A Custom Vintage Thagomizer!

Unless you've been under a rock, you'll know that the Colorsound Power Boost is one of Steggo's favorite pedals - especially with the volume knob mod. It can work anywhere from a mostly clean boost to a very nice dirty boost. It's also an essential piece of kit if you're wanting to try and replicate David Gilmour's pedal board. I've built several versions of the pedal, but the ones with vintage bits are usually my favorite. They're fun to build because, well if I'm being honest, I love to mess around with old components. To my ear they also sound a bit different, though I admit it could be confirmation bias. I don't think there's any inherent "mojo" in the bits, I just think they vary in different directions than modern components do. The vintage resistors and caps I've measured frequently tend to be a bit over spec, whereas most of the modern ones I've measured tend to be a bit under spec. 

An Interesting Take on the Klon Centaur - the Skelekloned Kentrosaurus

The Klon Centaur is one of the most popular overdrive circuits in the market today (largely because of the number of clones available). I've built several Klon clones of various types and by and large these all work extremely well. There is, however, an issue with the Klon. Because the design includes a charge pump, that charge pump and buffer can sometimes create interference when coupled with clock-driven modulation effects - like the vintage Electric Mistress and other similar effects. Since a lot of people (including me) like to couple a Klon with more vintage effects, I went in search of designs that eliminated the charge pump - and hopefully the interference with vintage modulation effects. I found a couple of options and this is the first one I've gotten built up.

Another Amazing Overdrive - Steggo's Layout of the Boneyard Emerald Green Overdrive

Chuck's Boneyard on the PedalPCB forum is an absolute wealth of information on pedal building as well as mods of famous (or not so famous) circuits. I've laid out boards for a few of the designs on the Boneyard and worked out a licensing arrangement to sell a few based on the schematics on the forum. All of the once I've breadboarded and laid out have been great pedals. A couple, however, reach the level of amazing pedals. The Celestial Engineering Timbre Man, which in Steggo livery is the Falcarius Overdrive, was the first to hit the "amazing" tier. The subject of this build report - Chuck's take on the Emerald Green Overdrive - is the second to hit that tier.

Heir and a Spare? Cloning the Prince of Tone

The Analogman Prince of Tone is a single channel version of the King of Tone - which is a two-channel pedal based on the Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal. While more common, and lower priced, than the King of Tone, the Prince of Tone still commands in excess of its $150 retail price on the secondary market. Since I'd built its big brother, I figured it was worth trying to build single channel version as well!

Harmonic Percolator Double Take - Albini Mod!

Steggo's new Harmonic Peolorosaurus board will not only build the "standard" version of the Harmonic Percolator, but the Albini modified version as well. I went ahead and built both versions of the circuit. This build report is therefore essentially and addendum to the previous one as there are only a few component changes.

Steggo's Take on the Harmonic Percolator!

One of the first pedals I built was AionFX's Particle - a modified version of the vintage Interfax Harmonic Percolator. It was a really neat Fuzz pedal, and AionFX provided recipes for both the normal unit and a version modified by Steve Albini. When I first started to learn to lay out my own boards, I wanted to get as much practice as possible. So I went ahead and laid out my own version of this circuit.

An Original Layout of an Amazing Boneyard Overdrive!

Learning to use the EasyEDA tool has opened up a lot of new opportunities for laying out unusual or unique designs. Recently there was a post on PedalPCB's Chuck's Boneyard detailing an update to an older Apocalypse Audio design. It looked interesting, so I decided to go ahead and test it out and all I can say is "Wow!" It is an amazing overdrive with a really strong and tight low-end.