Another Combo Pedal - Well, Sort Of! Cloning the ThorpyFx Heavy Water

The boost pedal market has exploded over the years. I believe part of the reason for the proliferation is some pedals tend to work better with specific amps, many pedals tends to work better with specific guitars, or more importantly specific pick-ups on those guitars. With many guitarists chasing specific or unique sounds, all of these subtle variations come into play. If you've watched any of the Anderton's guitar store videos on YouTube, you've likely encountered Danish Pete - a session guitarist and manager of their YouTube channel. He has a signature pedal called "The Dane" from ThorpyFx that combines a boost and distortion circuit (which would be a good future project...). There had been calls to produce the boost section as a standalone pedal, so ThorpyFx did just that, but took it one better. Instead of just having a single circuit, they created a dual effect pedal, the Heavy Water, which has the clean boost on the right, and a modified "grittier/dirtier" boost on the left. They also created a custom version with dual input/output jacks for people who wanted to create effects loops. I figured this would be a fun one to try since I already knew how to wire up a dual I/O jack pedal where it would function normally just using the input one and output two jacks (my recent Duo-Phase build). So in the final analysis, this is sort of a combo pedal as there are two circuits that can be accessed independently, it's marketed and sold as a single pedal normally.

Hoofing It! Cloning the EQD Hoof...

It's either a little late or a little early for Fuzz Friday, but I just got this beauty together and had to get it out there. The Earthquaker Devices Hoof is an extremely popular silicon/germanium hybrid fuzz pedal. New copies run about $179, so it's not incredibly expensive, but it's not really cheap either. It's a neat sounding pedal, and since you can never have too much fuzz, I figured it would be a great addition to the pedal board if nothing else!

Cloning the Fulltone OCD - The Ominous Carnivorous Dinosaur!

Founded in 1993, Fulltone made a variety of pedals over the years and was in many ways at the forefront of the boutique pedal market - in the US at least. The owner had been mired in some recent controversy and announced in August 2022 that it would be closing shop. If you go to the company website now, you get a Looney Toons "That's All Folks" banner, and that all of the individual pedals (which had been marked down) are sold out. The Fulltone OCD was a very popular overdrive pedal that, much like many popular pedals, underwent several parts transitions over the years. There are several variants, but I wanted to focus on some of the 1.X variants initially - especially the 1.4 which threw in a Germanium 1N34A transistor.

Not Just a Phase - Mu-Tron Bi-Phase Clone By PedalPCB

As I'd mentioned in my previous blog entry, I hadn't built many modulation pedals recently, and I figured it was time to remedy that. This is one I'd had going in the background for a while, but given the size and uniqueness of the build, I had to order additional parts and bits to actually make it happen. Based on the vintage Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, the PedalPCB Duo Phase an involved build, but in some ways is on the easy side for a modulation pedal - more on that in a bit. The Bi-Phase pedal itself, is a vintage unit that's found its way on both synths and guitars alike. Originals are long out of production, and vintage units run for quite a bit of money these days. There are apparently Chinese copies out there, but even those aren't exactly cheap.

Technical expert Steggi posing with her handiwork

Tone... In.... SPAAAACCCE!!! Cloning the EQD Space Spiral

Looking at the pantheon of available DIY effects pedals, you'll see a lot of distortion and overdrive pedals, a large number of boost and fuzz pedals, but then there tends to be a drop off as you get into modulation effects like chorus, delay, and flangers. Part of the reason for this is a lot of the classic analog modulation effects rely on long out of production integrated circuits, so even if you recreate the board exactly, you're missing critical components to actually make the effect work. There are, however, clones of many more modern pedals with modern integrated circuits, such as digital delay effects based on the PT2399 chip. One of these is the Earthquaker Devices Space Spiral - which can do anything from slapback delay, to a reel to real chorus, to absolutely psychedelic reverb and delay. It's not an incredibly expensive pedal, only about $199 new, but as there's a dearth of Steggo modulation pedals at this point, I thought it would be a good one to try out!

Mystery Meat - Cloning the New PRS Horsemeat

At the end of September, PRS announced their first three guitar effects pedals: a dual analog flanger called Wind Through the Trees, an optical compressor called Mary Cries, and a transparent overdrive called, of all things, Horsemeat. I'm forced to add yet another pedal to my list of awesome pedals with terrible names. That being said, in what has to be one of the shortest intervals between when a pedal is released and when it was first cloned, PedalPCB recently released the "Mystery Meat" - a clone of the Horsemeat overdrive pedal. With new pedals running just short of $250, and the few used ones out there starting at about $190, this is a great cloning candidate, so I decided to get cooking!

Steggo's Year in Review and Secret Lab Update!

Honestly, it's been an amazing year here at Steggo Studios, so before we go into the Christmas season, I wanted to write-up a year in review and 2023 preview! First, 2022 was the first year that Steggo Studios actually tried to sell pedals (at the urging of a friend), and on that front, things have succeeded better than I could have dreamed. The goal was to sell some pedals and basically support my hobby of building them, and with over 60 sold this year, I'm just amazed and grateful that so many people are enjoying the tone and the fun dinosaur themes! So without further ado, let's look forward to 2023 and see what's on tap!

It May Sound Kliche - Building the PedalPCB Kliche Mini Klon Clone!

When asked how many more Klon clones and Klon variants I'm going to build, the answer is pretty much always, "at least one more." I've built several different boards at this point - AionFX, Ceriatone, two different Tone Geek versions, a South Obolon FX version, and even a Puzzle Sounds (that I still need to work up an enclosure for!). However this is my first crack at a PedalPCB Klon clone. PedalPCB made up a set of validation boards for the special edition Kliche Mini (which has the dials offset like on the Klon KTR), and was nice enough to send me some!

Old School Tube Screamer Clone - The TS808

Along with the Big Muff Pi, the venerable Tube Screamer is one of the cornerstone effects pedals in the market. Both are available in a wide array of versions from the original manufacturer, and both have spawned a myriad of clones, modifications, and variants over the years. A couple of my favorite overdrive / boost pedals are Tube Screamer variants including the Tone Geek's version of the TS10 (my Velociraptor Screamer) and the Vemarum TSV808 (the Secret Spinosaurus). For this build, however, I'm going back to where it all started, the original TS808!

Cloning the Rare EQD Black Ash

The EQD Black Ash was a limited production fuzz pedal using a variety of vintage parts including carbon composition resistors and paper-in-oil capacitors. The total production was limited to 1500 units, and prices are rapidly rising at this point, with examples starting at roughly $300 and going up from there. When it came to cloning this particular pedal, I'd considered going with a vintage build like I've done with a variety of other pedals, but I've found they often have a higher noise floor than pedals with modern components so for this build I decided to go with modern components to validate the design and sound. I may go back and do a vintage build at some point in the future, though!