Toy Robot Low-Gain Overdrive Effects Pedal

The Toy Robot Overdrive is another Lounsberry Pedals design that began life in an Altoids box. It soon became an essential part of the rig of Blues guitarists who were looking for a warmer and more natural (tube-like) alternative to the classic green box.

The Toy Robot uses lower gains per stage in cascading sections to shape tone in smaller increments, rounding off the edges a little bit at each stage. It is a multi-stage FET preamp with gain staging and Germanium diodes. The first stage FET pushes stage 2 at full volume, causing immediate overdrive and fatness feeding the gain pot, which controls level to the Germanium Diodes. The third stage can be overdriven as well, depending on setting. It exploits the concept of gain staging and allows for moderate amounts of overdrive at every stage, and cleans up well with the guitar volume knob. Rob Chapman really liked this one!

Like all Lounsberry Pedals it sounds and plays more like a guitar amp than a guitar pedal, the controls work the same, and they are all very responsive, and can go from warm semi-clean to full on classic rock crunch and saturated lead tones.

The Toy Robot, may not flatten Tokyo, but it provides the dynamic touch response of a vintage tube amplifier and can warm up the input of your amp and provide some classic crunch.

Gain Staging
Discrete preamps provide gain in several stages, so that a lot of what happens to provide the right amounts of drive and compression in a preamp is determined by how many discrete stages are employed, and their levels, determining how the stages interact.