Second Son of Ben??? Steggo's Personal Preamp

A few weeks ago I finished up a Benson Preamp clone for a friend. He has an original unit, but wanted something smaller for his gigging board, so using the PedalPCB Son of Ben board I made him something that fits in a standard 125B enclosure size. His board has a lot of purple pedals on it, so I made his from a purple metallic enclosure with matching knobs using my laser etcher. I wanted to try something a little different on my copy - though it falls very much in the same theme.

The components used on this board are exactly the same as the ones used on the previous build (as I actually built the boards at the same time). The resistors are all 1% metal film. Most of the capacitors are 5% metal film WIMA, though the smaller (pF) values are actually silver mica. There are a few Nichicon electrolytic capacitors. The transistors are all new production J201.

Final assembly is almost exactly like before. I'm using my own "Steggo" 3PDT board on this one. As the board is fairly small, there would have technically been room for a battery, but as I generally don't use them, I didn't bother. For this build I fixed the enclosure so I didn't have to hand-wire the treble and bass potentiometers. The jack connections are all insulated with heat shrink tubing as well.

For the enclosure, I decided to go with a custom color Stomp Box Parts released called "Neutron Star." Most of these were B-stock as they'd had issues in powder coating. There were a couple of spots in the enclosure, but as I was laser etching and then re-polishing most of the enclosure anyway, I didn't see it as a big deal. The dark blue enclosure contrasts very well with the exposed aluminum from the laser etch.

After biasing the unit it was time to close it up. For custom jobs, I'm now doing some etching on the back plate as well. I started this with my pre-production Dimetrodon Distortion pedals, but liked it so much I decided use a modified version of it for custom pedals going forward.

I'm honestly really liking the tone I get from the pre-amp, and I'm going to try and figure out how to integrate this into my home board as a standard pedal. The bass control still seems a bit weak to me, but the drive and treble really add some good overdrive and even crunch to my tone.