A New Violet Ram's Head 2 Big Mutt

So since it's been several months since I built a Big Muff clone (granted, the combo pedal I just finished includes a Big Muff, but it is more than just a Muff clone), I figured it was time to go ahead and test out some alternate configurations of the Loud Cancer board - and try out some different potentiometer orientations as well. One of my favorite variants of the BMP is the Violet Ram's Head 2, so I decided to give it a whirl!

Whereas I'd used the black version of the PCB in the Gilmoreosaurus, I also had some made up in purple (yes, largely because I like the Violet Ram's Head version of the pedal). I populated a couple of these boards at the same time as I was building the Gilmoreosaurus boards - so I used a similar mix of carbon film resistors and metal film capacitors. There are a few true ceramic capacitors for the pF values. The diodes are new 1N914s, and the transistors are new PN5133 from Mouser. 

Unlike my first builds with this board and the Gilmoreosaurus, I decided to try and go with a more conventional two over one control configuration on this build. I'd made up a few enclosures that were set up for the AionFX Halo board - but without the hole for the mids switch. I never ended up using them, so I repurposed them for this project. The volume and sustain pots have the center leg directly soldered to the board, and legs one and three are hand wired. Because the layout isn't perfect for this board, I went ahead and completely hand wired the tone pot. Going forward I'm going to set up an enclosure where I can hard solder leg two of all three pots and hand wire the other two. That way I'll have a standard control layout where the controls all work clockwise as expected (as the board as laid out has all of the controls turning counter-clockwise). 

Per my normal practice, I'm using my 3PDT daughter board with the LED onboard, and all of the jack connections are insulated with heat shrink tubing. I built up one with a battery snap, but the Switchcraft jack for the battery version ends up a bit close to the two film capacitors near the input jack. I may try and bring the knobs down in the dedicated enclosure for this board going forward to allow a little more room, but that might then run afoul of the 3PDT board and stomp switch. 

Apart from the deletion of the mids switch, the enclosure is exactly what I'd worked up for my '73 Gilmour Ram's head build using the AionFX board. Honestly I think I like this one just a bit better. I'd previously built a Violet Ram's Head 2 using a mix of modern and vintage components (the diodes were vintage and I think the PN5133 transistors were a batch of NOS I'd picked up from Pedalhacker). Tone wise this one compares very favorably. I'd built two fully expecting to drop both in my Reverb store, but honestly I like the sound so much, I had a Bilbo Baggins moment...

... the situation was exacerbated by the fact that I had no Gandalf telling me otherwise... and my wife thought it sounded yummy when I was playing some Gilmour. So there you have it - one for me, one for the site.