Another Ceriatone??? The Goth Version...

When I finally finished my first Ceriatone Centura a few weeks ago, I still had a spare unpopulated board lying about. I'd picked it up several months ago along with the one I used for the gold enclosure built along with some other parts for... another project I'm working on. One I hope to feature on the blog in the future, but I digress! My previous Centura build sounds awesome, but now that I had one working, I really wanted to try and build one using the component load-out from the original Centura. So, I set about populating a new board!

As you can see from the photo above, I started with the same Centura PCB. This one is also not serialized, nor is it tied to a specific enclosure. I printed out the Ceriatone instructions to ensure I got the right mix of carbon film and metal film resistors. In fact, I used the Ceriatone recommendations to buy enough parts for several Klon clones - most of which will be appearing in the new Steggo Studios clone in the not so distant future! All of the capacitors <1uF are metal film capacitors. There is the one 1uF tanntalum capacitor, and then the normal mix of electrolytic capacitors (all polar this time around). The electrolytic capacitors are a mix of "cons" - Nichicon, Rubycon, etc. - basically what I could find that would fit and was high enough quality to bother with.

For the integrated circuits, I went ahead and upgraded the TL072 op amps to the "IP" rather than the "CP" version. The ICL7660SCPAZ is from Mouser. The diodes are 1N34A with a forward voltage as close to 0.35V as I could find (I think one is 0.358V the other is 0.362V). This measurement was taken on my digital multimeter, so I can't quote the amperage. I'm using a slightly modified star ground on the input, and this one even has the original Switchcraft 142AX DC power jack.

Which brings me to the enclosure. I guess this is sort of the "Goth Klon" variant - black with red knobs. Honestly I think I like it a bit better than the "bling" of the gold version. Because this one uses the original Switchcraft DC jack, I have to use an adaptor to power it. It also works beautifully on battery power as well.