16-bit Four Octave Synth - Cloning the EQD Bit Commander

Carrying on yesterday's theme of unusual modulation pedals, I'd also gotten a request for a clone of the EQD Bit Commander. This is an analog synth pedal that will turn your guitar's tone into a square wave with four octaves (two down and one up) of tone. It really gives you that early 80's video game sound in one fairly customizable package. 

For this build I used the PedalPCB Captain Bit board. Like all PedalPCB boards, it's very well laid out and was easy to populate. All of the resistors are 1/4W metal film, and there are surprisingly few of them for a pedal with this many controls. There are also very few film capacitors (all of which are metal film 5% tolerance). There are several electrolytic capacitors, and these are all neatly arranged in two rows on the board in the same polarity direction. The only somewhat unusual component on the entire board is the TM011 transformer. These were a little hard to source as Mouser was out, but I was able to find some in Germany and have them shipped over.

Because I wanted to reposition the LED from the standard location on my final enclosure, I ended up using a jumper on the original LED location on the PCB itself. I ended up using one of my own 3PDT / LED daughter boards which were originally laid out by Drunk Beaver Pedals. As the main board already had the current limiting resistor for the LED present, I jumpered the CLR and brightness switch on the board. The hook-up wire is all aviation grade from Tube Depot and all of the jack connections are insulated with heat-shrink tubing.

I wanted to come up with a really fun and original enclosure for this build. As the sound of the pedal reminded me of old video games, I decided to run with that and found a 16-bit style Stegosaurus and background (two separate images) and added a Minecraft-like font. I chose the knobs to carry the theme through, and I'm really happy with the final result. This is one of the few pedals I have with a diffused red LED, as it really just goes with the whole theme.

The sound of the pedal matches the demos of the original I've found online. Much like the Rainbow Machine, this is a fairly niche use pedal - at least for me. It does the four octave square-wave sound extremely well, though, and I'm sure I'll find some fun things to do with it going forward!