On Target! Cloning the EQD Arrows

The Earthquaker devices Arrows is a simple tone sculpting pre-amp booster. It stacks well with other pedals, taking the mud out of heavy fuzz pedals or brightening light boost pedals. It can also be used on its own to really make your signal stand out – especially on neck pickups. This project is the last of the first three pedals in Kyle the Ankylosaurus' "one knob" collection, and as with some previous Earthquaker Devices builds, I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I was going to.

Once again, this is a fairly simple circuit and build based on the South Obolon FX Morale Booster board, one of the early Ukraine support boards. It consists of only a few resistors, capacitors and one transistor (the diode is a simple reverse polarity protection diode). Since this is a modern, rather than vintage, build I used all new components - Yageo resistors, KEMET film resistors, Nichcon audio grade electrolytic capacitor, and one 2N5089 (not 5088) transistor. The resistors are angled because the board is set up for 1/8W (3.1mm) resistors, but I had a huge stock of the more typically used 1/4W, so I went with what I had - there was plenty of vertical room to accommodate them.

Once again I'm using the smaller 1590B enclosures for these, and even with the smaller enclosure there is plenty of room left inside. I could have included a battery connection, but I honestly don't know many people who use batteries on modern pedals, so I've left it out to leave more room for art and for the sake of simplicity. For these smaller enclosures I've been using Lumberg jacks with a star ground on the input. All of the jack-wire solder connections are covered in heat shrink tubing.

Archaeoceratops, meaning "ancient horned face", is a genus of basal neoceratopsian dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous (Aptian stage) of north central China. It appears to have been bipedal and quite small, reaching 0.9 m (3.0 ft) in length and 10 kg (22 lb) in body mass. It had a comparatively large head but no horns, possessing only a small bony frill projecting from the back of its head. For purposes of this pedal, the dinosaur’s name begins with “Arch” which was close enough for dino work to "archery" referring back to the original pedal name!

The enclosure itself came out a bit darker than I'd hoped. If I do any more, I may try and lighten it up a bit, but the overall effect is there. In terms of sound, honestly this is a great clean boost on its own. I haven't experimented with too many other pedals yet, but I'm planning on it, as this pedal is really a hidden gem.