My Own Hentor Sportscaster Tribute!

Long time readers of this blog will know that I'm an absolutely huge Rush fan and that Alex Lifeson is one of my favorite guitarists. I love trying to learn their songs - not only because I've loved listening to them for many years, but because of how technical many are. It forces me to really expand on and develop my technique as a guitarist. As a pedal builder (who has ventured into amps and building guitar kits), I'm also fascinated by the gear that Alex has used over the years. My goal in developing the Dimetrodon Distortion pedal was to take the MXR Distortion+ as used by Alex, and update it a bit so it would work with solid state amplifiers to really nail his tone at the lower gain settings - which it does amazingly well! In terms of guitars, Alex used a wide range over the years starting out mainly with Gibsons (and ending up with Gibsons), but during the 1980s when Rush began to experiment more with synthesizers, Alex changed-up his guitar of choice. In the early part of that decade he used modified HSS Fender Stratocasters - which after a few iterations became known as the Hentor Sportscaster. As I enjoy playing Strats as well (given that David Gilmour is one of my other favorite guitarists), I thought it would be really great to have my own Hentor Sportscaster.

Alex's "Limelight" Hentor - a steal at $187,500!

A Fanciful Steggo Reverb Pedal

Reverb pedals occupy an interesting niche in the effects world. Many amplifiers have some form of reverb (either digital or spring) built in, while others don't. The reverb effect is designed to shape the amplifier's sound to replicate the effect of playing in a large room - sometimes complete with echos. Steggo received a request for a reverb pedal, and decided to go all in and create something fun!

A Two for One Overdrive Pedal!

The JHS pedals SuperBolt has long been a staple of many pedalboards as it's a really decent overdrive pedal. A while back, however, JHS released the limited edition "TacoBolt" - a different take on the SuperBolt. It was more of a gated fuzz than a overdrive / distortion in a lot of ways. It was allegedly discovered when a normal SuperBolt had been mis-biased. TacoBolts at this point start at about $275 on Reverb, while SuperBolts are typically cheaper. I'd gotten a request for a TacoBolt from a friend, so I went in search of a good board.

Updating the Miragaia

A couple of years ago, Steggo released an awesome doom fuzz clone using the PedalPCB Arkaim Fuzz board. The build actually ended up being surprisingly popular, and I've even built a custom version in a totally unique enclosure. That new enclosure came out so well, I decided it was time to go back and re-visit the original Miragaia enclosure, as Tayda had expanded the range of enclosure finishes available since I'd done the original design.

A Slightly Different Archaeopteryx Fuzz

Last month I finished up a fairly old school version of the Octavia fuzz pedal with a ton of ceramic capacitors, etc. I'd intended to build about three of these, but ran out of some of the more vintage bits to actually go full ceramic for all of the capacitors. Since I'd already populated the resistors for the third pedal, I decided to substitute some of the same red metallized film capacitors like I use in a lot of my Klon builds for the ceramics.

A Different Blues Driver Mod!

I've previously built a few versions of the Galaxie mod of the Boss Blues Drive BD-2 pedal. The most common of which is the version I'd sold as a part of Steggo's ongoing support of Ukraine's defense. There are other versions of the circuit out there, and I'd at one point (in the sadly far too distant past) gotten a request for the Keeley modded version of the pedal. A quick search of the internet showed that one of my favorite sources of all information pedal, the Tone Geek, had a write-up detailing his version of the Keeley mod (as it was used by John Mayer). I thought this was a great start, but decided to see if I could take things just one or two steps further. So here's Steggo's take on the Tone Geek's take on the Keeley mod of the Blues Driver. 

A New Dimetrodon Distortion Variant in an Amazing Enclosure!

The Dimetrodon Distortion was Steggo Studios first original pedal design. Like most analog guitar pedals these days, it has DNA that can be traced back to earlier designs, but it fills a niche that none of the designs it is based on don't - at least for the tones I've been after. Last year I'd given away a prototype version of the pedal when my Instagram channel hit 1000 followers. It is getting close to 1500 now, so I decided it was time for another giveaway, but this time with a few twists!