Drunk Beaver's 3rd Limited Series Pedal Drop is the Cool Zaporizhzhia Preamp - a 4-Opamp Switching Multi-Clipping Preamp / Distortion

The Zaporizhzhia Preamp pedal shares a lot of similarities with classic 70’s hard-clippers DOD250 and MXR Distortion+ - while this circuit is rather more evolved from the Vox Distortion and Guyatone Zoom Box pedals from around the same era.

Controls : Level, Tilt-EQ, Drive, Clipping : Boost / LED / Silicon / Germanium / Germanium Transistors / Mosfet, Opamps : TL082 / UD1408 / LF351 / 741.

Readers of this Blog should be familiar with the pedal’s makeup as it is somewhat reminiscent of Vitalii Bobrov’s Bat Series of Rat derived pedals - which all feature multiple opamps and multiple clipping options.

On this occasion the Opamps are all very period specific for these types of hard-clippers - TL082 (NOS TFK one), UD1408A, LF351N, and 741 (Polish ULY7741 CEMI).

The Clipping Options in detail are : Boost (kinda MXR Micro Amp), Red LEDs, Silicon Diodes (BAV20 which have a bit higher Fv than the more common 1N914/1N4148 types), Germanium Diodes (NOS Polish AAP-153), Germanium Transistors (2 x MP37B’s used as diodes), and MOS (BS170/2N7002 MOSFETs).

The only other notable element is the Tilt-EQ which can best be described as a sort of Big Muff style Tone Stack - but without the Mid-Scoop, and a gain recovery stage after it (second half of TL082) - both parts are basically from the SEEA Fuzz Stereo (a fuzz based on the MXR Distortion+).

Readers should know that I like to collect extended-range DOD250 / MXR Distortion+ pedals - so this one’s a no-brainer for me. I know that at a default I can always rely on the LED Clipping - with some really expressive and beautfifully textured opamp action - which Vitalii is something a master of uncovering those rare great sounding opamp chips.

Some of those 70’s era hard-clippers were notably underpowered on the output stage. While all of Vitalii’s pedals benefit from really decent volume output - so it should not be an issue on this one.

As before these are literally hot off the press - no time for demos. Vitalii’s rapid prototyping process means that he’s still finishing off the pedal builds right up to the time of launch - which should be around the time when this article goes live - around 18:00 CET / 17:00 GMT.

There are only 10 Pedals in this Zaporizhzhia Preamp Pedal Drop - so you will need to make your way to the Drunk Beaver Reverb.com Store very quickly at the appointed time!