Old School Distortion + A Cool Enclosure!

A few weeks ago I posted the prototype of my Dimetrodon Distortion pedal, which melded a classic MXR Distortion+ pedal with a Big Muff Pi Tone stack. I have more of those coming soon, including some really fun variants, but today's subject is the very first Distortion+ variant I built together with its finally completed enclosure. A few months ago I was looking to expand the range of distortion pedals I had available, so I went hunting through the gear used by my favorite guitarists at various points in their career. Unless you've been under a rock, you'll know I'm a huge Alex Lifeson / Rush fan, so one of the pedals I decided to build was an MXR distortion as it was one of the pedals Alex used during the Moving Pictures era. For that initial build I went with the AionFX Aphelion, though I have a variety of other boards I can use (including my own) for future Distortion+ (and related) clones.

Much like the Big Muff Pi, the Distortion+ went through a lot of variants over its production run. The Aphelion not only supports variations to the base circuit, but includes two extra modifications: a treble-cut switch that changes out a capacitor at the input, and a diode selector that lets you go between germanium (Distortion+), silicon (250), or LEDs. The selector switch effectively gives you three different distortion pedals in one, and it may be something I try to incorporate into the Dimetrodon Distortion later on, but I prefer my addition of a true tone knob to the simple treble cut.

Despite the variety of builds, AionFX rates this as a Beginner build. I'd tend to agree with that - at least if you're building it in the base configuration in the instructions. If you try to build one of the variants or decide to experiment with some of the diodes. The parts count is low, even with the triple diode selection. For this particular build I went with almost all modern components, and you can tell that this was the angled 10K Ohm resistor era. The only "classic" parts I used were vintage 1N914 diodes for the silicon version of the circuit.

For the enclosure, I decided to go with something a bit original. I had tried to use decals on a hammered copper enclosure for my Boss HM-2 build, but given the extremely rough surface texture, that didn't turn out well at all. I ultimately ordered a new UV printed enclosure for that build (which looks great), but that left me with an unused hammered copper 125B. Since I was starting to do some of my own etching at this point, I thought an etched bronze top plate would look really cool. I decided to make the pedal name an homage to Rush's final studio album - Clockwork Angels - and go with a real steampunk theme. I had a bit of an overexposure problem right along one edge of the etch, but overall I think it came out killer. The pedal sounds great, and I may decide to make up a few more of these now that I have the negative and some extra bronze for the enclosure.