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. 

A New Combo Pedal - The Brachyceratops Overdrive

Sometimes I get a request for a pedal and then immediately wonder why I hadn't already done something along those lines. One popular combination pairs a Klon Centaur with a Marshall Bluesbreaker. I've done several different versions of the Klon Centaur over the years, and I really enjoy building them. I've also recently done a new dinosaur version of the Bluesbreaker, the Blues Brachiosaurus. In the background I'd been working on my own version of the Bluesbreaker, so when I got a request for the combo pedal, I decided to go all out with the new Bluesbreaker board and one of my favorite Klon boards as well!

A Truly Dino Bluesbreaker Clone!

The Marshall Bluesbreaker is one of the all-time classic pedals which sought to re-create the sound of the legendary Marshall Bluesbreaker amplifier from 1962. Original units have gone out of production and command a fairly high price, and there are some recent re-issues that aren't terribly expensive, but aren't terribly cheap either. I'd previously built an AionFX version of the Bluesbreaker, the Cerulean, which adds some different clipping modes to the circuit, but I'd never built a "stock" Bluesbreaker clone. My friend at South Obolon FX was kind enough to make a Steggo version of his board, so I started from there for an awesome dinosaur version.

Put a Bird on It - Aion FX Cerulean

So here's another one that I'd gotten the PCB populated a few weeks ago, but just managed to finally finish up the enclosure - the Aion FX Cerulean based on the Marshall Bluesbreaker. While you can get a Marshall Bluesbreaker II pedal for a quite reasonable price, original Bluesbreakers seem to start around $600 these days. The Bluesbreaker is an amp-overdrive style pedal designed to reproduce the tone of the amplifier of the same name from the 1960s. The basic circuit was used as the basis for the King of Tone (which I have previously posted an entry on). Aion FX took a couple of cues from the King of Tone and also provided an option to incorporate functionality from the JHS Morning Glory V3 (which I didn't actually incorporate into my build). The documentation for the Cerulean implies that at some point a King of Tone version may be offered in the future as certain board components are left unpopulated.