A Fanciful Steggo Reverb Pedal

Reverb pedals occupy an interesting niche in the effects world. Many amplifiers have some form of reverb (either digital or spring) built in, while others don't. The reverb effect is designed to shape the amplifier's sound to replicate the effect of playing in a large room - sometimes complete with echos. Steggo received a request for a reverb pedal, and decided to go all in and create something fun!

An Alternate Brachyceratops Overdrive

A little over a month ago I posted a new combo pedal build I'd gotten a request for - a combo I likely should have done long ago - a Klon plus a Bluesbreaker circuit. I sort of went all out on that original build as I used one of the amazing Tone Geek Mini-Taur boards and paired it with a brand new in-house layout of the Bluesbreaker that provides early and late tone options along with clipping options. It came out really well, and included an order reverse switch. However, I wanted to do a version using the same technique I had used on my BMP / power-boost combo pedal. In that version, there are four jacks - you can't reverse the order on the fly - that has to be done with patch cables, but you can use the pedals independently or include some sort of effects loop between them. 

A New Combo Pedal - The Brachyceratops Overdrive

Sometimes I get a request for a pedal and then immediately wonder why I hadn't already done something along those lines. One popular combination pairs a Klon Centaur with a Marshall Bluesbreaker. I've done several different versions of the Klon Centaur over the years, and I really enjoy building them. I've also recently done a new dinosaur version of the Bluesbreaker, the Blues Brachiosaurus. In the background I'd been working on my own version of the Bluesbreaker, so when I got a request for the combo pedal, I decided to go all out with the new Bluesbreaker board and one of my favorite Klon boards as well!

Another Amazing Overdrive - Steggo's Layout of the Boneyard Emerald Green Overdrive

Chuck's Boneyard on the PedalPCB forum is an absolute wealth of information on pedal building as well as mods of famous (or not so famous) circuits. I've laid out boards for a few of the designs on the Boneyard and worked out a licensing arrangement to sell a few based on the schematics on the forum. All of the once I've breadboarded and laid out have been great pedals. A couple, however, reach the level of amazing pedals. The Celestial Engineering Timbre Man, which in Steggo livery is the Falcarius Overdrive, was the first to hit the "amazing" tier. The subject of this build report - Chuck's take on the Emerald Green Overdrive - is the second to hit that tier.

Harmonic Percolator Double Take - Albini Mod!

Steggo's new Harmonic Peolorosaurus board will not only build the "standard" version of the Harmonic Percolator, but the Albini modified version as well. I went ahead and built both versions of the circuit. This build report is therefore essentially and addendum to the previous one as there are only a few component changes.

Steggo's Take on the Harmonic Percolator!

One of the first pedals I built was AionFX's Particle - a modified version of the vintage Interfax Harmonic Percolator. It was a really neat Fuzz pedal, and AionFX provided recipes for both the normal unit and a version modified by Steve Albini. When I first started to learn to lay out my own boards, I wanted to get as much practice as possible. So I went ahead and laid out my own version of this circuit.

An Original Layout of an Amazing Boneyard Overdrive!

Learning to use the EasyEDA tool has opened up a lot of new opportunities for laying out unusual or unique designs. Recently there was a post on PedalPCB's Chuck's Boneyard detailing an update to an older Apocalypse Audio design. It looked interesting, so I decided to go ahead and test it out and all I can say is "Wow!" It is an amazing overdrive with a really strong and tight low-end.

Revisiting an Old BMP Variant - With a New Board!

A little over a year ago I finished up a build of a really high gain and doomy Big Muff variant, Frantone's The Sweet. I had used a hand etched board from Effects Layouts and it came out pretty good overall. It sounded pretty much like all of the demos I found online. I'd tried to etch a couple more boards, but ran into some issues with my resist. Fast forward a few months and I'm learning to lay out my own boards. I figured something like this would be good practice as it is a bit more detailed than most of the early ones I'd been working on. So I got cracking and came up with my own PCB - no etching required!

Kloned Kentrosaurus Block 3 Mini Build Report!

The Kloned Kentrosaurus is one my favorite pedals. I'd initially built several using the South Obolon FX Kent Rev 2 board. Then my friend updated the board with the Steggo logo and Kloned Kentrosaurus name and I've used that PCB for all subsequent builds. It's an amazing board, but there was only one drawback. As the Klon is a buffered effect, I didn't have a suitable daughter board for the LED and stomp switch, so the production dinos had to hand wire each pedal. Since the pedal has proved popular, I figured it would save time if there was a suitable daughter board that would enable the use of ribbon cable and reduce the lengths of hookup wire in the enclosure - so Steggi went to work in EasyEDA and came up with something amazing!

Steggo and Steggi with a panel of the new daughter boards

One of Steggo's First Layouts - the Kosmoceratops Envelope Filter!

For the first couple of years building pedals, I was content to mostly just buy professionally produced circuit boards, populate them, and enjoy the awesome tone. However, as time has gone by, I wanted to start learning how to take that next step from schematic to layout. I'd gotten good at reading a schematic and could breadboard, but most of the available programs for actually turning the schematic into a set of Gerber files for a manufactured PCB (Eagle, Kicad, etc.) weren't not intuitive, expensive, or both! A few weeks ago a came across a video by the Tone Geek on how to lay out your own PCB using EasyEDA, so I figured I'd give it a try. Let's just say it's sent me down an amazing rabbit hole and opened up a lot of new possibilities because I'd finally found a layout program that was intuitive and cheap (read free).