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.

I picked up a series of enclosures from Tayda electronics and made up my own decals using clear waterslide transfer film and my laser printer. For this particular enclosure I decided to play on the Cerulean name and went with a pale blue. There's a bird called a Cerulean Warbler, and I decided to put one on the pedal. So, in effect, Portlandia fans, I "put a bird on it."

As you can see from the populated circuit board above, it's fairly straightforward. There is a trimmer resistor that you can use to adjust the presence, but I honestly haven't played with it much yet. It also includes a small army of diodes - ten 1N914 and two 3mm red diffused LEDs actually in the circuit itself. Other than that it is just a few resistors, capacitors, and one TL072 op amp.

I'm still honing my technique for gloss coating enclosures where I've made my own decals, but I think I've come up with a decent combination of gloss lacquers I can apply with my airbrush to protect the decals (and not destroy them in the process). I went with some fairly small knobs on this one, but I'm happy with the overall end effect.

    

As I mentioned previously, I haven't played much with the trimmer resistor yet, but I ultimately may just leave it where it is. At the current settings the overdrive lets me get a half decent approximation of the Signature guitar set up Alex Lifeson used for "Time Stand Still." I don't have a guitar with active single coils, but my Champan with the Bluesbreaker and my MXR Analog Chorus is sort of getting me there at this point - much better than most of my other pedals. I'm guessing that is because this is specifically designed to get you that "Marshall" sound and Alex was just using Marshall amps at this point.

So there you have it, another fun little pedal. I may have to try "Time Stand Still" with my Knight of Tone to see if the double boost buys me anything additional. I'm still trying to work up a recording set up to provide some tone demos on future blogs, but I'm not quite there yet! Stay tuned!