inside the baseplate. It's the only clue to the mods. I'm not sure, but it seems that maybe this might have been some sort of mod kit, like Monte Alums? Who knows...