The Codtone

Expandra
Based on the Bixonic Expandora
The original Expandora was possibly one of the first 'boutique'
distortion pedals I ever saw, and on reflection, had many
innovative features. It was certainly unique looking, housed in a
circular chrome tuna-tin enclosure and, long before all the trendy
overdrives had them, had a pair of internal dip switches to select
various levels of gain, or the mysterious “forbidden” mode.
It found favour with many players including Bootsy Collins and,
famously, Billy Gibbons. He liked them so much he had a couple
built into a guitar and also flamboyantly used six of them hooked-
up in series.

The original controls were knobs for Gain, Tone and Volume with
two internal dip switches. The switches yield four combinations of
gain; “Crunch”, “Overdrive”, “Distortion” and the “Forbidden”
mode. Expect Forbidden mode to be pretty wild after the first
third of the gain knob's range, this is normal! Beyond that point
it will oscillate and produce extreme gating.
The Expandra is configured to have the switches wired as external
toggles and the board also allows for the addition of a fourth
“Bite” control. This is a variation on the 'Ruez' mod that will
simultaneously shape the presence and smooth the sound of the
distortion.
Also in these notes are instructions for mods for variable
clipping, a foot switch-able Forbidden mode and a way to re-voice
it for a slightly more transparent sound.
 So, what's so special about this one?

Looking over the schematic, you'll notice that a good portion of

the circuit is based on the Rat, but there;s a lot more going on.
What really makes the Expandora so different from all those other
“dynamic” and “touch sensitive” overdrives is it;s “expander”
circuit.
Rather than having a fixed gain level, the amount of gain is
controlled by input amplitude, pick gently and you'll have a clean
sound, but the harder you pick the more distorted it gets.
Signal comes from after the first gain stage, goes through a diode
(D1), and is converted from an AC signal to a DC pulse. This pulse
is amplified by IC3B to trigger Q1 to turn on. When this happens
current flows though the led portion of IC4, the PC419/H11F3
optofet, generating a variable resistance of up to about 250K
parallel to R19 & R20 which are the values setting the gain of
IC2.
Distortion is created by the back-to-back symmetrical clipping
diodes D2 and D3.
Following the clipping stage is a simple filter as a tone control.
Finally, instead of the typical voltage divider volume control,
IC3A is used as an active volume control.
*All three pots are variable resistors, so unless you love off-board wiring,
you can get away with using only two wires per pot.
 Bill of Materials:

(Values in the second column are more common values you can
substitute.)
About that optofet
There is no discernible functional difference between the PC419 and the H11F3
optofets as they both share basically the same (very fast) response times and
resistance ranges.
Surface mount tips
Working with the surface mount PC419 isn't really as daunting as
it sounds. As far a SMT goes, it's quite a large part, about 4mm x
5mm. It's 4 legs are widely spaced on each corner, and if you put
it on the board early it's really quite easy.
I use my ordinary pencil tip iron. First I tin it's four pads on
the board, then tin one leg of the part. Holding it with tweezers,
I tack down one leg to keep it in place. Then do the rest. It's
really pretty straightforward...just don't sneeze.
Make sure the circle marking on the PC419 is
oriented to the LOWER LEFT.
 The Mods:
The Bite Control

The pads labelled J1 and J2 are for attaching the Bite control.
This is a variation of the “Ruez mod”, common in Rat builds.
Simply connect J1 to lug 3 of a B1K pot and J2 to lug 2.
(*If, like me, you once ordered some B500ohm pots by accident,
those will work very well here too.)
When the pot is fully clockwise you will have the stock Expandora
distortion. Turning the knob counter clockwise will simultaneously
reduce brightness and mellows the distortion.
If you wish to build a standard Expandora without the forth knob,
you must jumper J1 to J2.
 Asymmetric/symmetric Clipping

The stock clipping was a pair of 1N914, but of course feel free to
experiment here...LEDs, Ge diodes, mosfets- sky's the limit.
The clipping option I'm currently putting on my Expandratron is
two 1N914 in series at D3, with a single 1N914 in parallel on a
SPST switch. With the switch open it's asymmetric and less
compressed, closed the lower forward voltage wins, so this is the
stock, more compressed symmetric clipping.

*Another, neater, way to do this would be to omit D2 and D3, and

use a DPDT on/on switch with two pairs of clipping diodes.

Touch sensitivity

D1 has a large bearing on the touch sensitivity of the circuit.

You may wish to socket this position, especially if you plan to
experiment with clipping diodes.
Anything from an LED (which will light up) to a very low forward
voltage 1N60 will work here.
As a general rule I would recommend using something with the same
or slightly lower forward voltage than your clipping diodes.
 Re-Voicing the Circuit
Stock, the pedal has a great and distinctive sound that works
particularly well with a bridge position humbucker. It rolls off a
little presence and shaves off quite a bit of bass, leaving a prominent
upper mid range emphasis that works well for a typical rock guitarist.

The following mod was conceived to return some of the lows and add some
sparkle to present a more “transparent” sound.
It's actually two mods, but I've incorporated them onto a single DPDT
switch. If you prefer you could use two separate SPDT's as “fat” and
“bright” switches too.
Adding a bit more low end can be achieved by adding a larger cap on a
switch in parallel with C4. 470N works for me, with the stock 22n on
the board. The bottom end will still be attenuated at C13 though. If
you're still not getting enough bass, increase C13 to up to 1uF.
The bright switch is done by putting a lower value cap on the board at
C5. The stock value is 1n, so putting a 220pF cap on the board and a
820pF in parallel on the switch. This yields pretty close to the stock
value when the switch is closed, and less high-end roll off with the
switch open.
To put it on a single DPDT switch, connect the bass boost to the top
lugs (1 and 2) on one side and the treble mod to the lower lugs(5 and 6)
on the other side. I just tack the wires to the rear of the board.
 Stomp into the forbidden mode
Name something “Forbidden” and you know people will want to try
it, especially guitarists.
The forbidden mode is when both switches are open, removing both
R19 and R20 from the feedback loop of IC2. The values we're
dealing with are 1K1, 560ohm and about 370ohm when they're
paralleled.
By using an on/off/on switch at SW1, with a 560ohm resistor at one
end and a 1.2K at the other you can get the same result but with
only one switch, then by breaking connection to that switch with
a stomp switch you can activate the Forbidden mode.(Omit R19 and
SW2.) The best way to wire this is to run a wire from the
rightmost SW1 pad to a 3PDT stomp switch lug 1 and connect this to
the middle lug of one side of an DPDT on/off/on switch. The other
middle lug connects back to the board at the junction of C6 and
R5. The left most SW1 pad connects to lug 2 of the stomp.(see pic)
For this all to work effectively there's one more thing we need to
address though. As I mentioned earlier, the Forbidden mode gets
pretty unusable beyond about a third of the way up.
If we use a 3PDT stomp, one set of lugs can activate forbidden
mode, the second set work an indicator light and we'll use the
third set to add some parallel resistance across lugs 1 and 3 of
the gain pot. A 330K resistor worked nicely for me. You can even
add a 1M pot or trim pot so you can set the maximum amount of
Forbidden gain.
 Thank you.
This project could not have been completed with out the work,
enthusiasm and contributions of many people.

Firstly, credit where credit is due, Bixonic for the cool design!
Also to Hoax Electronics and Harold Sabro for their interpretations.

And to my friends;

Captain Peyote (Justin Bills) for turning me on to it and helping me

understand it.
EffDub (Forrest Whitesides) for the layout and creating the ingenious
hybrid optofet.

Thanks also to the BYOC, Grindcustoms and Madbean forums.

The fourth pot, and so much else I've learnt, I first saw at
Beavis Audio Research, It's a great resource, thanks Dano!

Guitarmageddon (aka Ben Rogers)

www.codtone.com

This information is for DIY use only. Commercial use is forbidden.

Expandora is the property of Bixonic, codtone and the codtone Expandra
have no affiliation with Bixonic.

Copyrightcodtone2013