Dinosaural Tube Bender Clone - the Wyvern!

So this build is a clone of another rare beast, the Dinosaural Tube Bender. I've honestly never seen one for sale, but it does have an interesting history. Designed by Dan Coggins and originally published as a DIY project in the UK version of Guitar Magazine, Dan made additional tweaks to the design and released it under his Dinosaural brand, with only about 140 being produced in the original run from 2003-2007 (with an additional 12 being built from original components in 2016). Aion FX traced one of the production models and has released it as the Wyvern. 

Unlike the OTC-201, the Tube Bender / Wyvern design is relatively simple with only a few resistors and capacitors. Most of the work is being done by the four silicon based transistors. The original uses a mix of BC307B and BC549C transistors. I didn't have a BC307B, but I did have BC549C transistors, so I used those in the pedal (the three transistors in the photo above reversed to the silkscreen). The US equivalent of the BC307B is the 2N3906 which is the one transistor that actually follows the silkscreen. 

For the enclosure I decided to once again do something fun, and since I liked the Aion PCB name, I decided to just go with the Wyvern name and pick up some fun art online. Once again the labels ended up a little closer to the knobs than desired, but the photo above makes it look like they overlap (which they don't) because of the forced camera perspective.

The pedal itself reminds me a bit of the tube screamer - though it doesn't give the same level of punch a my Tone Geek Valve Screamer (which I'll detail in a future blog). It is a fun little pedal I need to work more with to understand what all it will buy me.