King of the Stone Age? Cloning the Limited Edition Mad Professor Stone Grey

Back in February I built the AionFX clone of Mad Professor's Stone Grey Distortion pedal. It was a neat pedal, but the clone wasn't 100% accurate as I ended up using clipping diodes rather than transistors (essentially used as diodes) in the original. I also became aware of a limited edition version of the pedal and figured if I could figure out what changed in that version, it would make a far more interesting build! So, I did something fairly rare, I actually bought a pedal and set about trying to figure out what made it tick. 

Steggo's First Grab Bag Sale!!!

EDIT: Well, Dimetrius was right... these are all now sold!

So as I mentioned in my teaser article, there are a lot of cool things in the pipeline. I just put in a large order for enclosures this weekend. Of course, now Dimetrius (the dimetrodon - our office manager - don't worry, he's cool - he'll never ask for a TPS report) has indicated that we have too many pedals, especially early prototypes, lying around. He also hinted it would be "really cool" if we could find a way to get some of them to new homes. So, introducing Steggo's first "Grab Bag" sale!

Dimetrius Dimetrodon - our office manager - with his coffee

Cloning the Mad Professor's Distortion

Despite the recent trend, I am actually still building clones of pedals that weren't produced by Boss. This build is based on the Aion Protolith, a clone of the Mad Professor Stone Grey Distortion. It was a fun (and quick) little build - especially in light of all of the recent complex pedals I've been building. The Stone Grey Distortion's lineage goes back to a circuit in a 1980s Japanese electronics book. This was adapted in 2009 by Bjorn Juhl and then sold to Mad Professor for general production in 2011.