A New Dimetrodon Distortion Variant in an Amazing Enclosure!

The Dimetrodon Distortion was Steggo Studios first original pedal design. Like most analog guitar pedals these days, it has DNA that can be traced back to earlier designs, but it fills a niche that none of the designs it is based on don't - at least for the tones I've been after. Last year I'd given away a prototype version of the pedal when my Instagram channel hit 1000 followers. It is getting close to 1500 now, so I decided it was time for another giveaway, but this time with a few twists!

Special Dinovember 2023 Edition Dimetrodon Distortion Build Report!

A while back I had a Dimetrodon Distortion enclosure that had a bit of a problem. It had gotten scratched up, although the UV printing on the face of the enclosure was just great. I'd had mixed results trying to paint enclosures in the past, but I found some powder coat spray paint (rather than having to go through the powder coating process) and I figured this would be a great opportunity to see if I could recover a damaged enclosure - and then I decided to take it a few steps further!

Updating the Dimetrodon Distortion - A New Deluxe Version!

Back in June Steggo released its first original pedal design, the Dimetrodon Distortion. I love it (obviously), and a lot of other people have picked one up and really seem to be enjoying them. The only limitation of the original design was the fact that you had to pick one of the at least six major variations of the Big Muff based tone stack during the build unless you socketed components, which is a nightmare in a production pedal. I ultimately went with a fairly scooped mids version - the '75 Ram's Head - for the primary variant. However, at the time I mentioned that I wanted to try something like what was done on the AionFX Halo board and add a three way mids switch. After some work laying out the changes to the circuit and finding a switch that would work, Steggo is proud to introduce the next iteration of the Dimetrodon Distortion, the "Deluxe" which includes a three-way switch to toggle between three tone stack modes!

Is It Distortion? Is It Sustain? A New SS-3 Clone!

A little over a year ago a built the AionFX Soma - their clone of the Cornish SS-3 - and called it the "Dimetrodon Distortion 2." This was before the complete re-work of the Dimetrodon Distortion pedal into its current form, and honestly the SS-3 is a little bit of a different beast than a Distortion+, even with the shared DNA. Recently I'd gotten a request for a new SS-3 clone, so I worked with the requestor to come up with a new prehistoric creature to serve as the mascot for the build. I also transitioned over to the PedalPCB Semi-Sweet Distortion 3 board in the process.

Custom Built Brutalist Jr. - With Steggo!

Kurt Ballou at God City instruments had the brilliant idea to create a distortion pedal, the Brutalist Jr.,  and use the PCB as a business card. I'm not sure whether or not he still gives these out as business cards, but the PCB is still available on his DIY PCB website. I'd previously built clones of the Brutalist Jr. using both hand-etched and commercially produced PCBs which would fit in a 125B enclosure, as the original business card version requires a slightly larger enclosure. However, a local friend had one of the original PCBs lying around and asked if I would build it up. Since I'd never built one of the "real things" - I jumped at the chance!

Updated International Style!

About a year ago I'd built a couple pedals based on the Godcity Brutalist Jr. - a really neat, fairly mod-able, distortion pedal using a hand-etched board based on the template from Effects Layouts. It's an awesome pedal, but as I have been having some issues with my lithography lately - I hadn't made any more because I haven't been able to hand etch boards recently. Fortunately, my friend at South Obolon FX was able to lay out a board for me, so now I have some printed circuit boards - that fit neatly into my preferred 125B enclosure size that I can use going forward!

A Long and Winding (Development) Road - The Dimetrodon Distortion is Finally Done!

When I started building guitar pedals a few years ago I had a couple of initial goals in mind. First, I wanted better (and affordable) access to guitar pedals that were expensive, esoteric, out of production, or often a combination of all three. Second, I'd always had an interest in electronics (I work as a materials chemist in the semiconductor industry, and my uncle was always good with electronics), so building my own pedals seemed like a great vector to develop my skills in an area that I'd long neglected. As with most people new to the hobby, I started with professionally produced PCBs which were clones of the pedals I wanted build. However the further I delved into the hobby, the more I wanted to start making something different or unique - which gave rise to the idea of creating my own distortion pedal using a classic pedal as a base. 

A little over a year ago I posted an article with my hand-etched prototypes of the Dimetrodon Distortion pedal. It basically took the MXR Distortion+ and added a Big Muff tone stack and a gain recovery stage. It was okay, but after I'd built it and tested it, there were problems. It tended to pop a fair amount because of where the volume and gain recovery were located in the circuit. I tried solving this with pull-down resistors, buffers, you name it, but it just didn't quite fix the issue. So I decided to take a step back and see if I could re-engineer the pedal a bit better, and now a year later - it's finally done!

Dimetrodon Distortion prototype enclosure

A Custom Triangle Big Mutt Phi!

The Triangle version of the Big Muff Pi is one of the more popular versions of the venerable circuit. I've built one in the past using a Tayda board, and it came out really pretty well. A friend was in the market for a Big Muff clone, and so I brought in pretty much my complete stable of variants to my favorite local guitar store (Five Star Guitars) so he could try them all on relevant amplifiers. In the end, he decided he wanted a triangle variant. He also wanted something in a form factor slightly larger than my standard 125B Big Mutt Phi build, so I decided to just go back to the Tayda board and come up with a suitably cool 1590BB2 enclosure for it!

Return of the MX-RAWR! Distortion+ with Options!

A few weeks ago I posted a custom MXR Distortion+ build I worked up for a friend using the tried and true AionFX Aphelion board. Well, the response I got to the design was frankly overwhelming and unprecedented. So I've decided to make up a few more for the shop. If they sell, I'll make more. They're not terribly hard, but I really want to keep using good vintage diodes where possible. So that may limit the pedal's lifespan, but maybe not. We'll see.

A Fun Custom MXR Distortion+ (Modded) Clone

The MXR Distortion+ is one of the classic distortion effects pedals. I'd built one using the AionFX Aphelion board last year, and it also forms the basis of my home-brew Dimetrodon Distortion pedal (which I swear is really coming soon - I'm just waiting for the last of the beta test feedback!). One of the cool things about the AionFX board, is that it has three clipping and treble options which can be selected with a couple of toggle switches on the front of the enclosure. The clipping switch lets you choose between germanium diodes (as used in the Distortion+), silicon diodes (as used in the DOD 250), or LEDs (more like a turbo Rat). The treble switch changes the high frequency cut characteristics of the effect tone. I have a friend who recently took up the guitar and wanted a Distortion+ pedal, and the cool thing about this particular configuration is it gives you effectively three distortion pedals in one, with three treble options on each!

More Deja Vu - A Truly Steggo Acapulco Gold Clone!

So this is the second official build report for the new "one knob" collection from Steggo, and this one goes back to where the blog started with a build of an EQD Acapulco Gold clone. In a lot of ways it's hard to believe how far the blog and Steggo Studios as a whole has come in a little over a year, and I'm looking forward to what the next year brings!

The New "One Knob Collection"

I tend to build a lot of either vintage pedals or complex pedals, but there are a lot of really good pedals with only one knob. In fact, the first actual build I posted on the blog was a clone of the one-knob Acapulco Gold pedal, even though that wasn't the first pedal I'd built. I've recently been experimenting with some boards I've been able to order direct, which makes it cost-effective to offer some simpler pedals for sale through the studio. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce the first three pedals in the "One Knob Collection," but in typical Steggo fashion, there has to be a fun story to go with it!