An All New Thagomizer... Almost Literally...

Unless you've been under a rock, you know I really like the Colorsound Power Boost circuit, especially clones that use vintage components. Unfortunately, there are a finite number of vintage components available in the world at this point, and eventually supplies will run out. Vintage components are also more expensive than their modern counterparts, so I wanted to build a Power Boost clone on the AionFX Nucleus board with new components to see what impact it made on the tone of the pedal.

So, at this point I did cheat a little on the parts. As you can see from the board above, all of the resistors are modern 1% Yageo metal film. The capacitors are modern WIMA, KEMET, and Nichicon (electroyitc). The diodes are all new as is the integrated circuit (though the IC is new on all of my builds as it is part of the 18V charge pump). However, the transistors are still the BC169 and BC184 combination I've used on all of my Thagomizers since the very first build. Those are still vintage, but I'm likely going to have to start going with modern substitutions, at least on this type of build, going forward.

As for the rest of the build and internals, it's pretty much exactly like all of the other Thagomizer builds I've done. I'm using a star ground on the input jack. All of the jack connections are heat shrink wrapped. These also include a battery snap as there is room for one in the enclosure.

The enclosure itself is in the same theme as the various Thagomizer I vintage pedals, but as this one has all "modern" components, I went with different art, fonts, and a different color. Tayda has recently released several new metallic colors, so I used this opportunity to try one out. This one is the metallic dark gold version, and I really like how it looks. I'm going to have to find ways to use it more going forward. The spacing on this version didn't line up exactly like I thought, so I may make adjustments to the art before making any additional enclosures.

In terms of sound, it sounds very similar to the vintage ones, but not identical. If anything, I'd say it has a slightly "brighter" tone - at least with my Chapman fed into my Boss Katana amplifier. I'll likely end up using this one as a "travel" pedal for lessons, etc., while the vintage one will stay at home unless there's a major performance in the works.