Let's talk about clipping diodes...
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- Опубликовано: 14 авг 2024
- Most of you will have heard of 'clipping diodes' being references when talking about various distortion/overdrive pedals, but what are they and how do they work? Well, today we're going to give a broad overview of that.
We go through the most common types of clipping diodes as well as discussion symmetrical vs asymmetrical clipping and hard vs soft clipping.
Many thanks to Adam from Chevron Effects for lending us their Honeyburst overdrive for this video.
00:00 - What are clipping diodes?
04:00 - Different type of diodes used for clipping
05:25 - Symmetrical vs asymmetrical clipping
08:20 - Soft vs hard clipping
12:03 - Thanks for watching!
As always, for more information on any of our pedals, visit www.zandercircuitry.com 
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Great stuff. Back in my day you had to wade through pages and pages of petty forum arguments to get this sort of information
Haha! Glad to be of service!
Great info. I’m trying to muster up the courage to build my own OverDrive pedal and this is where I started.
Check out JHS pedal "short circuit" series. Josh livestreams breadboarding different circuits. Quite informative.
Man this is one of the best breakdowns of soft/hard clipping and diode application that is on RUclips. Top notch bro!
great video. Thanks
thanks for the video, I was trying to understand symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping and you really helped!
Surplus and Honeyburst Stacked sounds the best by far, and happens to be the one where you played some single note lines.
It deserves mention that the guitar signal level is simply adjusted in level to achieve the same amount of clipping for each of the widely varying diode forward voltages. Without that explanation, it might be assumed the lower forward voltage of germanium by itself gives an advantage, which it of course does not.
This was great, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks
Great explanation and demonstration! Thanks!
Awesome explanation! ❤❤
Probably the best clipping diodes video I've watched. How about making soft - asymetrical clipping by puting a resistor to one of the two diodes in a hard cliping configuration.
Great video, I learned a lot!
I feel like I've learnt something today. Oh and how you make that honeyburst so edgy, it's smooth as buttered silk when I use it 😂😂😂
I’m curious about clipping diodes in the Big Muff circuit. There are 2 identical gain stages in series. I completely understand the concept of changing the diodes in the negative feedback loop for the second stage when you are switching to a higher forward voltage. That would reduce clipping overall and increase voltage (volume) going into the output gain stage. However, what happens if you put germanium diodes in the first clipping NFB loop? I’m not clear on whether or not the clipping stages also each amplify the signal - I think they do...
For switching, can you put 2 diodes in parallel and the highest forward voltage applies?
Because they run in series, changing the diodes in the first stage has less of a drastic effect in the sound if the 2 stage still has diodes in it. It will have an effect, just far more subtle because the second stage clips so agressively
Kind of like if you have a high gain distortion pedal and then stick a big clean boost in front of it, if the distortion is already cranked, the boost before it won't really add *that* much more to it
👍👍👍
From what I’ve read, the closest way to emulate tape saturation in a solid state manner is with symmetrical soft clipping to give predominantly odd order harmonics and similar compression. Is this true, and if so what pedals would you recommend?
I'm not really familiar with using them for tape saturation, but you're right about symmetrical giving predominantly odd order harmonics, the 'compression' (presumably saturation) amount would depend on which diodes you use as they'll all have different points where an input signal will force them to clip it, germaniums will clip much earlier than LEDs for example.
I know people praise one of the Strymon pedals (I think the Deco?) For this tape saturation thing, but I'm not sure what the circuit is
If you're looking for something from us that would give you an otherwise fairly clean platform to really play around with the differences between different diodes and symmetrical/asymmetrical, I'd suggest checking out our surplus pedal (the new smaller format), there's a demo on our channel :)
Thanks for the response! The Strymon Deco is actually DSP for the saturation, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me- for time based effects sure, but not for dirt.
I’ll check out the Surplus for sure!
Thank you agent 47.
😂😂
What kind of guitar is that? I really like its shape!
It's a fidelity guitars double standard :)
"typical guitar signal range between 1 to about 4v?". You mean, with active humbuckers right? and even so, 4v...
'typical' probably wasn't the right word to use, but yeah, guitars with high output active humbuckers can peak 4v when played hard, most won't hit that high though obviously, my guitars for example wouldn't be anywhere near that. I'm also including basses with actives in that range.
Get a haircut.
Are you on parole?
Lmao! I was looking for this comment.