Updating the Miragaia

A couple of years ago, Steggo released an awesome doom fuzz clone using the PedalPCB Arkaim Fuzz board. The build actually ended up being surprisingly popular, and I've even built a custom version in a totally unique enclosure. That new enclosure came out so well, I decided it was time to go back and re-visit the original Miragaia enclosure, as Tayda had expanded the range of enclosure finishes available since I'd done the original design.

A Different Blues Driver Mod!

I've previously built a few versions of the Galaxie mod of the Boss Blues Drive BD-2 pedal. The most common of which is the version I'd sold as a part of Steggo's ongoing support of Ukraine's defense. There are other versions of the circuit out there, and I'd at one point (in the sadly far too distant past) gotten a request for the Keeley modded version of the pedal. A quick search of the internet showed that one of my favorite sources of all information pedal, the Tone Geek, had a write-up detailing his version of the Keeley mod (as it was used by John Mayer). I thought this was a great start, but decided to see if I could take things just one or two steps further. So here's Steggo's take on the Tone Geek's take on the Keeley mod of the Blues Driver. 

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!

Steggo Finally Builds a Fuzz Face!

Introduced in 1966 by Arbitrer Electronics, the Fuzz Face is one of the earliest guitar effect pedals. It gained a great deal of popularity because Jimi Hendrix made extensive use of the pedal. The circuit itself is fairly simple, only consisting of 2 transistors, 4 resistors, 3 capacitors, and 2 potentiometers. The catch is the gain and leakage of those two transistors is vitally important to the overall final tone of the effect. In modern clones, variable resistors are used to help individually bias the transistors to ensure good tone for both the silicon and germanium versions of the circuit. I'd always wanted to put together a fuzz face, but which one?

Fortunately and PedalPCB has a great board called the Twin Face which combines both the silicon and germanium versions into one pedal!

Another Cool Custom Pre-amp! Cloning the Peavey Decade

I got a request for a pedal that recreated the pre-amp portion of the Peavey Decade amplifier. The Peavey Decade is an old-school solid state amp that has been used by a lot of bands. It has waxed and waned in popularity over the years, but it is popular enough that there are a couple of fairly boutique guitar pedals that emulate it's preamp section. PedalPCB makes a preamp board, called the Decadence Preamp. So with board in hand, I got cracking!

A Custom Miragaia!

A couple of years ago I'd built a few clones of the Mountainking Megalith using the PedalPCB Arkaim Fuzz board. These have been somewhat popular, and I have an updated version of the "Miragaia" enclosure in the works. In the interim I'd gotten a request for a custom "doomy" pedal - with Steggi on it. So we aligned on using the same circuit - with a custom enclosure!

Updating a Most Tranquil Steggo Pedal!

One of my favorite enclosures and pedals was the Steggo take on the Zendrive (which has since been re-introduced by Warm Audio as the Warmdrive). I'd initially used the AionFX board for my builds, but my friend at South Obolon FX released a version of this board and was kind enough to make me a Steggo version. I'd built one up a few months ago, but I've finally gotten a few more done for the shop!

A Vintage Style Dimetrodon!

The Steggo Dimetrodon Distortion is based on the vintage Distortion+ circuit, but up to this point I'd only used all modern components in my Dimetrodon builds. Given the original Distortion+ dates from the 70's I thought it would be fun to look for old gut shots of the pedal to see what sort of components were used on the early iterations of that pedal and test out the Dimetrodon with something similar. I had also recently built a couple of Dimetrodon Distortion pedals with the Sovtek tone stack, but I didn't have one for personal use, so this build let me sort of kill two birds with one stone!

Old School MXR Distortion + PCB - Image from Premier Guitar

The Return of the King (of Tone)

One of my earliest builds was a clone of the boutique Analogman King of Tone pedal. The King of Tone itself is a very sought after double overdrive pedal, with a variety of clipping options (most of which are set using internal DIP switches). The "real thing" is currently in Version 4, and on Reverb they still tend to start at around $600 for a real one and go up from there. The waiting list for an original remains long as well. My first build was in my "pre-dino" days - and I'd bought a kit from Germany that included an unpainted enclosure, the PCB, and all of the parts. I substituted some good matches for the original diodes rather than using the stock ones with the kit, though, as depending on who you ask the King of Tone has "magic diodes" much in the same way the Klon Centaur / KTR does. I'd always wanted to circle back and make a real "dino" version of the pedal, so I finally took the plunge.

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!

Updating an Old Favorite - A Cornish-Inspired Silicon Big Muff

Before the release of the PedalPCB Polonium 2 distortion board (which I've built up as the Protoceratops 2, and which now has taken up permanent residence on my pedalboard), there was a loose consensus on the internet as to what the Cornish P-2 looked like from a schematic standpoint. I'd previously built up several hand-etched versions using the Effects Layouts PCB, and really enjoyed them. In hindsight with a clone in hand, there are several differences, and the Effects Layouts design always included the "probably" disclaimer anyway. It's therefore likely more proper to call this an "Cornish-inspired" variant, as it really is kind of its own thing.

A New Violet Ram's Head 2 Big Mutt

So since it's been several months since I built a Big Muff clone (granted, the combo pedal I just finished includes a Big Muff, but it is more than just a Muff clone), I figured it was time to go ahead and test out some alternate configurations of the Loud Cancer board - and try out some different potentiometer orientations as well. One of my favorite variants of the BMP is the Violet Ram's Head 2, so I decided to give it a whirl!

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.

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.