The Safety Valve - LMNC VACUUM TUBE DISTORTER

video by LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER

"Wiring up 10, Because i wondered what it would sound like!
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"There are a number of variants of the safety valve but this matches the 1.0 version Which i think sounds the best, Having tried various versions including the 2.0 and also the GMSN version which has an input buffer and a slightly different circuit, they just didn’t tick the main box which was, TONEEEE MOTHERFUDGING TONEEE. So i thought screw it, and took it back to the Safety Valve 4710.

It does not have any CV control this is for the above reason and also namely, with valve distortion the sound adjustments are more to do with the level of things going into it, so i didn’t see it as being particularly important to complicate the circuit further just to add CV control over things that don’t do as good of a job as adjusting things earlier in the signal chain. The best approach is to treat it like a pedal, it has a switch to turn it on, it accentuates aspects of the sound in a warm waffly kind of manner, and can boost the signal a heck of alot!

Also the Tone control is just a simple RC filter (a resistor and a capacitor) so that didn’t make sense to make CV controllable either as having a filter after the safety valve would do the same thing controllably but better.

There are a couple of differences between this design and the 4710 in the inital video, that being, there is an LED behind the valve this acts as a signal monitor, it listens to whatever goes on in the safety valve and lights up accordingly, Even when bypassed. There is also an engage LED next to the switch.

When there is nothing plugged into the input it goes into feedback mode this is purposeful, it means you can use the module as a drone. You can remove this mode with a simple cutting of a trace on the jack socket PCB board if its annoying but I dont see why you would feel the need. :D

One more thing to note! This kind of distortion like a lot of distortions dont do much to simple sound sources like a single square wave for instance. if you put a single unmixed square wave in, thats what you get out."