An Alternate Brachyceratops Overdrive

A little over a month ago I posted a new combo pedal build I'd gotten a request for - a combo I likely should have done long ago - a Klon plus a Bluesbreaker circuit. I sort of went all out on that original build as I used one of the amazing Tone Geek Mini-Taur boards and paired it with a brand new in-house layout of the Bluesbreaker that provides early and late tone options along with clipping options. It came out really well, and included an order reverse switch. However, I wanted to do a version using the same technique I had used on my BMP / power-boost combo pedal. In that version, there are four jacks - you can't reverse the order on the fly - that has to be done with patch cables, but you can use the pedals independently or include some sort of effects loop between them. 

The Klon side of the board was built as before with a mix of carbon film and metal film resistors. The capacitors below 1uF are all metal film. I used the "early" mix of bipolar and polar electrolytic capacitors for this build. I also hand picked and matched the diodes based on the Tone Geek's recommendation for voltage drop. I generally have to audition about 10-12 diodes to get the two I really want for a Klon build. Fortunately I have other distortion pedal builds that can handle the overflow! The big change this time is I used a brand new daughterboard for the stomp switch. I really hate hand-wiring switches and LEDs where possible, and this combo design required me to do both! So "Steggi" sat down and laid out a really useful daughter board that incorporates a 3PDT switch (it makes it easy to match switches in mixed combo pedals) and allows you to place the LED on either side of the stomp switch without hand wiring! It's all connected to the main board via ribbon cable. Because the Klon typically uses a 2PDT switch, technically the center row of solder lugs isn't used and I didn't actually need to solder them in, but it looks better this way!

The Bluesbreaker side is essentially unchanged from last time - well - if I'm being honest there is one difference. My first run of prototype boards had the potentiometers reversed. The part I normally use for an Alpha potentiometer in EasyEDA needs to be placed on the bottom of the board to have the correct orientation. These were the opposite. I corrected this on my second set of boards, but as this one is my personal prototype, I went ahead and used the validation board.

The wiring is identical to my Big Muff / Power Boost clone - which I originally came across in the PedalPCB DuoPhase. The advantage is that you can have a single in / single out if you want to use the pedal stock. Alternately you can patch the I/O to reverse the order with cables. You can also add an effects loop between the pedals, or you can use the pedals on two totally different effects loops on their own. As always, I'm using heat shrink tubing to insulate the jack connections, and all of the jack connections are made with aviation grade wire.

From the front, the art is exactly the same. This version lacks the knob at the bottom for the order reverse, but that is the main visual difference. As I mentioned in the original article, the dinosaur mascot this time is the Brachyceratops. According to Wikipedia:

“Brachyceratops ('short horned face') is a dubious genus of ceratopsian dinosaur known only from partial juvenile specimens dating to the late Cretaceous Period of Montana, United States. Brachyceratops has historically been known from juvenile remains, with one specimen having since been re-classified as Rubeosaurus ovatus.”

The dinosaur art once again comes courtesy of my Ukrainian friend Kate, who is an amazing digital artist!