A Custom Vintage Thagomizer!

Unless you've been under a rock, you'll know that the Colorsound Power Boost is one of Steggo's favorite pedals - especially with the volume knob mod. It can work anywhere from a mostly clean boost to a very nice dirty boost. It's also an essential piece of kit if you're wanting to try and replicate David Gilmour's pedal board. I've built several versions of the pedal, but the ones with vintage bits are usually my favorite. They're fun to build because, well if I'm being honest, I love to mess around with old components. To my ear they also sound a bit different, though I admit it could be confirmation bias. I don't think there's any inherent "mojo" in the bits, I just think they vary in different directions than modern components do. The vintage resistors and caps I've measured frequently tend to be a bit over spec, whereas most of the modern ones I've measured tend to be a bit under spec. 

An Interesting Take on the Klon Centaur - the Skelekloned Kentrosaurus

The Klon Centaur is one of the most popular overdrive circuits in the market today (largely because of the number of clones available). I've built several Klon clones of various types and by and large these all work extremely well. There is, however, an issue with the Klon. Because the design includes a charge pump, that charge pump and buffer can sometimes create interference when coupled with clock-driven modulation effects - like the vintage Electric Mistress and other similar effects. Since a lot of people (including me) like to couple a Klon with more vintage effects, I went in search of designs that eliminated the charge pump - and hopefully the interference with vintage modulation effects. I found a couple of options and this is the first one I've gotten built up.

Another Amazing Overdrive - Steggo's Layout of the Boneyard Emerald Green Overdrive

Chuck's Boneyard on the PedalPCB forum is an absolute wealth of information on pedal building as well as mods of famous (or not so famous) circuits. I've laid out boards for a few of the designs on the Boneyard and worked out a licensing arrangement to sell a few based on the schematics on the forum. All of the once I've breadboarded and laid out have been great pedals. A couple, however, reach the level of amazing pedals. The Celestial Engineering Timbre Man, which in Steggo livery is the Falcarius Overdrive, was the first to hit the "amazing" tier. The subject of this build report - Chuck's take on the Emerald Green Overdrive - is the second to hit that tier.

Heir and a Spare? Cloning the Prince of Tone

The Analogman Prince of Tone is a single channel version of the King of Tone - which is a two-channel pedal based on the Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal. While more common, and lower priced, than the King of Tone, the Prince of Tone still commands in excess of its $150 retail price on the secondary market. Since I'd built its big brother, I figured it was worth trying to build single channel version as well!

Harmonic Percolator Double Take - Albini Mod!

Steggo's new Harmonic Peolorosaurus board will not only build the "standard" version of the Harmonic Percolator, but the Albini modified version as well. I went ahead and built both versions of the circuit. This build report is therefore essentially and addendum to the previous one as there are only a few component changes.

Steggo's Take on the Harmonic Percolator!

One of the first pedals I built was AionFX's Particle - a modified version of the vintage Interfax Harmonic Percolator. It was a really neat Fuzz pedal, and AionFX provided recipes for both the normal unit and a version modified by Steve Albini. When I first started to learn to lay out my own boards, I wanted to get as much practice as possible. So I went ahead and laid out my own version of this circuit.

An Original Layout of an Amazing Boneyard Overdrive!

Learning to use the EasyEDA tool has opened up a lot of new opportunities for laying out unusual or unique designs. Recently there was a post on PedalPCB's Chuck's Boneyard detailing an update to an older Apocalypse Audio design. It looked interesting, so I decided to go ahead and test it out and all I can say is "Wow!" It is an amazing overdrive with a really strong and tight low-end.

A Famous 1980's Vintage Chorus - With a Purple Dinosaur???

As a college student in the late 80's and early 90's, it was amazing to witness the tectonic shift in musical styles over such a short period of time. One of the seminal releases of the era was Nirvana's Nevermind, released in 1991, which almost overnight ended the reign of hair bands and ushered in the era of alternative rock spearheaded by the Seattle grunge scene. The second single from the album, "Come as You Are," featured an iconic watery guitar riff played through the original iteration of the EHX Small Clone chorus pedal (with some post production) which was only built from 1979 to 1883. While you can get a modern version of the Small Clone today, there are some differences to the circuit which result in a different sound from the pedal. AionFX has released a modified version of the original as the Lithium project, so I absolutely had to build at least one!

The Dimetrodon Distortion - In Miniature!

Last June Steggo released the first original in-house pedal - the Dimetrodon Distortion. In one version or another it's become a permanent fixture on my pedal board able to do anything from overdrive to serious doomy distortion all in one package. I've made a lot of them, but I'd really love to see the pedal really take off and sell at a level that some of the medium-sized boutique makers reach (in the range of 50-100 pedals / year as opposed to 10-20). Given my current time constraints, I'd need to find a way to streamline some of the production of a version of the Dimetrodon to reach that production level (as I don't want to just continually make one pedal). I'd followed a recent release from Supercool Pedals (the Thneed - which is a great pedal BTW!), and that pedal is entirely SMD. Looking at that pedal as an example, I wondered if I could do something similar with the Dimetrodon without sacrificing the tone, so the Dimetrodon Mini was born!

Quick 5F2-A Update!

Late last month I posted my first amplifier build - a Mojotone 5F2-A Tweed Princeton. I've got to say, a month in and I'm absolutely loving that amp. I decided to put it in our upstairs family room and sell the Fender Champion 20 amp I had up there (and to be honest had rarely played because I honestly didn't like the amp that much). With the Tweed upstairs, I've actually been splitting my practice time a lot more between my downstairs office (where most of the guitars and amps live) and the family room (where I only have the one amp, no pedals - gasp! - and one guitar). That being said, there was one detail missing from the amp...

Revisiting an Old BMP Variant - With a New Board!

A little over a year ago I finished up a build of a really high gain and doomy Big Muff variant, Frantone's The Sweet. I had used a hand etched board from Effects Layouts and it came out pretty good overall. It sounded pretty much like all of the demos I found online. I'd tried to etch a couple more boards, but ran into some issues with my resist. Fast forward a few months and I'm learning to lay out my own boards. I figured something like this would be good practice as it is a bit more detailed than most of the early ones I'd been working on. So I got cracking and came up with my own PCB - no etching required!

Upping the Amp-erage - Building the Mojotone 5F2-A Tweed Amp Kit

I've been building pedals for several years now, but like any gateway dru... errr... hobby, I soon discovered that there were people who built their own amplifiers as well. Much like with guitar pedals, being able to build your own amp opens up options that may not normally be available because the amplifiers are rare, expensive, or likely both. Even if it is a more common amp style, building one yourself can often be cheaper. It also allows customization and choice of components to create a unique sound. I'd started my first amp project about 1.5 years ago, but sort of got bogged down and intimidated by the scope. I decided it would be advisable to maybe try a slightly more entry-level build to understand the ups and downs of the process a bit better. Mojotone offers a variety of kits with good documentation, wiring diagrams, and schematics. They aren't incredibly cheap, but all of their designs are well-proven. Their easiest kit is the 5F1 Tweed based on the 1950's vintage 5 Watt amplifier. This was a little more basic than I wanted to go as it only has a volume with no tone knob, so I went with the 5F2-A Tweed Princeton, which was first introduced in 1957 (and should pair up really well with my '57 American Vintage 2 Stratocaster). 

A David Gilmour Inspired Strat - Redux

A little over two years ago I put together a parts-caster using the EMG DG20 pickup set. This set of pickups was used by David Gilmour starting in around 1985 at the Live Aid concert. He'd continue to use the active pickups through about 2005 when he would return to the Black Strat and it's traditional single coils. When I first got the EMG DG20 together, it sounded good - by itself. Unfortunately most of the Gilmour sounds and pedals I'm trying to emulate are from the earlier albums, and the active pickups didn't stack well with my amplifiers and effects pedals. So given I have many guitars and this one wasn't being played - I had two options. I could try and sell it (the market for parts-casters as a unit is not good), or I could pull out the active pickups and re-wire it with single coils. After some unsuccessful attempts at the former, I settled on the latter, and I'm very happy I did!

Updating a Most Tranquil Steggo Pedal!

One of my favorite enclosures and pedals was the Steggo take on the Zendrive (which has since been re-introduced by Warm Audio as the Warmdrive). I'd initially used the AionFX board for my builds, but my friend at South Obolon FX released a version of this board and was kind enough to make me a Steggo version. I'd built one up a few months ago, but I've finally gotten a few more done for the shop!

A Vintage Style Dimetrodon!

The Steggo Dimetrodon Distortion is based on the vintage Distortion+ circuit, but up to this point I'd only used all modern components in my Dimetrodon builds. Given the original Distortion+ dates from the 70's I thought it would be fun to look for old gut shots of the pedal to see what sort of components were used on the early iterations of that pedal and test out the Dimetrodon with something similar. I had also recently built a couple of Dimetrodon Distortion pedals with the Sovtek tone stack, but I didn't have one for personal use, so this build let me sort of kill two birds with one stone!

Old School MXR Distortion + PCB - Image from Premier Guitar