I Scream, You Scream - Cloning the VFE Ice Scream

The VFE Ice Scream is a boutique overdrive / boost pedal that, according to their website, "...are designed to push higher gain amps into meltdown. It all starts with a mid boost stage before the gain circuit. Tune the voicing of the mid boost with the MID knob, and then use the variable low and high cuts to further sculpt your tone to cut through the mix."  Unfortunately VFE Pedals shut down around 2020, though there are Gerber files available for a lot of their designs (I actually picked up several, so there may be some cool odd builds in my future). You can still get new pedals for $199 or so, so they're not incredibly expensive... yet. PedalPCB offers a board for this pedal as the "Frost Drive" - and they offer three different "flavors" of the board (vanilla, mint, and sherbet) so I decided to take the plunge and build all three!

Because I was building three pedals, I had to be fairly careful to make sure that I kept the three variants straight. The three varieties differ in four resistors (identified as low, vol, min, and max on the board) and two capacitors (max and hi). One of the potentiometers for this build (C10K dual) is really difficult to acquire, so the instructions helpfully include changes needed to substitute a C100K dual potentiometer instead - which is much easier to get!

For this build, I'm using almost all modern components, as it is a modern pedal. The resistors are all 1%% metal film Yageo. The film capacitors are all WIMA or KEMET. The electrolytic capacitors are Nichicon. All of the ICs are original and socketed. the 1N914 diodes are all new production from Mouser (I think they're Onsemi). The 1N5817 reverse polarity protection diode is an older one I picked up from my local electronics parts store.

The original pedal has six potentiometers, but it appears a three are the 9mm variety based on the appearance of the pedal. This would make the interior a bit less crowded. Another challenge is the dual gang pot is in the bottom middle of the enclosure. PedalPCB offers a pot insulator, but these have been out of stock for a while. Fortunately I had a few left over from my Tone Geek Aqua Puss build I was able to cut down and use instead.

The wiring follows my normal process for all three pedals. I'm using a star ground on the input jack. The PedalPCB 3PDT daughter board is attached to the I/O jacks with aviation grade hookup wire, and it is attached to the main PCB with ribbon cable. The jacks are Switchcraft 111X.

I didn't end up moving the LED for these builds, but getting everything into the enclosure was a bit tight. It may be worth attaching everything to the board and then boxing it on these rather than using the enclosure itself to align the potentiometers onto the PCB.

There are several internal controls on the board as well - two trimmer resistors and two DIP switches. The switches control the clipping diodes (symmetrical vs. asymmetrical). The trimmer resistors control input impedance and the boost / cut frequency for the Tone knob. I typically have been running at about 50% on each.

The "Sherbet" Variant

For the enclosures I wanted to do something fun (as always). This time around the enclosure features an Azhdarchid - family of pterosaurs that includes some of the largest flying animals of all time. The ones on the enclosure are supposed to be on the large side (the largest Azhdarchids have wingspans between 33 and 39 feet!). I figured it would have likely let out a fairly significant screech, so it sort of (very) loosely fits in with the "scream" portion of the original name.

The "Mint" Variant

The background is an Asian art scene I'd licensed, which the dino itself is clip art that I've colored in tones to sort of go with the background. 

The Vanilla Base Pedal

Since I used the same basic art for all three pedals, I needed an easy way to tell the "Vanilla" version of the pedal from the "Sherbet" and "Mint" varieties (anyone else getting hungry?). I decided to simply change the colors of the pterosaur on each - mostly cream colored for vanilla, orange for sherbet, and green for mint. I also changed the LED color using warm white, orange, and green for vanilla, sherbet, and mint respectively.

All of the pedals are working flawlessly at this point, and they do not only provide a huge amount of gain, but the multi-band equalizer gives you a lot of tone control. I'm honestly still experimenting with these at this point to see which one(s) I like best and with what guitars. The only downside is unlike the new Tone Geek Vemuram TSV808 board, the switches controlling the clipping modes are internal rather than accessible from the top of the pedal. That makes it more difficult to change the character of the clipping on the fly - so you really pretty much have to dial it in and leave it there until you're in a place where you can take off the back.