Put a Bird on It - Aion FX Cerulean

So here's another one that I'd gotten the PCB populated a few weeks ago, but just managed to finally finish up the enclosure - the Aion FX Cerulean based on the Marshall Bluesbreaker. While you can get a Marshall Bluesbreaker II pedal for a quite reasonable price, original Bluesbreakers seem to start around $600 these days. The Bluesbreaker is an amp-overdrive style pedal designed to reproduce the tone of the amplifier of the same name from the 1960s. The basic circuit was used as the basis for the King of Tone (which I have previously posted an entry on). Aion FX took a couple of cues from the King of Tone and also provided an option to incorporate functionality from the JHS Morning Glory V3 (which I didn't actually incorporate into my build). The documentation for the Cerulean implies that at some point a King of Tone version may be offered in the future as certain board components are left unpopulated.

Long Live the King (of Tone)!

Here's a recent project that I had a minor initial issue with, but is quickly turning in to one of my favorite pedals. This is The Knight of Tone from PCB Guitar Mania. The board is based on the King of Tone, another boutique pedal that is extremely popular. As with most out of production boutique pedals (edit - turns out it is still in production, but with a 3 year waiting list - yikes!), this one is now fairly expensive - in the $700 to $800 range for originals. Rather than sourcing my own parts, I ended up picking up the full kit from Das Musikding. You can get it with or without an enclosure, and the enclosure can be drilled or not. I went ahead and picked up a drilled enclosure and the whole thing cost me €55 - or about $65 at today's exchange rate. Not a bad savings!

How Many Parsecs?

So my latest project is something a little different - the Aion Parsec. The Parsec is based on the Systec Harmonic Energizer from the mid-70s. It's a nifty little filter/equalizer pedal that lets you get some really interesting tones if you want to mess around with it. It will take your guitar tone anywhere from very growly bass to fairly tinny treble. You can also do some basic boost with it if you play around with it. This is another one of those long out-of-production pedals that the "real thing" will cost you north of $1000 (I recently saw one on ebay for $1495), but building your own is far cheaper, and a heck of a lot of fun!

Aion Oceanid - Cornish OC-1 Optical Compressor Adaptation

Here's a project I literally finished up last night. Granted, the PCB had been populated a couple of weeks ago, but it took me a while to get the enclosure to a point where I was happy with it. The Aion Oceanid is quite a bit more complex than Acapulco I detailed in my previous blog entry, and is an adaptation of the Cornish OC-1. This brings me to one of the major benefits of building your own guitar effects pedals. The cheapest I've seen a Cornish OC-1 for sale is about $750. Some Cornish pedals blast through the $1000 mark. The Aion PCB will cost you $12, and the rest of the components (assuming you get good quality ones) should run you $50-$60, meaning you get a boutique pedal for an order of magnitude less cost - assuming you're willing to put the time in to build it.

An Easy One - The Acapulco Overdrive Kit

So I figured I'd start out the blog with a simple one, the Acapulco Overdrive kit from Das Musikding based on the Acapulco Gold from EarthQuaker Devices. I included links in case you want to go searching for this and forget to include "guitar pedal" in your Google search (insert winky face emoji here). In the interest of full disclosure, this is not the first pedal I built, or even built successfully, but it is an awesome little afternoon project!

Welcome to Steggo Studio Productions!

Welcome to my new blog covering one of my more recent interests - all things guitar. I've played music in one form or another for as long as I can remember, but guitar was never an instrument I'd picked up - well until COVID hit. With a lot of extra time at the house, I decided to take the plunge and pick up the electric guitar, and with the electric guitar suddenly comes "The Quest for Tone"! The dizzying array of tone and effects pedals available, and the prohibitive cost of many of the more unique ones, has led me down another rabbit hole - building my own effects pedals!