A Fun and Unusual New Boss Clone - The OC-2 Octave!

It's been a little over a month since I finished up my most recent Boss clone builds (if memory serves, it was the double DS-1builds I did back in mid-March). This time around I'm doing something a little different - on a lot of levels. For this build, I'm using the PedalPCB Ocelot Octave board which clones the Boss OC-2 Octave pedal. Honestly, this is one of the more unusual pedals I've built as it adds an additional tone one and two octaves below whatever not you're playing. Octave 1 is useful across most guitar ranges, but I find Octave 2 gets a bit muddy depending on your pick attack if you're playing low bass notes on the guitar. On the higher strings, having the three octave tone is really pretty cool though. The OC-2 appears to be out of production, and used copies seem to run the gamut on Reverb from about $150 to over $300 depending on condition, so this is another great candidate for cloning!

Site and Pedal Sales Updates

So the (very) small scale manufacturing is now in full swing at Steggo. I'm not intending to go into a stand-alone business here, just small-scale sales of a few pedals to share the good tone and basically support the hobby. To that end, I've added a pedals for sale gadget on the right hand column. Those of you reading this on a mobile device will likely need to change to web emulation to actually see it - I remain convinced that mobile devices by and large provide absolute crap emulation of just about everything. I've also added links to the Steggo Facebook page as well as my Instagram account which is mostly Steggo related at this point. I've also added a "Contact Steggo!" gadget so you can email me with questions, orders, anything.

The Oddball Muff - The Op Amp Version...

Another Big Muff Pi variant! I know those of you who read this blog semi-regularly are shocked... shocked! That being said, this one is actually a bit different. In 1977, Electroharmonix engineer Howard Davis was tasked with redesigning the normal BMP circuit to use op-amps rather than transistors for the gain stages. While some purists do not consider the op-amp version to be a "real" Big Muff, it's simply called the version four on Kit Rae's page. One of the best known users of this particular variant is Billy Corgan who used the V4 on the 1991 Smashing Pumpkins album Siamese Dream among others. For this build I'm using the AionFX Corvus board in the base build configuration for the project incorporating the tone bypass toggle and the variable gain-stage modification developed by Analogguru. Original versions of the pedal can cost upwards of $500, but new versions can be had for about $100 - so it's a decent DIY opportunity, but nothing compared to more boutique offerings.

Dimetrodon Distortion - A Classic Hybrid Distortion Pedal

In my update about a week ago, I included some teasers for upcoming pedals that I had not yet included on the blog. One of these was the Steggo-san Overdrive which I featured a few days ago. In terms of overall appearance, that is still one of my favorite pedals. In terms of sound, today's pedal ranks right up there. The Dimetrodon Distortion combines the classic MXR Distortion+ circuit with the tone stack from a Big Muff Pi creating something of a hybrid pedal. I've worked up a couple of different prototypes of this design so far, and I think I've decided which way I want to go long-term, because if offers me the widest range of options for this particular circuit going forward.

Ukrainian Army BMP SN 002 Going to Auction

Over on Instagram there's been an auction of sorts going on to benefit Ukrainian relief efforts called "Pedals for Ukraine." A few weeks ago, I finished up my first early 90's Sovtek Big Muff Pi clone and at the time was trying to figure out a way to give back since I'd sourced a lot of the key components from Ukraine. Well, now that serial number 002 is completed, I've decided rather than trying to sell the pedal and give half to relief, I'm going to just donate it to the Pedals for Ukraine effort so all the funds get to those who need it - and someone gets a really great sounding pedal to boot!

Cloning the Limited Edition Way Huge Geisha Drive

One of the greatest things about DIY guitar pedals is that you're often free to recreate limited edition, rare, or out of production pedals that would be hard or impossible to get ahold of otherwise. The Way Huge Geisha Drive was a fairly niche overdrive / distortion pedal originally released back in around 2017. As far as I can tell, it looks like there were three enclosure variants produced - a red, a blue, and a special handwired edition limited to 40 units. Normal red / blue versions seem to be hovering around the $300 range, while the handwired versions go for over $1000. I'd etched myself a couple of boards using the Effects Layout tracing, and I've got both boards populated (though only one boxed). Of course, no sooner do I etch up my own boards, but I find that PedalPCB appears to have one as the Samurai project. I've ordered one of their boards for comparison, and I might go that route for future builds if I can make it work in my enclosure design without too many modifications. 

Eggeaux Steggo Cornish P-2 with Bypass Clone - $135

I just finished up my second Effects Layouts P-2 with the Cornish Bypass. This one is pretty much a carbon copy of the first one I built a few weeks ago. Price is $135 which is a real steal compared to retail on the originals!

Old School CMOS Overdrive - Cloning the Original EHX Hot Tubes

The 1970s was a time of rapid change and development in the electronics industry. Transistors became increasingly common, and the technology to fabricate them saw revolutionary jumps in density and fabrication. Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technologies became increasingly common, and were first applied to guitar fuzz effect pedals to emulate a "tube sound" in 1977. In 1978, Electro-harmonix released their own CMOS-based overdrive pedal, the Hot Tubes. It was only produced in its original form from 1978 to 1981 when EHX ran into financial issues. The pedal was eventually re-released as a "nano" series pedal in 2013 and in a dual pedal with the Crayon as the "Hot Wax" later. These are still in production and only run about $80, so while you can save a couple of bucks building your own, it's not one I'm going to produce in any volume!

Production Updates, Prices, Timeline, and Teasers!

Steggo Studios will have some pedals available for sale soon! I've been working in the background on the boards as mentioned in my previous blog entry - along with a few surprises because who doesn't love surprises! I've been waiting on enclosures from Tayda to arrive, and they hit the post earlier this week! So without further ado, here's "the plan" and planned inventory levels!

A New Klon - In a Convenient Travel Size - Redux!

This isn't my first Klon build. This isn't even my first Tone Geek Mini-taur build. However, as I ended up selling my Tone Geek BFK (The Klone Wars) to my guitar teacher - and that was the only one I'd built with carbon resistors - I figured I needed a replacement (never mind I have at least two other functional Klon clones). I'd also ordered the parts in case my aforementioned guitar teacher needed something in a 125B form factor rather than the full-size Klon / Ceriatone. Since I have sort of a "mid tier" part and "high-end" part build, I tried to get as close to the early Klon configuration as I could for this one. One of these days I need to do a tone shoot out...