Crysis

Project overview

Crysis is a versatile high-gain distortion pedal with sonic characteristics and touches the sensitivity of a high-quality 100-watt tube amplifier.

Especially good for tight crunch rhythms and dynamic solos. This board features an internal Presence trimmer.

Introduction

The Crysis is a circuit inspired by the famous Suhr Riot, without being an exact replica; through the years they have been many different versions of the Riot and the riot Reloaded, most of them with small values changes on the components and in the clipping section. For this project, I’ve researched the most common versions of this pedal and many schematics provided by the DIY community to lay down an ultimate boutique version of it that captures the best essence of the original Suhr Riot.

If we take a look at the schematic, we can find many similarities to the M-Audio Crunch Box, later also cloned and modded by JHS as the Angry Charlie; you can check our Angry Carlos if you want to build either of these.

The Crunch Box also has roots in some other famous pedals as the Marshall Blues Breaker and the Fulltone OCD. So we can proudly say that PCB Guitar Mania’s Crysis is the prodigal son of a long family of Marshall-like pedals, taking the best of each model through the years and refining it as one of the most lauded high-gain “stack of amps” pedal.

Controls

• Drive: Adjusts the amount of gain added to your tone, taking you from classic crunch to high-gain heaven.
• Vol: Adjusts the output of the pedal. Riot provides enough level to push the front end of any tube amp into natural overdrive.
• Tone: Shapes the pedal’s overall tonal response, from smooth and warm to cutting lead tones.
• Presence: affects the overall ‘shape’ of the tone of the pedal. It interacts with the tone control.
• Diode Switch: Select In between 3 Different clipping options. To the left engages the symmetrical Germanium diodes + the LED pair, to the right the asymmetrical Silicon diodes + Led pair, on the center we got just the Pair of LEDs, being the loudest of all the 3 options, with a more open and organic tone. The pair of LEDs clip are hardwired as always on.

For further analysis on this circuit, take a look at this thread on Free Stomp Boxes Forum.

For any technical questions regarding this build, don’t forget to check out our Facebook Group and our forum at Free Stomp Boxes.

Crysis – Building Docs

Crysis – Drilling Templates