A Nightmare on Echo Street - PCB Guitar Mania's Echo Dream Clone

So this particular build has to rank up there with the absolute weirdest pedals I've ever put together and played, and it can be a real wolf in sheep's clothing depending on how you set the controls! Based on the Death by Audio Echo Dream 2, PCB Guitar Mania's Echo Nightmare PCB (available in trough-hole or SMD formats) is a pretty faithful adaptation of the original based on my playtesting so far. You're able to get a huge variety of tones and delay times with the pedal, and add fuzz. You can even kill the dry signal and only hear repeats if that's your jam (though I'm still struggling to understand an application for that functionality in anything outside extremely experimental music!). 

PCB Mania No Noise Gate - Dang Useful Utility Pedal!!!

Readers of this blog should be well aware at this point that I'm a fan of high gain distortion and fuzz pedals. I'm also a fan of vintage transistors actually used in those high gain pedals. While you can get some absolutely amazing tones using high-gain distortion effects, you can also get a lot of tones you don't actually want. The most common is a hiss (high or low pitched) or a hum, though there are other unwanted noises that can detract from your sound. Given the prevalence of the issue, it should be unsurprising that there is a solution out there - Noise Gates. Many companies have produced a variety of pedals that essentially act as a high-pass filter - louder tones, i.e. what you actually want to hear, sail through while the softer hiss tones are filtered out. In this entry, I build PCB Mania's No Noise Gate - which is based on the Electroharmonix Noise Gate. The current EHX Silencer pedal is a bit more capable as it includes an effects loop rather than simply acting as a filter.