A Two for One Overdrive Pedal!

The JHS pedals SuperBolt has long been a staple of many pedalboards as it's a really decent overdrive pedal. A while back, however, JHS released the limited edition "TacoBolt" - a different take on the SuperBolt. It was more of a gated fuzz than a overdrive / distortion in a lot of ways. It was allegedly discovered when a normal SuperBolt had been mis-biased. TacoBolts at this point start at about $275 on Reverb, while SuperBolts are typically cheaper. I'd gotten a request for a TacoBolt from a friend, so I went in search of a good board.

Fortunately PedalPCB offers the Taqueria, which is an amazing board in terms of value for the buck. It starts with the basic SuperBolt circuit (including the gain switch which was eliminated on the TacoBolt), but includes a "Bias" switch which allows you to switch between "Super" and "Taco" configurations. The overall parts count for the pedal is fairly low, with the J201 transistors doing most of the work. I'm using all modern parts for this build - 1% tolerance metal film resistors, 5% tolerance film capacitors and MLCC caps, and 20% tolerance electrolytic capacitors. I still have some through-hole J201 transistors, so I used them for this build. The six trimmer resistors on the board allow you to individually bias each transistor in "Super" and "Taco" modes. 

I'm using my normal 3PDT daughter board on this build, but I decided since there were already six trimmers in the build, why not make it seven! I used a jumper for the LED CLR on the main board and enabled the brightness control for the LED on the daughter board. I'm using clear yellow / gold LEDs which can be kind of bright and this lets you control that a bit better. The rest of the build follows my normal process - ribbon cable to connect the two PCBs and aviation grade wiring to hook up the jacks (insulated with heat shrink tubing). 

Once the pedal was together, it did take a little while to get biased correctly. The PedalPCB forum has some values for the three transistors in both Super and Taco configurations, and the inclusion of individual pads to easily measure the voltage on each transistor helped quite a bit. I ended up using the recommended configurations for all three (based on measurements of the real thing). There are some alternate suggestions out there as well I may try at a later date.

I also had a ton of fun with the enclosure. The Stegosaurus gracing the enclosure is part of a larger piece of linocut art by Brian Reedy, who was kind enough to give permission for its use on the enclosure. I borrowed some of the other art used the same font I used on my recent 5E3 build. The font and the style seemed to mesh really well with the linocut... and it goes up to ELEVEN!

The sound of the pedal is really cool as well. The SuperBolt side is a very solid overdrive which I think I'll find useful in a lot of situations. The TacoBolt side is reminds me a bit of a Cornish NG-2 fuzz pedal. It's very gated and will be useful in some situations, but not all situations. Because the bias of the transistors is changing radically when the Bias switch is activated, you do get a pop, though honestly I'm not sure that this is a pedal you'd ever want to try and change on the fly anyway.