Way Huge Aqua Puss Mk I AP2 Clone

Out of production pedals have started to reach fairly dizzying heights in terms of price. The Klon Centaur is well-known for high prices, but when you think of expensive pedals, something like the Way Huge Aqua Puss may not come immediately to mind. After all, you can buy a current production Aqua Puss for about $150 brand new. However, the one that is available today is the Mark III, and it sounds different than its earlier incarnations. One of the most prized versions of the pedal is the Mark I AP2 that uses the MN3005 BBD chip, and you can currently get an original on Reverb for $4250. Fortunately the Tone Geek has a PCB clone of the original for a far more reasonable price - as long as you can find all of the parts!

For this build I went ahead and just ordered the Mouser BOM on the Tone Geek page. This part load out best mirrors the original Mark I units. I couldn't find an original MN3005 BBD chip, but there is an Xvive Audio reproduction which can be had for a fairly reasonable price. If you're going to build one of these yourself, I'd advise making sure you get the BBD and the MN3101 clock driver chips from as reputable sources as you can. There are a lot of counterfeits out there, and fakes are unlikely to function properly in the circuit. The resistors are mostly carbon film, with a lot of film and a few ceramic capacitors. Note, in the photo above the SA571 chip is reversed, the correct orientation is below. The fact that it had a dot and an indentation threw me off initially.

Wiring for the pedal is fairly manual with no daughter board for the 3PDT switch (like the original). My wiring is a bit more "spaghetti" than the original pedal, but hopefully I can neaten that up on any future builds. The wiring diagram recommended a shielded wire from the input jack to the switch. I decided to go one better and run shielded on both the input and output. I doubt it makes a difference, but it was easy enough to do since I had the wire available. There wasn't room for a battery in the current enclosure, though if I move around the stomp switch location, I may be able to add one in the future.

The Tone Geek board is designed to drop into an Aqua Puss Mk 2 enclosure. The Mark 2 pedal can be had for about $90 used, but I have an aversion to just junking a perfectly good pedal, and $90 is a lot to pay for an enclosure! Fortunately there is now a face place and drilling template available for a 1590BBS enclosure, so that's the way I decided to go. At this point the enclosure is just a basic black sand finish, and it sort of has that "Lord Vader, your delay pedal is ready..." vibe to it. I've done an initial calibration of the clock and bias with my oscilloscope, but I'm not quite satisfied with the cancel calibration yet. That being said, the pedal sounds great so far - pretty much dead on like the original!