A New Steggo Pedal - The Pterodactyl Phaser!!!

Back in February, I finished my first build of the AionFX Emerald - a clone of the Boss PH-1R phaser. It was a really nice pedal, in fact it is finding a semi-permanent home on my pedal board. It wasn't an easy build, as there are a lot of components and the pedal has to be properly biased once assembled. Now that I'm assembling a whole range of dinosaur-themed pedals, I wanted to include a phaser, and I had a great idea for the enclosure (more on that in a bit). It was really just a question of which phaser to choose. Most of the fun of DIY is building something that is hard to come by because of cost, rarity, the fact that it is out of production, or a combination of all of those. Since the Boss pedal is long out of production, and retail it generally costs $200-$300 US, I figured it fit the bill.

Final Photos of Pedals for Ukraine Riabininohadros!

I went ahead and posted the final promo photos of the Riabininohadros (Blues Driver Galaxie Mod) for the upcoming Pedals for Ukraine auction. Steggo decided to get in on the action, and I wanted to experiment with some better "on location" shooting for Steggo pedals in general so this became the test case!

Cloning the Rare Boss CE-1 Chorus... Well... Kinda!

There are certain vintage pedals which are much harder to clone today than they were once upon a time. Among these are chorus pedals, flangers, phasers, and basically anything that relied on a specific integrated circuit to do the heavy lifting in terms of audio signal modification. While Moore's Law has continued unabated for over a half century, and despite the fact that modern semiconductors consist of  literally over 100 billion transistors on a single processor die, certain integrated circuits go completely out of production and ultimately become exceedingly rare. 

One pedal design I've always wanted to clone is the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, largely because (I'm sure you'll be shocked) Alex Lifeson used one at one point. However, there hasn't been a decent DIY clone out there - largely because the original uses obsolete Panasonic MN3002 BBD chip, and these are getting increasingly hard to find. PastFX has a clone of the original they've sold for years, but even after cornering the market on MN3002 chips, they're running out. As such they're released a version of the pedal using the more common MN3007 chip. Because of the rarity of the required chips, the MN3002 version runs about $350 US while the MN3007 version clocks in just north of $200 US.

Blues Driver with a Ukrainian Dinosaur - Redux!

A couple of weeks ago I posted a pedal I'd just finished which I'd intended to use as a donation for Pedals for Ukraine. Unfortunately once I got the enclosure back, I realized that there was a typo, and the there were some issues with the dinosaur - the contrast wasn't as good as I'd hoped. So, I resolved to revamp the artwork and give it another go. The enclosures finally came in today, so I got cracking!

Boss Blues Driver with a Ukrainian Dinosaur - For a Good Cause!

When Russia began its illegal and pointless invasion of Ukraine in February, I posted a "yellow and blue" pedal I'd recently finished - my first Boss Blues Driver - in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Later on I donated Ukrainian Army BMP serial number 2 to the Pedals for Ukraine charity auction on Instagram. That pedal did very well, raising $260 for relief efforts. I ultimately plan to build more of those, but I wanted to do something a little different for a second Pedals for Ukraine donation. Something more dino related, so I hit the web looking not only for dinosaurs native to Ukraine, but I also wanted to come up with a fun pedal to put into said enclosure! Given my first "blue and yellow" pedal was a Boss Blues Driver, I thought that may be a good place to start.

A Galaxie Far Far Away? Modding the Boss BD-2

A few months ago I posted my first build of the Aion Sapphire clone of the Boss BD-2 Blues Driver overdrive pedal. At the time I mentioned that the board supported the Galaxie modification by Machine Head Pedals, and I planned to complete a second build of that version. It took a bit longer than expected (as I was working on other projects), but here it is, and from what I can tell so far, it is amazing!

A Fun and Unusual New Boss Clone - The OC-2 Octave!

It's been a little over a month since I finished up my most recent Boss clone builds (if memory serves, it was the double DS-1builds I did back in mid-March). This time around I'm doing something a little different - on a lot of levels. For this build, I'm using the PedalPCB Ocelot Octave board which clones the Boss OC-2 Octave pedal. Honestly, this is one of the more unusual pedals I've built as it adds an additional tone one and two octaves below whatever not you're playing. Octave 1 is useful across most guitar ranges, but I find Octave 2 gets a bit muddy depending on your pick attack if you're playing low bass notes on the guitar. On the higher strings, having the three octave tone is really pretty cool though. The OC-2 appears to be out of production, and used copies seem to run the gamut on Reverb from about $150 to over $300 depending on condition, so this is another great candidate for cloning!

Double Dutch Distortion - Two Boss DS-1 Builds!

About a month ago, I published an article covering my build of the legacy version of AionFX's Comet - their original clone of the Boss DS-1 pedal. AionFX's design philosophy changed a few years back. Instead of making very modular boards with myriad options built in, the focus shifted to more approachable designs with only the most popular options explicitly spelled out in the instructions. This makes building effects pedals more approachable for people without extensive electronics experience - or an electronics degree - like me. At the end of the legacy Comet build, I'd indicated that I planned to build a couple of the modern version of this project, so without further ado, here are those builds!

Completing the Original Three - The Boss OD-1 Overdrive!

In 1977, Boss released its first three compact effects pedals for guitar. I'd previously built the AionFX clones of two of them: the PH-1r Phaser (the Emerald) and the SP-1 Spectrum (the Chroma). With two of three complete, you knew I'd eventually get around to finishing the set. AionFX's Parhelion is a clone of the Boss OD-1 Overdrive pedal with a couple of added features giving the pedal a little more flexibility. Note, the legacy version of this project (like the legacy version of the Comet board I built few weeks ago) was originally called the "Corona" (as in the corona of the sun), but when the new version of the project was released in 2021 the name was changed for, well, obvious reasons!

It's Not Only a Boss Clone - It's a Yellow and Blue Pedal

Generally I like to try and compartmentalize my hobbies away from politics. Honestly, I try to compartmentalize a lot of things because in today's world it is far too easy for politics to pervade all topics, all the time, with the maximum possible emphasis. I'm also a graduate / fan of Ohio State University, so to feature the colors yellow (or maize) and blue is a big step in even the worst of times. That being said, the crisis in the Ukraine is as abominable as it is appalling. I sincerely hope the international community finds the political and strategic will to take meaningful action to first return the situation to status quo ante and then continue sanctions against Putin and his oligarchs to weaken their power structure and ability to cause further harm. Therefore in support of the people of the Ukraine, I'm making it a point today to feature a blue and yellow pedal. I wish I could take more meaningful action.

As I'd mentioned in a previous blog entry, I'd been having trouble with one of my Boss pedals, and this is the culprit. AionFX's Sapphire is one of the new Boss pedals released toward the end of last year. Overall I've always had great success with AionFX pedals, with very few not working immediately (and those that didn't work have generally been easy to debug). This one caused me some issues. The first pedal fired up okay (well, at least the light came on), but while I got sound in bypass mode, I got nothing in active mode. I audio probed back to Q4 which seemed to have an issue. Unfortunately in trying to de-solder Q4, the trace broke pretty much ruining the board - so this is take two! The BD-2 is still in production, so stock units can be had for reasonable prices (~$115 new), but building is always cheaper (assuming you don't have to build it twice, but even then...). However, the AionFX project also supports one of the most common modifications of the BD-2 pedal - the Galaxie mod which replaces a lot of the passive components and givens the pedal a different sound and character. I'm planning on building one of those too now that I've got the stock version working!

Fuzz Friday!!! The First Clone of the Boss FZ-3

I'm still working my way through various Boss clones, and I still have several more to do for the "first wave" of clones. The first wave has been pretty much based on AionFX boards, but there there will be a "second wave" where I go a bit further afield. For this particular build, I'm using the Aion Argent clone of the fairly rare Boss FZ-3 fuzz pedal. Initially produced in 1997 as a successor to the FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz (a far more complex build that I posted earlier this month), it was discontinued after a couple of years. Like many other discontinued Boss pedals, this one eventually developed a small cult following including  John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins). Despite their relative rarity, original units can be had for between $200 and $300. AionFX is apparently the first company to offer an accurate PCB of the unit as previous traces had some key errors limiting functionality.

2nd Generation Boss Overdrive - Cloning the OD-2r Turbo Overdrive!

It's been over a week since I posted my last Boss clone, and sadly I'm still debugging one of the Boss PCBs I've been working on to no resolution yet. I'll keep banging away at it though. In the meantime I've finished up another one of the recent releases from AionFX, the Aurum project, which clones the Boss OD-2 pedal's Turbo mode. The original OD-2 had a "Turbo" mode which could be turned on or off - this particular clone only includes the circuitry for that Turbo path. The non-turbo mode is not included, even as a toggle switch. The standard BOM also will build the OD-2r version of the pedal, as the volume control on the original OD-2 had to be pretty much cranked to 100% to get unity volume coming out of the pedal. The OD-2r fixed that issue, and that fix carries through to the standard Aurum build. That being said, if you want the original, AionFX calls out where parts should be substituted to build that version of the pedal.

Vintage Boss Distortion - In More Ways Than One!

The Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal has a very mixed reputation. While it wasn't one of the first three small form-factor effects pedals released by Boss like the Spectrum I posted a couple of days ago, it's almost as old - dating to 1978. The major difference is that the DS-1 distortion pedal has been in continuous production since then. So why clone a pedal that's in production and can be had for low price of $59 at Sweetwater? In 1994, the pedal underwent a major revision necessitated by the discontinuation of the TA7136P IC pre-amp chip (that wasn't even actually an op-amp). The re-designed and re-voiced pedal is regarded as, in AionFX's words, "a poor quality beginner's pedal." For that reason, most modern clones are designed to capture the pre-1994 version of the pedal, which does generally go for over $200-300 on reverb, or one of the myriad of modifications that have been made to the pedal over the years, or both!

One of the Original Three - Cloning the Boss SP-1 Spectrum

Three Pedals for the Shredder-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Metal-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Power Groups doomed to die...

Excerpt from Lord of the Pedal Board...

In 1977 Boss entered the world of compact guitar effects pedals with the release of three pedals - the OD-1 Overdrive, the PH-1 Phaser, and the SP-1 Spectrum. In honor of the 40th anniversary of their release, Boss produced a limited run anniversary set of 1500 units with reproductions of all three of these pedals. They had to make a few changes to the circuit and some component substitutions, of course, but the final circuit adjustments were all still performed by hand on the new production units just as they were with the originals. The SP-1 was essentially a parametric equalizer pedal that could really create some unique sounds if fed into a boost pedal. With original copies costing anywhere from $500-$800 - and the limited reissues at nearly the same price point, this would seem to be an ideal candidate for DIY clones.

A Slightly Easier Boss Chorus - The CE-2

This build is based on another gem in the recent Boss releases from AionFX. The Azure project is a slightly modified clone of the Boss CE-2 chorus. The original pedal was released in 1979 with a bass version following in 1987 using the same basic circuit. Unlike the Dimension C with only four modes that toggle, the CE-2 is a more conventional pedal with potentiometers controlling Rate and Depth. The Bass version included a Mix function to blend clean signal back in, which is brought over in the Azure project (as it can build both versions). Setting the Mix knob to full makes the effect identical to the original guitar circuit. You can get an updated version of this pedal as a Waza Craft for about $220, and prices for originals go north from there. So again, this is a great candidate for a clone.

Death Pedal - Cloning the Boss HM-2

So, think of this as a "bonus" Boss pedal blog entry. In my review of the AionFX Emerald, I'd indicated that it was my second Boss pedal build after the Dimension Chorus and later edited the post indicating that there was one other Boss pedal I'd completed. I'd forgotten that this particular build, the AionFX Graviton, was a Boss pedal for a couple of reasons. First, it was one of my very early builds and second, I went with a completely non-Boss inspired original enclosure design for the pedal itself. The project itself is a clone of the somewhat niche Boss HM-2 "Heavy Metal" distortion pedal. It was only originally produced from 1983 to 1991 with little fanfare, but apparently the Scandinavian Death Metal scene has decided to pick it up, crank all of the knobs to 11, and run with it. Waza Craft new production versions of this pedal will set you back almost $200, with original Boss models exceeding that. So once again this is a great candidate for cloning.

Aion's Hypercube - Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz Clone

This entry continues the litany of builds focusing on AionFX's Boss pedal clones. The Hypercube is an adaptation of the Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz originally released in 1993 and discontinued in 1997. Like many older Boss pedals, this one gained a cult following and is now starting to really creep up in value. NOS boxes are going north of $500 on Reverb, but used offerings are generally falling in the $300-$400 range. This project is not one of the recent six releases, and I'd picked it up a while back but never gotten around to getting it built. However, with the new litany of Boss releases, I decided now was the time to loop back and get this beauty built!

Another New Boss Clone - The OD-3 Overdrive!

The Boss OD-3 Overdrive pedal is a newer (well, relative to most other Boss pedals I've built recently!) pedal first released in 1997. The AionFX Heliodor clone was released in November alongside five other Boss clones in DIY PCB form. As I mentioned in my recent Emerald (Boss PH-1R Phaser) build, I went ahead and picked up the whole set (along with a few other surprises), and this is the second one of that set I've managed to complete. Unlike many of the pedals I've built, the OD-3 is still in production and is available new from Boss. It's not terribly expensive (you can pick one up for $113.99 from Sweetwater), but building it is still cheaper than buying one outright. The only downside is you can't really replicate the Boss-style enclosure easily - unless you happen to have a dead one lying about.

Set Phasers to Stun! The Boss PH-1r

In November of last year, AionFX announced six new boards based on classic Boss pedals - with four of the six never having appeared as a DIY PCB before. Needless to say I picked up the whole set. In addition to the new PCBs, AionFX also offered special JFET sets which would facilitate building these pedals, as in many cases the circuits required JFETs no longer available in anything but SMD form. The PCB boards themselves support adding an SMD if you're up to it, or you can buy pre-soldered SMDs from AionFX on through-hole mini-boards - just add your own jumpers!

For this first entry in the series, I'm going through my build of the Emerald - a clone of the Boss PH-1r Phaser pedal originally released in 1980. These pedals are not exactly rare or incredibly expensive - good examples run around $200 on Reverb, with mint examples still falling below the $400 mark - but they have been hard to clone because they require four matched JFETs to function properly (and matching through hole JFETs is hard enough, I can only imagine what a pain in the aaa... butt... matching SMDs would be). Fortunately, AionFX offers matched sets of JFETs for only $8 - which is totally worth it from where I sit!

Aion's Blueshift - Cloning the Insanely Complex Dimension DC-2

The Boss DC-2 Dimension C chorus pedal was originally released in 1985 and remains one of the more popular chorus effect pedals. While it technically only has four main settings, the electronics behind the pedal are insanely complex (more on that in a bit). The original Boss version is long out of production, with excellent condition examples running north of $500 on reverb. That being said, you can get the Waza Craft re-release model new for just a little north of $250. Building your own version is a bit cheaper, but it is a huge challenge. I picked up the Aion FX version of this pedal, the Blueshift, which is an absolute beast of a build. It comes as two separate PCBs, and then gets progressively crazier from there!