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.

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.

Another New Design - The Falcarius Overdrive - Modified TSV808 With 3-Band EQ

As I mentioned yesterday in my entry on the Kosmoceratops, I've moved from simply populating boards laid out by 3rd parties (either professionally or by request) to boards I've laid out myself. One of my all-time favorite pedals it the TSV808 (the Secret Spinosaurus in its dino version), so when I found that "Chuck Bones" of Celestial Engineering had worked with others on a modified version of that circuit with a 3-band equalizer, I knew I had to try laying one out myself.

One of Steggo's First Layouts - the Kosmoceratops Envelope Filter!

For the first couple of years building pedals, I was content to mostly just buy professionally produced circuit boards, populate them, and enjoy the awesome tone. However, as time has gone by, I wanted to start learning how to take that next step from schematic to layout. I'd gotten good at reading a schematic and could breadboard, but most of the available programs for actually turning the schematic into a set of Gerber files for a manufactured PCB (Eagle, Kicad, etc.) weren't not intuitive, expensive, or both! A few weeks ago a came across a video by the Tone Geek on how to lay out your own PCB using EasyEDA, so I figured I'd give it a try. Let's just say it's sent me down an amazing rabbit hole and opened up a lot of new possibilities because I'd finally found a layout program that was intuitive and cheap (read free). 

Cloning the Famous EQD Monarch

The EQD Monarch is an out of production FET based overdrive pedal that gained a lot of popularity as a dirty boost without a lot of extra distortion or compression. It was also available as a DIY kit for many years through StewMac (and others), but while StewMac still offers many DIY effects pedal kits, the Monarch is no longer among them. I had a friend who wanted a Monarch clone - largely to allow a bandmate to leave his original unit in the studio and gig with a more easily replaceable copy - so I started doing some investigation on boards and kits available. As it turns out, the pedal is more than a bit finicky, and there were some flaws in the original design which likely led to a fair amount of frustration for both the users and the DIY community. Chuck Bones (of the PedalPCB Boneyard) did a great analysis of the circuit, suggested some modest improvements, and then took that a few steps further ultimately creating the Viceroy - a six-knob, two footswitch Monarch on steroids. Down the road, I plan to build the Viceroy, but for now I was more interested in getting a good direct clone of the Monarch working well - and across its full range.