More NG-2 Clones!

The Cornish NG-2 is a high end fuzz pedal used most famously by John Mayer. I'd previously done a couple of clones in a hybrid Cornish style / dinosaur enclosure, but I really wanted to go with something more unique going forward. At the same time, I got a request for a couple of NG-2 pedals, but they wanted a custom enclosure similar to the original pedal. So, I had a lot of building to do!

All three (well technically four, but I'll get to that in a bit) builds were done simultaneously based on the PedalPCB Nugget Fuzz board. I used my normal modern component selection - Yageo and KAO Speer resistors for the most part (apart from the 360R that I had use an alternate brand), WIMA and KEMET film capacitors, Nichicon electrolytic capacitors, etc. Both of these include the C-Buffer boards as well, so it is a buffered rather than true bypass. I'm using 1N34A diodes (I've got a fairly large stock of them), though these are ones that just barely missed the "magic" number for my Klon builds. Once again, the boards went together well, though it is so neatly laid out, I tend to try and solder way too many components in one go! As for the fourth pedal (which will actually be my personal pedal) - it's not quite done yet. I was short one 51R resistor and one A50K potentiometer - so I couldn't finish it. 

The offboard wiring follows my normal standard of running everything to a star ground on the input jack. I'm also still using heat shrink tubing on all of the jack connections. For the standard offering (enclosure above) I left the LED in the normal location. I really like the new art - I basically redrew the Ngexisaurus from the previous pedal, and created a suitably Asian background for this Asian dinosaur (and threw in some watercolor effects when I added his fill colors). If you look closely at the gut shot, you'll also see I'm moving to white plastic 9V DC jacks for white enclosures - honestly just because I think it looks cool.

For the "more original" style enclosures, I sort of let the original enclosure be my guide. I've obviously changed the brand brand name and added a copious number of Steggos, but otherwise it is quite similar to the original. I wouldn't make anything like this for general sale at this point, but if someone wants something made directly, I'll work with them (to a point). No reasonable person could confuse an "Eggeaux Steggo" NG-2 for a Pete Cornish NG-2. I also ended up moving the LED so it would work better with this layout and running wires from the PCB to the bottom of the enclosure.

In terms of sound, running through my Boss Katana, they sounded exactly like every other NG-2 I'd built - which was pretty much always on the edge of breakup into some rather uncomfortable spaces. I decided I'd run it through my Bad Cat tube amp instead to see what difference it made. The short answer is... a LOT!!! This pedal clearly prefers tube amps to solid state amps, and went from "meh" to "amazing" in a heartbeat!