Taking everything I learned from these different versions, I focused on the two circuits I thought sounded the best, the Ross Distortion and the DeArmond Square Wave.
Using those as my starting point, I began working on my own version of the Distortion+ circuit. I wanted the gain to be warmer and fuller, with more punch, and I wanted to add a tone control that worked well with the circuit.
Another issue I wanted to fix was the lack of output. On many of these pedals, the volume has to be nearly maxed out just to reach unity gain. I wanted a lot more output available so the pedal could also be used to push an amplifier harder.
I decided to use a dual op-amp and use the second half to boost the output. I also developed a tone control that gave the pedal a useful range without changing the basic character of the circuit.
That first version became the Halo Bender Distortion.
The Halo Bender did well, but since I was already known mostly for fuzz pedals, I think it was somewhat overlooked.
Years later, a friend told me he had been using the Halo Bender with the gain turned down and was getting early 1970s Jerry Garcia-style tones from it. He suggested that I revisit the circuit and make a lower gain version.
I went back to the circuit and reduced the gain to about half of what the Halo Bender had. It still had the warmth and punch I liked about the Halo Bender, but the lower gain opened up a much wider range of sounds.
With the new circuit came a new name, the Dire Wolf.
The Dire Wolf did very well, especially with Grateful Dead fans, but I always felt the circuit could do much more than that. Eventually, I changed the graphics to move away from the Grateful Dead theme and give the pedal its own identity.
As more players outside of the Grateful Dead world started using it, I began hearing from people playing all kinds of music who were telling me how much they loved the pedal.
After a while, I started experimenting with different versions of the circuit.
One of those became the limited edition Crush'd. It used the basic Dire Wolf circuit but replaced the germanium clipping diodes with silicon diodes. This gave it a harder, more immediate distortion with more output compared with the smoother, more compressed sound of the Dire Wolf's germanium diodes.
There was also the limited edition Touch of Grey, which put the Dire Wolf circuit into a vintage-style enclosure, and the Dire Wolf Deluxe, which added a germanium boost in front of the Dire Wolf circuit.
Even though the Big Muff will always be my favorite circuit, the Distortion+ has been almost as important to me.
It was the first pedal I ever built, and just like the Big Muff, it sent me down another decades-long rabbit hole of tracing circuits, comparing versions, and experimenting with different ideas. Eventually, all of that led to the Dire Wolf.