The Yacana CMOS Drive is a pedal that is based on the Way Huge Red Llama, which was the first commercial pedal released by Way Huge in 1992. The creator of Way Huge, Jeorge Tripps, was inspired to start building pedals after reading Craig Anderton’s book “Electronics Projects for Musicians” in 1978.

The Red Llama circuit is almost identical to the “Tube Sound Fuzz” circuit from Anderton’s book, with some slight tweaks to the part values. The Tube Sound Fuzz circuit itself dates back even earlier, as it was first published in Guitar Player Magazine in February 1977. It was the first known usage of a CMOS hex inverter (CD4049) to generate overdrive tones.

Each stage of the circuit acts as an inverting op-amp, but unlike traditional op-amps, they are easily overloaded and produce a unique and fantastic sound when this happens. In Anderton’s book, he simplified the circuit by removing the input op-amp stage, making it more sensitive to input impedance and more reactive with the guitar’s volume if the pedal is placed first in the signal chain.

The Yacana CMOS Drive is based on the Red Llama circuit, but it also includes a gain switch adapted from the EFPM version of the Tube Sound Fuzz. This switch allows for two gain modes, called “Rhythm” and “Lead,” with a third position in between. The pedal can be built with either the Red Llama version or the Tube Sound Fuzz version, with default values provided for the Red Llama and alternate values for the Tube Sound Fuzz.

Summary created by AI from the original source.