The Pedal Board's New Groove - Way Huge Red Llama Clone!

So here was a fun, easy, and fast build for a really neat little pedal. The Aion Yacana is a slightly modified version of the Way Huge Red Llama, originally released in 1992. There's actually a decent demo video of the pedal on YouTube that I recommend for anyone looking to build this pedal. If you turn the drive knob down, it basically puts more signal into your amp while retaining your amp's intrinsic character. If you start adding drive, it will add some hair / distortion to the signal as you start bringing in the IC on board (that does most of the heavy lifting for the effect pedal). Aion FX version adds a boost toggle switch not on the original that provides additional gain ranges. This primarily impacts the range of the drive knob, and based on my test compared to the demo video, the downmost position appears to mirror the basic pedal most closely.

Adventures in Photoetching - or - Making Old School PCBs for Fun

At the first of the year I published an article on two new versions of the EHX Big Muff Pi effects pedal I'd completed. One was built on a home-etched board a friend had sent me using a pattern from the Effects Layouts blog. At the time I mentioned that I had done photo-etching in the past starting when I was in graduate school (getting a Ph.D. in chemistry - so applying chemistry to something guitar pedals, electronics, and music is "really cool" in my book!). Since I had some experience in the area (most recently around four years ago when I etched not one, but two sets of double-sided detail parts for 1/100th scale T-72 tanks), I decided it was time to dust off the old equipment and get cracking. This time I decided I'd try and take advantage of a few options unique to PCB etching (since I'm only doing single-sided boards!). 

Board etching in Ferric Chloride

Even More Pi? A Violet Ram's Head 2 Build!

So, for those few of you who actually follow the blog, have you gotten the idea that I love the Big Muff Pi circuit, yet? If you're a fan as well, I definitely recommend Kit Rae's page covering all of the different variants of this iconic effects pedal. It has been an absolutely indispensable reference as I've tried to go through and build many of the different versions of this stomp box! As I mentioned in my announcement a few days ago, I'll likely have a few pedals for sale in the not so distant future, and the initial ones are likely to be BMP clones - so continue to watch this space.

That being said, this particular pedal was all for me! For this build I've gone back to AionFX's Halo board. It is a great board, and there is a spreadsheet that lets you build literally any version of the pedal you'd like - it even cross references the component codes on the board to the component codes on the circuit diagrams on the Kit Rae page. I'd already built a couple of versions of the '73 Gilmour Ram's Head (one of my two original Halo builds and the home etched PCB), a Russian Civil War / Red Army variant (also on a Halo board), and a Triangle (on a Tayda board). I'd heard great things about the Violet Ram's Head versions, especially the 2nd version, so I decided to go that route for this build. 

Aion's IVP Preamp - Tough Build, But So Worth It!!!

The complexity of effects pedal builds varies widely from circuit to circuit. Some of the most ubiquitous pedals out there, like the Big Muff Pi, are relatively simple circuits and fairly easy builds - at least in stock configurations. Component choice and modifications can, however, raise the level of difficulty quickly. Then there are other builds that you know are going to be turning things "up to eleven" in more ways than one. The AionFX Blueshift / Boss Dimension C DC-2 clone I built last year was incredibly complex - though AionFX only lists it as an Advanced (4/5) build (honestly I'd quibble with that...). I was looking for a unique challenge and I wanted to build up a few pre-amps to use with my planned computer recording interface. I'd built PCB Guitar Mania's Wolfgang 5051 pedal, and while it is a gain monster, I was looking for something with a bit more flexibility. Enter AionFX's IVP Preamp - one of their few builds that gets the full Expert (5/5) difficulty rating.

Apocalypse Now - Aion's Meteor (Ibanez SD-9)

The 70s and 80s saw an explosion of pedals, especially distortion pedals, hitting the market. One of these was the Maxon / Ibanez SD-9 Sonic Distortion pedal. The circuit itself has quite a bit in common with the Boss DS-1 or MXR Distortion+. For this project I used the AionFX Meteor board - which like the Plasma board I recently built - is available in legacy (no bypass board) and new formats. I went with the most recent version of the board with the 3PDT bypass daughterboard. As with many classic pedals, this one doesn't appear to be in production anymore, though you can get used models for around $200.

Colorsound Overdriver - Vintage Boost!

The Colorsound Overdriver is an early boost pedal from 1972 that quickly found its way into the hands of guitarists like David Gilmour and Jeff Beck. I'm a big Gilmour fan (just in case my recent DG20 Strat build didn't make that abundantly clear!), and really wanted to add this particular pedal to my board. These gems appear to be out of production at this point, and even later versions from the 1990s appear to be going for $500+ on Reverb, so this pedal is an ideal candidate for cloning. AionFX has a PCB for this particular pedal marketed as the Plasma. There is a modern version which just builds the Overdriver, and a Legacy version which will do the related Power Booster circuit as well. For this build I went with the more recent incarnation of the board and decided to do the Power Booster as its own build later.

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.