[might be branching in silly DIY project] What kind of pedal could get me close to this Orange micro crushed tone?

[Flurko]

Hi OSG,

Lately i've dug up my Orange Micro Crush mini amp, and I've enjoyed plugging a guitar in and playing it with headphones, late at night before bed.
It's main cool factor is objectively how cute it is (I mean, just look at it, it's adorable !), but on headphones the clean is pretty nice, and the distortion has its charms, if you lean into the harshness.

It turns out I really like how this distortion sounds with my lipstick'd 7 string, so much that I recorded a quick demo by plugging the headphone jack of the orange in my interface. I had to crank out the interface input AND the volume of the amp to have something audible, there's plenty of background noise, but it sounds like this :

https://soundcloud.com/mieuxdecorrosion ... ps9vLyjDNE
(harsh guitar sound warning, it's probably not for everyone)

Now my question for the collective hivemind of OSG is : Is there some kind of stombox that would sound like this ? Something cheap I hope, to sound this bad but fun ? I saw an old thread on a forum of someone comparing the schematic of the micro crush distortion circuit to a MXR Distortion +, but I know nothing about this kind of stuff.

Thanks in advance !

[marqueemoon]

That’s a really interesting sound.

My first thought is the top end attack from the lipsticks is really clangy and most of the distortion is happening below that.

Maybe something built for bass with a clean blend would do the trick.

Maybe a bitcrusher would also get you in this neighborhood.

[Flurko]

Thanks for the answer !
I had never tried recording this amp this way before, I didn't think the lipsticks were having such an impact on its distorted sound.

My first thought is the top end attack from the lipsticks is really clangy and most of the distortion is happening below that.

Just to be sure, I recorded a sample with my Jazzmaster and with my Epiphone SG, to have a benchmark with higher output single coils and standard humbuckers. The sound is way too thick this way, and doesn't clean up well when lowering the volume with the pots.

[Flurko]

I've looked a bit around but nothing seems to fit the bill.
It looks like the cheapest/easiest option would be to find a way to get an actual micro crush circuit in a pedal case.

I'm thinking about the following plan :

-buy a 2d orange micro crush, cuz I want to keep the one I have. I found one for cheap online, that's not the main problem.
-remove everything except the internal circuitry, maybe bypass the parts that are not the actual amp circuit it it's straightforward enough to do ?
-encase it in a pedal enclosure, and wire a linear boost after the headphones out to have a way to control the volume ? I already have a 'das lineal' booster wired somewhere, I hope it's easy enough to do. Maybe it's not even needed and there's something reducing the output to the headphones jack, that can be safely removed?

The main problem is, I've never built a pedal before, but I know how to solder and probably how to drill holes in a box.

[Zork]

Hm, I'd have to give it a try but I believe a Boss DS-1 with the gain very low and tone all the way up can get you pretty close. Maybe HM-2 as well with the gain at zero, highs up and lows down but it could still have too much gain. I think a lot of this sound results from the lack of a speaker really...