Finally a Dino Themed G-2 Clone... No Really!

I've been threaten... errr... promising to get around to finishing up my dinosaur themed G-2 clones for a while now, but they kept getting put on the back burner for other projects. This past weekend I decided it was high time to get them finished up! For more details on the pedal itself and some of the challenges one encountered making a reasonable clone of it, please refer to my original build from last May.

For this build, I immediately applied all of the learning from last year around the clipping diodes. In fact, the first components I added to these builds were the diodes themselves after I had verified the leakage current and voltage drop. From that point forward, the build was very straightforward. I'm using all 1% metal film resistors (Yageo and Speer). The film capacitors are WIMA and KEMET, with an emphasis on using 5% tolerance where possible (if I remember correctly the largest film capacitors are 10% tolerance). The electrolytic capacitors are all Nichicon. The transistors are BC549C like the original pedal, which is why they are all reversed relative to the silkscreen (which was set up for 2N5088 transistors).

Because this is a buffered pedal, it actually makes use of all of the main PCB and daughter board PBC connections typical to the AionFX layout (most of the non-buffered pedals only actually use four of the connections). I'm using ribbon cable here because it is easier. There is a toggle switch on the 3PDT daughter board that lets the user switch between buffered and true bypass. I typically run my Cornish effects in buffered bypass. As with all AionFX layouts, this one uses a star ground to the input jack, and all of the connections to the audio and power jacks are insulated with heat shrink tubing.

For the enclosure, we have a very suspicious looking pair of Gallimimus. I wonder what those two are up to? This pair of miscreants was painted by my wife - ADK - in the same medieval style she used for several dinosaur paintings. This is one of the last ones from that batch that I haven't showcased, but there are a couple more coming!

The pedal matches the sound of my previous G-2 builds, so there's no major surprise there. The G-2 always feels "darker" in tone than the other big muff clones I've built, but it definitely has its niche!