A Truly Dino Bluesbreaker Clone!

The Marshall Bluesbreaker is one of the all-time classic pedals which sought to re-create the sound of the legendary Marshall Bluesbreaker amplifier from 1962. Original units have gone out of production and command a fairly high price, and there are some recent re-issues that aren't terribly expensive, but aren't terribly cheap either. I'd previously built an AionFX version of the Bluesbreaker, the Cerulean, which adds some different clipping modes to the circuit, but I'd never built a "stock" Bluesbreaker clone. My friend at South Obolon FX was kind enough to make a Steggo version of his board, so I started from there for an awesome dinosaur version.

The circuit itself is not terribly complex, and the large PCB footprint left plenty of room for the logo and name of the board. Although this is a more classic pedal, I'm using almost all modern components for this particular build. The resistors are all 1% metal film. The film capacitors are all 5% tolerance metal film. There is one modern MLCC, and the electrolytic capacitors are all Nichicon. I'm using new 1N914 diodes for the clipping diodes, but I did sneak one of my classic Motorola 1N5817 diodes in as the polarity protection diode because, well, because it's blue for lack of a better justification. The new production TL072IP op amp is socketed as well.

The off-board wiring for the pedal is fairly straightforward. This particular PCB includes individual ground connections for both the audio and DC jacks, so I went ahead and used them instead of going with a star ground. It helps keep the wiring on the inside fairly neat. because of the spacing I went ahead and used individual wires to attach the 3PDT daughter board rather than trying to use ribbon cable. As per my normal practice, I went ahead and insulated all of the jack connections with heat shrink tubing.

For the enclosure art, I once again enlisted my Ukrainian friend Kate to provide the dinosaur mascot - our way cool Blues Brachiosaurus! I went with sort of a cool texture background and allowed the black of the enclosure to show through - which actually creates a really neat feeling texture on the top of the enclosure itself - sort of like skid plate. 

As for the sound - it's a Bluesbreaker. It tends to like lower gain pickups better than really hot pickups in my experience. Depending on the pickups and the amp, you can get anything from a fairly clean boost to a really nice dirty boost and light distortion. The volume control is on the light side, and you need to be at around at least 2:00 or so to get much above unity. 

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