I think I've mentioned before on this forum, but I highly recommend checking out the Boss Power Drive (PW) 2.

I used one of these as my bass distortion for a number of years, and it always sounded great. Somewhere between a boost and a distortion. Definitely the best Boss distortion pedal I've ever heard.

I eventually replaced it with a Rat pedal that has served me well for the past few years, but my bandmate recently got the PW-2 back into working condition, and it sounded as good as I remember it.

They pop up on Ebay fairly often, I'd get one if you have the chance.

juice wrote:

Mosfet booost, just like a SHO. I built this one

That, sir, is a nice looking pedal.

These days, I've been using the Analogman BD-2 Super for a little grit / clean boost. SO much nicer than the stock pedal, and the Tone control is actually usable now.

For fuzz, I've been using a Maestro FZ-1B (on the right side in the picture below). With a dying battery, oh so much fun.

juice wrote:

Mosfet booost, just like a SHO. I built this one

Nice, juice. What schematic did you work from?

the self-biasing 10 Meg-ohm schematic:

http://kilback.net/homebrewtweaks/pedals/cleanboost.htm

It's the same as the zvex super hard-on.

This pedal and the other two I've built actually have a 1/2 watt pot with a switch on it. I wire them differently, so that turning the pot "down" is actually turning it up. I do this, because when the pot it turned all the way down, the resistance is zero and it opens a switch circuit on the back of the pot. On that circuit is a trimpot internally adjustable so that you can sort of have a preset gain. That's also why the pot is on the side, because it's too deep to mount on top and use the switch. Kind of cool, not sure how useful though.

I'm going to build 6 more of these and sell them. I think locally all 6 are spoken for, but I think I'm going to make another batch of 10 or more in a couple of weeks. If anyone is interested, I'd ship them for $55 anywhere in the US. Basically I'm a drug dealer for pedal electronics and this is a good way to support the habit.

Any chance you could add a master volume knob like on the Super Duper 2 in 1? I'd buy one from you just because the original is that good.

My new pedal from 4ms pedals arrived this week.
It is called Noise Swash and sounds in some respects similar to the Z-VEX Fuzz Factory but has more character and craziness i love the shit out it. I had them add a dry signal dial and an extra input. The sound out of this thing is just incredible. (my opinion at least!) Though it does take some time to learn its temper and take control over it.
I now have a RAT and the Swash. I need no more.

Lemuel Gulliver wrote:Any chance you could add a master volume knob like on the Super Duper 2 in 1? I'd buy one from you just because the original is that good.

I'm going to be testing out a similar pedal to the Super duper 2-in-1, although I think I can make it better as a distortion and boost pedal. This is my preliminary schematic, but I can't remember my mosfet math so I need to check out all of the component values first.

With this pedal, which is different than the zvex, I think you should be able to have nearly 18V clean headroom, or some attenuated full-on clipping.

I tried one of those fairly inexpensive Ibanez DS7 pedals. It is owned by a friend of mine and we agreed that it sounds better on his bass than my guitar.

Here's what I use gain-wise, in the order that it appears:

MXR GT-OD (Looks like the Distortion III, except green)
MXR Blue Box
Zvex Fuzz Factory
EH Hot Tubes
Currently run into a Sunn Colliseum, which breaks up nicely for a solid state head.

Of them I like the GT-OD the least, though it gives a good boost to the Hot Tubes and nudges the two fuzzes further into mayhem. It's rare that I use it on its own. Haven't had the Blue Box long and at first I found the gating to be annoying, but because of that gate I can leave the FF in crazier crazy territory and turn on the Blue Box to tighten the reins. The Blue Box and the Hot Tubes play very well together. Don't like the distortion circuit to the Hot Tubes, but the auto-pilot regions of the EQ are killer. Together they're not perfect but they get the job done.

Boss DF2 for distortion
Barge Concepts BB1 for boosty crunch
Chuck Collins Harmonic Percolator for unusable squealing feedback, shite distortion and rapid, intermittent signal loss

i suspect the latter may not working as intended