Updated Geisha Drive Clone!

About a year ago, I posted a build using a hand-etched board cloning the out of production Way Huge Geisha drive. It was a really fun build, but recently I've been having trouble with my photoresist which has made creating hand-etched boards very difficult. I have an alternative in the works, but it's not ready to go yet, so watch the blog for more info there! In the meantime, South Obolon FX had laid out a version of the Geisha, and was kind enough to create a Steggo version of the board.

Cloning the Limited Edition Way Huge Geisha Drive

One of the greatest things about DIY guitar pedals is that you're often free to recreate limited edition, rare, or out of production pedals that would be hard or impossible to get ahold of otherwise. The Way Huge Geisha Drive was a fairly niche overdrive / distortion pedal originally released back in around 2017. As far as I can tell, it looks like there were three enclosure variants produced - a red, a blue, and a special handwired edition limited to 40 units. Normal red / blue versions seem to be hovering around the $300 range, while the handwired versions go for over $1000. I'd etched myself a couple of boards using the Effects Layout tracing, and I've got both boards populated (though only one boxed). Of course, no sooner do I etch up my own boards, but I find that PedalPCB appears to have one as the Samurai project. I've ordered one of their boards for comparison, and I might go that route for future builds if I can make it work in my enclosure design without too many modifications.