Catalinbread Dreamcoat Preamp & Overdrive

Catalinbread Dreamcoat

The Catalinbread Dreamcoat began as an exploration of a specific ’60s and ’70s classic rock tone. It evolved into a multi-dimensional gain machine capable of anything between unruly sputtery fuzz and classic rock chime.

This is not meant to make you sound like a classic rock god. It inspires by using tools  otherwise be inaccessible.

The heart and soul of the Dreamcoat is a near-exact recreation of Aiwa’s TP-1011 reel-to-reel deck preamp. These can be found in ’60s and ’70s classic rock recordings.

All of the functionality of that unit is present, from sparkling cleans to powerful crunch and glassy leads. But the “Sat” control gives you an extra layer of grunt. This allows the Dreamcoat to range between near-dry tonal indifference to complete “melting-amp” Neil Young type tweed sounds.

A certain classic rock sound wasn’t just a tape deck, though.

Some players installed a passive inductor-based frequency “booster” into their guitars. These cut both sides of the spectrum around the resonant frequency of their guitar, giving the appearance of a frequency boost.

To that end, we’ve added a frequency booster circuit that doesn’t cut anything. This gives a richer tone with a little oomph where it counts.

To top it all off, we’ve included a clean blend circuit. It begins after the frequency boost and ends after the tape preamp. You can EQ the sum of your clean tone and dirt, all while preserving your pick attack and presence.

The whole shebang runs at 20V. This is higher than the original Aiwa, expanding its capabilities and delivering tons of headroom.

About the Aiwa TP1011

The TP-1011 accepts a microphone input and operates at as low as -60dBu, and guitars 20dBu higher. So a guitar signal naturally overloaded the front end, creating its signature distortion.

Unlike the original Aiwa unit that runs at 18V, the circuit didn’t really do the amp-melting thing until I increased the operating voltage to 20V, and so that’s where we stand.

The 20V operating voltage is supplied via a shunt-regulated charge pump. Plugging a standard 9V power supply into it does the trick.

When you adjust the Blend control, keep in mind that the “clean” sound is actually whatever you feed into the Dreamcoat. Running another pedal up front will allow you to blend the signals in parallel.

This is a boon for you gain stackers out there, or you can get creative with it. Try plugging in an ADT pedal or a subtle chorus up front and backing off the Blend control to let your cleans really jump out.

Controls

• FREQ: This controls the amount of boost at a specified frequency band, from 2.4KHz to 5KHz, which you set with the internal trimmer. When the knob is fully counter-clockwise, it’s out of the circuit. When you turn it up all the way, you’ll get a full 10dB boost at the selected frequency.
• BLEND: This control blends the signal coming out of the Freq control with the Aiwa deck circuit. Nudge it south-of-max to gain back some of your pick attack, and turn it all the way down to hear just the EQ’d dry signal. When all the way down, make sure you turn your master up to compensate and vice-versa.
• SAT: Controls the amount of feedback present in the first stage of the Aiwa unit. You can think of it as a “gain range” control. The default setting on the original is a hair past noon, everything else is extra. If you find that you are getting too much sputter, turn this control down.
• MIC VOL: This is the original “distortion” control of the Aiwa deck and controls the total “distortion” of the circuit.
• MASTER: You know what this does. You will never want for volume with the Dreamcoat, it can get punishingly loud. After all, the Aiwa was meant to drive speakers! As you adjust the Blend control, you may need to turn this up.