I had a request for a custom vintage thagomizer build. While I'd done a vintage build with Allen-Bradley resistors on the South Obolon FX Thagomizer board, I'd never done one with predominantly Iskra resistors (eagle eyed readers will spot the one Allen-Bradley hiding in the middle of the PCB). For the most part, this build exactly mirrors the Thagomizer on my personal board with one or two minor substitutions. As always, I had a lot of fun getting the larger Iskra resistors to fit on the modern PCB - which of course gets amped up quite a bit when you try and get tropical fish capacitors to fit on the board! The transistors are all NOS as well. The only modern bits are in the charge pump portion of the circuit that takes the incoming 9V power and cranks it up to the 18V that the circuit is designed for.
Even with the big honkin' tropical fish capacitors, the board sits low enough in the enclosure so I can use Switchcraft 111X jacks for the audio in/out. They're a tad bit close to a couple of the the big capacitors, but not to where they interfere with actually plugging the pedal in. The DC jack is a Lumberg, but this new board/enclosure isn't designed for a battery. Per my normal process, I'm using my 3PDT daughter board for the switch and LED, and all of the connections to the jacks are insulated with heat shrink tubing.
For the enclosure, this one was a special request. I'd done a black text on orange before, but was asked if I could "reverse that." So now we have orange on black. I decided to take a couple of cues from my Secret Spinosaurus and snagged a black stomp switch. I also used the same anodized black nut for the switch and the same black aluminum knobs. I really love how the pedal came out, and it sounds amazing - just like my personal version with the same parts load out!
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