Fresh Compressed Orange Juice?

This build is a clone of the Orange Squeezer compression circuit by Guitar PCB called the "Julius". I picked up the PCB for this project because it's pretty much the sound Mark Knopfler uses on "Sultans of Swing" - which I need a lot more practice before I'm competent at! This build itself is pretty straightforward with very few parts. Guitar PCB is a smaller outfit, so you get a parts list and some decent instructions, but unlike Aion FX there isn't a pre-populated shopping list with part numbers for Mouser or Tayda. I just added additional parts to an order I was making to cover the components needed for this build.

As you can see from the PCB above is - it's tiny! My one criticism of Guitar PCB boards in general is they tend to use all available space, which makes it hard to secure the board into my holder. There are also no holes for PCB standoffs. That wasn't a big deal on this particular board because (despite the instruction's indication to the contrary), you can use an on-board potentiometer which will at least give the board some stability. However there are other projects which require hand-wired potentiometers that make it difficult to secure the board.

I was able to source a JRC4558 for this project and I pulled a couple of 2N5457 transistors out of my stash. The build calls for a "germanium" diode, so I grabbed a D9 from my stash - I think it was a K but it may be a B - I forgot to write down which one I used and now I can't quite tell from the photo. Next time I open it up to adjust the bias I'll verify which flavor I used.

As I only had one potentiometer and I'm using aviation grade wiring from Tube Depot on my builds, I decided to leave the wires a bit long and not introduce additional strain in the solder joints on the potentiometer. I also moved the LED (which is a bi-color LED - red for bypass, green for active) to match the location on many of my other pedals (and because there was no drilling template included). There is a trimmer resistor included to adjust the compression. I haven't fully dialed it in yet, but so far the unit sounds great 

As to the enclosure - well, what color could it have been other than orange? I mean really??? This is a 125B from Tayda that I had drilled and UV printed with an orange tree. As this pedal only has one potentiometer, I decided to go with one of the big Russian BMP style knobs from Small Bear. This is a fun little pedal for some very specific songs / sounds, but I don't see it replacing some of my other compression pedals (including an upcoming one!) with broader capability.