ANIMAL FACTORY AMPLIFICATION TLC2272 Pit Viper Guitar User Manual
- June 5, 2024
- ANIMAL FACTORY AMPLIFICATION
Table of Contents
ANIMAL FACTORY AMPLIFICATION TLC2272 Pit Viper Guitar User Manual
Congratulations! You are now the proud human to an AFA Pit Viper Pedal.
She’s the crawling queen snake, baby, and she rules your den. Seductive in silver, it’s hard to take your eyes off this serpent. Handle appropriately for smooth and responsive tones. Getting too comfortable, however, will result in this Animal striking with minimal warning and fatal consequence.
The Pit Viper is simple enough to plug-and-play, but do have a quick read through this very short manual to familiarize yourself with the controls…
The Animal Factory Amplification Pit Viper is an unabashedly solid-state overdrive with a very large voltage swing. With a bite that is at once poisonous and mesmerizing, it goes from a gritty not-totally-clean boost to a raw, full-fledged amp-on-full-tilt roar.
Using the three-way switches in tandem with the control knobs allows you to dial in varied clipping and compression textures. What’s more, it stacks superbly with other overdrives and sounds equally good on solid-state or tube amps.
This pedal is not just for guitars, either. A number of A-list musicians and producers (see our website for details) have used it on instruments as diverse as synths, vocals and parallel buss processing during tracking and mix down.
We’re very proud to present a pedal whose simplicity does not dilute Animal Factory’s obsessive design philosophies: idiosyncratic sounds, high addictive potential, stunning looks and generally not likely to leave your board soon.
SAFETY & TIPS
We attempt to build safe products. Here are some further cautions you should exercise while using them.
- Do not eat the Pit Viper.
- The Pit Viper was developed around a rail-to-rail opamp so that you can get higher voltage swing at a standard 9V pedal power. You should get superb performance at 9V itself. It can however be operated safely up to 15V with increasing and output swing. Do not exceed 15V at any given time, or operate it from e.g. an 18V supply. This will cause permanent damage to the circuit and is not covered under the warranty!
- Operate with a standard pedal power supply (not included) – Boss style negative center, 2.1mm, 9V DC.
- Your cat may take offence to the sounds made by Pit Viper. This is normal. If you do not have a cat, please adopt a cat (unless, of course, you are allergic ).
OBEDIENCE TRAINING
HOW TO CONTROL YOUR ANIMAL
TOXICITY – Gain knob. Turn CW to increase distortion.
HISS – Tone knob. Turn CW to cut treble.
VENOM – Volume knob.
FEAR: SOFT CLIPPING
MIDDLE: Off
LEFT: Audibly asymmetrical, loud clip. ATTACK LED lights up with level.
RIGHT: Complex zener clipping textures with more distortion in the higher frequencies and less saturated lows.
MALICE: HARD CLIPPING
MIDDLE: Off
LEFT: Lots of chug and grind in this position on higher gain settings.
RIGHT: More compression in the higher frequencies, softer attack and a more subtle overall breakup.
PERSONALIZE YOUR PET
DIY MODS FOR ADVANCED USERS
The Pit Viper is quite responsive to the use of different op-amp integrated circuits (ICs) in the circuit. Practically any LILA opamp in an 8-pin dual in- line package (DIP8) can be used here. The default opamp that this pedal ships with is the TLC2262. To make life a little easier for DlYers, the IC is installed in a socket. Before proceeding further, make sure the power supply is disconnected and the pedal is not receiving any power!
Open the pedal with a Philips head screwdriver to reveal the circuit board and
carefully pry out the IC. Try not to bend the legs, as this will make it hard
to put back in if required. ALWAYS note the orientation of the IC! Putting it
in backwards will almost certainly (and instantly) kill the chip. The dot on
the chip denotes pin 1, and lines up with the indent on the socket.
The other IC we highly recommend in this circuit is the TLC2272, which has a faster pick attack and a somewhat fuzzier sound overall. Great results were to be had from OPA2604 and OPA2134. JRC4558D sounds even more compressed. Please note that we do not provide technical support for DIY mods; you should know what you are doing!
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Power: 9-12V DC, approx. 30mA, Uses a 2.1 mm DC jack with negative center (Boss-style pedal standard power supply)
WARRANTY
All Animal Factory Amplification products, unless otherwise specified, are protected by a 2-year warranty on manufacturing and workmanship. This does not cover cosmetic damage by routine use or damages through user modification.
CONTACT US
animalfactoryamps
@animal_factor
animalfactoryamps