Steggo's First Combo Pedal - The Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal

Lovetone pedals are known for several things. First off, they generally are amazingly good pedals with great sound and a lot of flexibility. Second, they often have some fairly unusual names (Big Cheese, Brown Source, etc.). Finally, they're all long out of production and original examples are incredibly expensive - with price tags ranging from several hundred dollars to around $1500. I'd previously built clones of the Brown Source (the Firefly TV show themed Browncoat) using the AionFX Obelisk board and the Big Cheese (the 2001 themed Monolith) using the AionFX Monolith board (one of the few times I've stuck with the trace name of a board for the actual pedal), and I'd been impressed with the overall quality of the pedals. Lovetone released a combination pedal with the two of these in one box (and on one board) called the "Cheese Source" - so I decided to build my first "combination" pedal bringing these two awesome effects together.

Cloning Lovetone's Big Cheese - Another Great Pedal with an Odd Name

Fuzz pedals were one of the first effects pedals released and come in an absolutely dizzying array of different takes on the classic tone. One of the more famous boutique fuzz pedals out there is the Lovetone Big Cheese, which in my humble opinion is a far better name than the Brown Source, but still keeps the theme of odd pedal names. When AionFX released their clones of four famous Lovetone pedals, I picked up their Monolith project which is an "exact adaptation of the Big Cheese except for the addition of an optional boost stage... for additional volume." I'd had some issues trying to create a decaled enclosure, so I finally threw in the towel and had one UV printed. The enclosure finally arrived, and I've managed to get this pedal boxed. If you can find an original Big Cheese, it will set you back at least $1500, though there are some apparently commercial clones available for ~$175 (though I'm not sure how accurate they are).

Browncoat Serial Number 3 Now Available - $120

I just finished up Browncoat serial number 3, and it is now available both here and on the Reverb store. Externally this one looks just like the previous two. The only change is I'm using a different brand of 33n film capacitors I picked up from Pedalhacker because I ran low on the WIMA ones.

Production Updates, Prices, Timeline, and Teasers!

Steggo Studios will have some pedals available for sale soon! I've been working in the background on the boards as mentioned in my previous blog entry - along with a few surprises because who doesn't love surprises! I've been waiting on enclosures from Tayda to arrive, and they hit the post earlier this week! So without further ado, here's "the plan" and planned inventory levels!

Quick News Updates and Upcoming Production Schedule

The blog has been quiet for a few days while I've been working in the background on a few items, but I wanted to take a moment and give everyone an update on a few recent topics and make a few announcements. 

First up, as I indicated earlier in the month, I entered the StG-90 in the Warmoth guitar of the month contest on their forum. Well, the results are in and... I didn't win, but I did come in a strong second out of six with over 20% of the total vote (8 votes vs. the winning entry's 11). The winning entry was submitted by a previous guitar of the month winner, and was honestly pretty dang stunning. So for my first time out, I can't say I'm disappointed in how well the guitar did.

Brown Alert??? Cloning Lovetone's Brown Source

So, I'm going to chalk this up as one of the pedals with one of the worst names, yet having one of the best sounds out there. The Lovetone Brown Source was originally released in 1995, and tried to capture the "brown sound" - that elusive distortion tone that so many rock guitarists try to achieve. The term itself was originally coined by Eddie Van Halen, and many different pedals, amps, and combinations thereof have been used over the decades to try and find that perfect organic tone. Actual vintage Lovetone pedals start at $700 and go up into low four-digits from there, so this is yet another pedal screaming for a decent clone. In July of last year, AionFX released four Lovetone clones, including one of the Doppelganger which I completed last year and posted a review of in October. This project, the Obelisk, was released at the same time, and I finally managed to get it completed!

A Doppelganger Doppelgänger - Building Aion FX's Quadratron

The Lovetone Doppelganger is a four stage optical phaser pedal with a huge number of tone options. Once again, this is currently a very expensive pedal, with examples going on Reverb north of $1000. However, Aion FX offers a version which you can build for a fraction of the cost of the original, though it is a challenging build! As you can see below, the PCB itself is vary large, though it isn't packed as tightly as some other manufacturers' offerings are. As this is a fairly complex build, I'm actually going to go through the process step by step rather than glossing over some of the more gory details.