The Beatdown

So I know that I have said that I wouldn't do super common projects here like boosts and overdrives, but this one is an exception. My first "big" amplifier that I ever had was a solid state Marshall 5210. Many people turn their noses up at solid state, but the 5210 was one of Marshall's very first offerings in solid state way back in the early 80's. In fact, it was designed to be the solid state replacement for the JCM800 model 4210 combo amplifier, and they did a very good job.

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While the cleans were not the amps strong suit, they were fine, but the dirty channel was all Marshall-y goodness. I sold the amplifier recently, after more than 20 years of ownership, and was somewhat nostalgic for the dirty channel, so I decided to do a project that was the dirty preamp in a box. 

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Most amp-in-a-box pedals use the approach of replacing tubes with FET's, as was made very popular by the awesome folks at runoffgroove.com. This certainly produces some good sounding stompboxes, but they aren't always completely true to the amp they are attempting to emulate. With the 5210 already being solid state, I used the exact dirty preamp with just a couple of component tweaks. By and large, it is a 1:1 save for the power supply, which uses an LTC1044 to get +/-9V power supply (the amp runs +/-15V, and thus has more headroom). The LTC1044 could be used at up to about 12V, but be careful not to overdo it and fry the chip.

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This pedal has a full Marshall tone stack along with volume and gain controls. Now, the question is "why call it the beatdown?" Well, for whatever reason the amp model number always reminded me of a sports score, 52-10, which is a beatdown in something like American football, or even basketball. Thus the sports reference in my artwork.

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This is a very straightforward build. For board layout files, find them here.