Even More Pi? A Violet Ram's Head 2 Build!

So, for those few of you who actually follow the blog, have you gotten the idea that I love the Big Muff Pi circuit, yet? If you're a fan as well, I definitely recommend Kit Rae's page covering all of the different variants of this iconic effects pedal. It has been an absolutely indispensable reference as I've tried to go through and build many of the different versions of this stomp box! As I mentioned in my announcement a few days ago, I'll likely have a few pedals for sale in the not so distant future, and the initial ones are likely to be BMP clones - so continue to watch this space.

That being said, this particular pedal was all for me! For this build I've gone back to AionFX's Halo board. It is a great board, and there is a spreadsheet that lets you build literally any version of the pedal you'd like - it even cross references the component codes on the board to the component codes on the circuit diagrams on the Kit Rae page. I'd already built a couple of versions of the '73 Gilmour Ram's Head (one of my two original Halo builds and the home etched PCB), a Russian Civil War / Red Army variant (also on a Halo board), and a Triangle (on a Tayda board). I'd heard great things about the Violet Ram's Head versions, especially the 2nd version, so I decided to go that route for this build. 

As you can see from the populated board above, I've gone with a bit of a mix of vintage and modern components this time around. The resistors are all modern metal film resistors with a 1% tolerance. The capacitors are mostly film as well, though many are older Panasonic units. Instead of using MLCC capacitors for the ones outside the signal path, I instead grabbed a couple of appropriately rated mica capacitors. The diodes are vintage 1N914s, and I used PN5133 transistors.

I finished up this enclosure while my main computer was still down, so I went with text only on the enclosure. I've found fonts that mimic what you'd see on the originals fairly closely, so I went with them. I used the same spray paint as I'd used on my earlier triangle build, and while basic, I think the final design looks reasonably good. I didn't bother labeling the mids modification on this one because I know what it is and it kept the enclosure a little less busy - especially since I wanted to call out the exact circuit used on the face.

So how does it sound? It's pretty amazing. It seems to have a bit less hiss than the Gilmour builds, but that could be because it has PN5133 rather than the old-style 2N5133 transistors. At this point it may actually displace my original '73 Gilmour Halo build on the board, but I haven't decided for certain yet. I need to play around with it a bit more. That being said, I can very highly recommend this particular build for this iconic effect.