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Hi there, welcome to my blog - La Revolution Deux. It's an odd name - but I like it! Here you will find all the info on my various DIY Guitar effects builds, amplifiers and guitars. Everything from a humble Ibanez tubescreamer to the holiest KLON Overdrive.

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Monday 23 July 2012

Wampler - Ecstasy / Euphoria Overdrive


The Wampler Ecstasy has recently been renamed the "Euphoria", for what reasons I'm unsure but it could be to do with a few not-so-positive forum topics popping up on google when you search for Wampler Ecstasy! I thought I'd already covered this one but a quick trip over to IVIark's tagboardeffects.blogspot.com reminded me that I haven't! The general circuit topology has been known for a while after Brian Wampler kindly got stuck in and posted a few hints over at the freestompboxes.org forum;

"Here's the thinking along the design of the ecstasy. The idea was to boost the bass to fuzz up the bottom end a bit, yet retain soft clipping. So there's a pot to a big cap (nfb to ground), variable low pass filter as a tone control, simple gain boost opamp stage after this. [The] switch adds in diodes to 4.5v ref (IIRC!), soft clipping only, or no diodes which is all opamp clipping. Simple design, but works and sounds great."

Gutshot of the Wampler Ecstasy Overdrive
So let's have a read of the description of the Ecstasy / Euphoria from the Wampler website;

"When Brian created the circuit that would eventually become the Euphoria, he was working on creating a pedal that would go from clean tones to distorted tones while adding a bit of warmth. He wanted something for himself that would be dynamic, have a great sounding “gritty” tone to it yet be able to respond to the volume knob like a tube amp. Everything about Brian is in the dynamics of sound and if a pedal can't work with him dynamically, then he just can't use it.

The Euphoria is his take on that elusive tone and feel made famous by Dumble Amplifiers - smooth creaminess yet crunchy when you need it to be, yet the tonality is much more transparent than other “dumble sounding" pedals. Very responsive tone controls that interact with the pedal - they don't just “color” the sound. The controls actually affect the response and feel of the pedal, just like a great tube amp.

If you love the sound of your clean tone, and just wish you could have more “hair” on the note... a little bit of grit without any change in tonality, the Euphoria will do that with ease. PLUS it's extremely flexible... with the toggle switch in the down position you'll get a hint of fuzz along with the overdrive, it's reminiscent of the tones that "Eric Johnson" may use. With the toggle in the up position the tonality is super smooth, creamy yet crunchy when you dig into the strings.

This is reminiscent to the famous “Dumble” tone, though it's really much, much more than that. In the center position, the toggle will give you tons of crunch, or roll the gain back a bit and push the volume up and you have a superior clean boost with a 2 band EQ that's extremely transparent, but variable so you can actually turn it into an awesome treble booster just by cranking up the treble and turning the bass down."

Here's a ProGuitarShop demo video of the Ecstasy / Euphoria in action;


Now we've heard it lets see the reversed schematic;


Note that the schematic is a screen grab from modelling software - you don't need the three seperate voltage dividers which provide 4.5v, a single voltage divider will do with all of the points that need connecting to 4.5v pointed there. the 12.5k/12.5k resistors in the filter at the rear of the circuit are in fact a 25k pot with it's middle lug connected to the 22nF cap. The opamp (as seen in the gutshot above) is a JRC4580D.

So looking at the circuit layout it's pretty simple - tubescreamer/voodoo labs overdrive hybrid with a treble roll off control. The switching goes between soft/none/hard clipping options and the bass control is the same bass control as is seen on PaulC's Timmy Overdrive.

For a vero layout check out tagboardeffects.blogspot.com; http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/wampler-ecstasy.html

For more info here's the freestompboxes.org forum topic; http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13611&hilit=wampler+ecstasy

14 comments:

  1. Briggs -
    Check the Super Klown thread, I posted a time-sensitive question for ya on a specific Klown/klone pedal I found. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think Wampler got the name of the pedal changed due to the release of a Bogner pedal of the same name.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ciao
    ho appena realizzato questo pedale.
    Fantastico suono. se a qualcuno interessa posso mandare una demo del suo suono
    ciao

    ReplyDelete
  4. Am I the only one who thinks this is basically another timmy clone with some uninspired standard mods?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah, we had to change the name due to trademark being held by bogner. As far as a timmy clone, it was more of a coincidence than anything else. It's very basic electronics folks - two non-inverting gain stages with a very simple variable low pass filter in the middle, clipping diodes used in the way that clipping diodes are used, and a super easy way to increase bass. Using a pot in the NFB path isn't exactly rocket science, lol... It's a big cap with variable resistance in between. Bring that cap closer and you get more bass.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brian, the ci of this original pedal is the jrc4580 or mc1458

      Delete
    2. Originally? Probably whatever I had laying around at the time. Generally a 4558 or a TL072 If I had to guess on the original big box old ones. On the smaller versions like the picture above I think it was a 4580.

      Delete
  6. It is very cool to know such information, someday they can be very helpful.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I built one of these a few years ago and it's my go to dirt box.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I made this pedal. Sounds great with just a little gain combined with bass boost. Recomended for clean sound like fender frontman 65 and other clean channels which sounds without soul. Allways on. Nice way of thinking, and excellent design. I am happy with this thing.

    ReplyDelete
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