Cloning the Lovepedal JTM - a New One Knob Pedal!

As Steggo and Kyle announced earlier this week, there is a new entry in Kyle the Ankylosaurus' "one-knob pedal" line of effects - the Philovenator Overdrive. This one is a clone of the Lovepedal JTM with an added twist (which does add an extra control, but it creates a fairly fun and unique pedal in the process). The Lovepedal JTM itself is essentially mid-60's British tone in a box, but it's not exactly a cheap pedal with new examples running around $225 (US). The original just has one control that varies the volume at the clipping stage, so it was an ideal choice for a Steggo clone!

Starting with a customized board laid out by South Obolon FX, the Philovenator replicates the JTM circuit (which isn't terribly complicated), and adds an alternate clipping mode. For this build, all of the resistors are Yageo 1% metal film. The two film capacitors are both WIMA. The electrolytic capacitors are Nichicon. The transistor is a modern production 2N5089. There are two different clipping stages on the board that the user can toggle between with a SPST switch. 

Given I had an option of creating a different clipping stage, I wanted to make sure that I would get an appreciably different sound between the two modes. The stock JTM uses a pair of BAT46 Schottky diodes in the symmetrical clipping stage. These have a typically forward voltage of about 0.25V. For the alternate diodes, I went with the tried and true 1N4148 which have a forward voltage of about 0.86V, and are used in a lot of commercial distortion pedals.

As originally designed, the clipping mode switch would be internal, but I decided to go external with it. It was placed very close to the as default location for the potentiometer. I figured it would be easier to simply take the switch off board than flipping or moving the potentiometer, so that's the route I went. I used a little ribbon cable to wire up the SPST switch and had it pass through the enclosure to the left of the knob (as viewed from the top).

The rest of the wiring is fairly standard. I'm using Lumberg 1/4" phone jacks and a PedalPCB 3PDT stomp switch board. All of the wiring connections to the jacks are insulated with heat shrink tubing, and the LED is hand-wired (though the current limiting resistor resides on the PCB itself).

Getting the enclosure together for this build was a lot of fun. Once again, the dinosaur art was provided by Ukrainian digital artist @estelkatrin (Instagram). According to Wikipedia:

Philovenator is a troodontid, a group of small, bird-like, gracile maniraptorans. All troodontids have many unique features of the skull, such as closely spaced teeth in the lower jaw, and large numbers of teeth. Troodontids have sickle-claws and raptorial hands, and some of the highest non-avian encephalization quotients, meaning they were behaviorally advanced and had keen senses. 

The Art Deco background and border are both stock images licensed online to round out the design. I was also able to add some shading in Illustrator to highlight the dinosaur. I decided to go with a black "chicken-head" knob on this one to carry the vintage feel through. 

I'm hoping to get some sound demos up soon, but honestly this is another great little pedal. The "JTM" mode really nails the sound of the original pedal and when you flip the switch you get a really useful little distortion pedal.