Distortion/overdrive circuitry - looking for books

[Limak]

Hey there, I know most of you here are just consumers of the gear but I figured there would be some constructors too. I need some decent book about building distortion units/high gain channels for amps. Currently I am able to make some simple circuits like power amp with differential inputs and push-pull output stage and some other simple things like that. But turns out all my attempts at making a decent distortion were a complete failures. Well, what I actually managed to do is prove how shitty some of those transistor cheap-o amps with distortion channel are - by cranking up my power amp section(just this one, really) I managed to get almost replica of this crap cheap transistor distortion we all hate.

What I'm looking for is a book with some tips&tricks for transistor/tube distortion(though I focus on transistors currently, in fact from what I know well picked JFET and MOSFET can sound really close to tube when it comes to distortion and it's graceful recover) and for making it sound more musical. I got grip on basic electronics and calculations behind them(including amplifier stages design and filters design) so it doesn't need to be book for complete newbies.

Sorry for some geek-talk but I'm in desperate need of some decent literature and good metal tones is what I'm looking for and you guys here are nailing it down so I thought this is the best place to ask.

Cheers

 

[streetwise]

If you're interested in tube distortion or tube amps in general, I recommend Kevin O' Connor's 'TUT1' and Richard Kuehnel's 'Vacuum Tube Circuit Design: Guitar Amplifier preamps'

Don't know about solid state circuits though... I'm not much into them Here's something about the design of Tube Screamers: http://www.geofex.com/article_folders/tstech/tsxtech.htm