Cloning the Ubiquitous EQD Plumes

The Earthquaker Devices Plumes is an almost ubiquitous overdrive pedal with three different tone settings - LED distortion, boost, and silicon distortion. It is a neat little pedal, and its low price (around $100 new) makes it a great point of entry for newer guitarists. It has a good enough voice that you'd want to keep it around on the pedal board which doubtless contributes to its enduring popularity. For this build I'm using the PedalPCB Greengage Overdrive board. Once again PedalPCB laid out a nice board with plenty of room for all of the components.

As this is an inexpensive pedal, there is nothing exceptionally complex about the build. All of the parts are fairly basic, with no exotic magic diodes, rare transistors, or out of production IC's to add cost and complexity to the build. The circuit is also fairly straightforward with the distortion clipping being done by two 3mm red LEDs or three 1N4148 diodes on the silicon side. There are a pair of TL072 op amps and TC1044SCPA to handle the voltage switching. As always, I went with the highest quality parts I could justify in this build (1% Yageo / KAO Speer resistors, WIMA / Kemet capacitors, Nicicon Electrolytics). All of the ICs are socketed as well.

The hookup wiring follows my current best practice using a 3PDT daughter board from PedalPCB to run four strand ribbon cable between the switch and the main PCB itself. I'm using a star ground on the input jack. Both the input and output jacks have had their locator holes in the enclosure sanded back to expose metal so there is a solid ground to the enclosure itself. All of the connections on the DC jack and input/output jacks are covered in heat shrink tubing to protect them.

At this point I'm just using a standard true bypass 3PDT switch for the pedal. I have read that the original has a momentary switch that can be used as both instantaneous boost / distortion or tripped normally. I haven't played with the "real thing" (beyond seeing several YouTube demos to ensure I got the sound right) to see if that's true - so for any future pedals if that mod is possible I may go that route if it is.

Photo Credit: u/samnewmanmusic on Reddit

Taking a step back, the Plumes pedal itself has a bit of a cult following as well. There are a myriad of enclosure variations available, with guitarists chasing some of the rarer colors to add to their board. Reddit user samnewmanmusic posted the photo above which I think is an amazingly good look at many (though I doubt all) of the variations of this pedal. So, with all of the variations of this pedal, I knew I had to do something fun for the enclosure, with a nod to the original but bringing in the dinosaur theme common to many of Steggo's pedals, and then I had an idea (be afraid, be very afraid!). 

Art Credit DK Findout

As it turns out, many dinosaurs which we originally thought of as scaly reptiles actually have more in common with birds. This was noted in the original Jurassic Park movie in the 1990s, but it wasn't until later that the fact that many dinosaurs (like the velociraptor above), actually had feathers became well-known. So the "turkey" line from the original movie was actually more accurate than first realized!

Terror Bird size - art credit NPR

In more recent times (geologically speaking), after the dinosaurs became extinct, large birds in the Phorusrhacid family filled the same predatory ecological niche that dinosaurs like T-rex would have millions of years previously. In fact, their body conformation mirrors that of the T-rex in some ways with a large head, long legs, and small forelimbs. These "terror birds" stood roughly 10 feet (over 3m) high and were fairly agile. Yet another very big turkey to be afraid of!

So in honor of feathered dinosaurs and large predatory terror birds of ages past, I give you the "Plumage" overdrive! All of the art for this pedal is adapted from licensed Adobe stock images. At the bottom we have a friendly terror bird and velociraptor in a lovely pastoral setting as wispy clouds float overhead. I found a font that was close enough to the original Plumes font so the DNA of the pedal is clear, but all of the art is free and clear. 

In terms of the sound of the pedal, honestly I'm kicking myself a bit for not trying one out sooner. It is a very solid pedal, and if you could only carry a couple of pedals gigging or traveling, this is one you'd probably want to include. Both of the distortion settings are good (you will need to increase the level in the silicon setting as there is a volume drop off going from LED to silicon - which is normal) and the boost setting is really nice. If you crank the level you can get your amp to do some of the distortion for you!