Thursday, July 14, 2022

You Can Call Me Jan, or You Can Call Me Ray... Cloning the Vemuram Jan Ray Overdrive!

This build sort of picks up where I left off last time with my Vemuram TSV808 build, I now turn to the Vemuram Jan Ray. This is another Tube Screamer variant, and while expensive (at least $375), it is still in production. According to the Vemuram site:
"The Jan Ray was designed to recreate the punchy clear tone of the Blackface Fender amps from the 60's. So-called the 'Fender Magic 6' sound. An easy to handle overdrive keeping the characteristics of the guitar with great sustain without any unnatural compression. The end result is an ultra-smooth drive that retains the Tube Screamer’s trademark mid bump; however, it opens it up with the full-range clarity of the Jan Ray."
There are a few clones of this pedal out there, and it is better known than the TSV808, but for this build I'm also using one of the brand new Tone Geek boards - the Black Triangle project


Tone Geek applied a lot of the learning from tracing the TSV808 board to the Jan Ray, and as the two are based on the same circuit, there are a lot of shared components. As with the previous build, I went with the provided BOM using high-end resistors (including a couple of 1/2W resistors), mica capacitors, axial film capacitors, and solid polymer capacitors rather than traditional electrolytic capacitors. I also went with the 1N5817 polarity protection diode in this build as well. Unlike the TSV silkscreen, this one also calls out the correct op amp.


The 3PDT and other hookup wiring for this board is identical to the TSV808 board, and I used exactly the same approach - jumpers and hookup wire on the switch. The grounding also followed exactly the same approach I used before, which matches the star ground on the input like AionFX uses. 


As with the TSV808, the Jan Ray clone brings all of the controls to the top of the enclosure for easy access. The four potentiometers of the original as well as the Saturation control, which is a trimmer only accessible with a screwdriver from the back on the original. I've only run this with my tester so far, and the noise floor is a bit higher than the TSV808, but it's a great pedal in its own right. Of course, now I need to run a comparison test between the Jan Ray, the TSV808, and my Valve Screamer Classic clone. 

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