Apex Distortion is a versatile distortion pedal which was originally inspired by a particular LM308 rodent pedal.  The goal was to create something new, while still paying homage to the original.  This is not a clone.  It is a reimagination of a classic.  Top of the food chain.  The Apex predator.  

​

History

I decided to challenge myself to design a pedal around that chip with a circuit inspired by the said rodent pedal. So… I found some LM308s and got to designing. The pedal went though many revisions, in fact I had a version that I almost released. I really liked it, but I felt after playing it at band practice a few times, I thought I could do more… it needed more toanz for my snobby ears. I wanted to improve some aspects of the original by increasing its versatility, improve the gain range, smooth and thicken the tone, while still maintaining some bite.   

​

Circuit Breakdown

First things first, I love boosting the RAT with another drive, bit so I added a JFET front end gain stage.  JFETs are great because they react extremely well to the dynamics of your playing… dare I say it?... are very amp-like in their character.  Next is the LM308 primary gain stage.  I completely changed it’s voicing.  I wanted a nice low punch with crisp highs and it had to preform well in both low gain and high gain situations.  Next is the clipping section.  I wanted to a blend of smoothness and crunch so I combined a mixture of diodes and an LED.  Up next, the tone stage, which similar to the RAT, functions as a classic low pass filter however it is reversed so to the left is darker, right is brighter.  Finally in true classic form a JFET buffer which also adds some color as it saturates.

​

I’m really digging the result, I hope you do too.