A Big Thank You - Pedals for Ukraine

I just wanted to give a shout out and thanks to the people who bid on the Ukrainian Army BMP pedal in the Pedals for Ukraine auction. It ended up going for $260 which was donated to World Central Kitchen to support ongoing relief efforts in Ukraine. 

The pedal was mailed out yesterday and is on its way to its new owner!

Old School Distortion + A Cool Enclosure!

A few weeks ago I posted the prototype of my Dimetrodon Distortion pedal, which melded a classic MXR Distortion+ pedal with a Big Muff Pi Tone stack. I have more of those coming soon, including some really fun variants, but today's subject is the very first Distortion+ variant I built together with its finally completed enclosure. A few months ago I was looking to expand the range of distortion pedals I had available, so I went hunting through the gear used by my favorite guitarists at various points in their career. Unless you've been under a rock, you'll know I'm a huge Alex Lifeson / Rush fan, so one of the pedals I decided to build was an MXR distortion as it was one of the pedals Alex used during the Moving Pictures era. For that initial build I went with the AionFX Aphelion, though I have a variety of other boards I can use (including my own) for future Distortion+ (and related) clones.

Improving My Workspace - The Electronics Cart - Part 2

Warnings and apologies in advance, but this is going to be a very long post as it will detail not only the rest of the construction of the cart, but its finishing and then actual fitting out with my components as well! 

At the end of Part 1, we'd just finished gluing up the bottom of the cart's three shelves. As you can see from the photo below, the tape has come off of both of the I structure and the bottom shelf. With those sub-assemblies complete it was time to go ahead and work on building the other two shelves.

Improving My Workspace - The Electronics Cart - Part 1

Unless you only buy enough components to build one project at a time, building effects pedals eventually leads to collecting a large number of active, passive, and other components. Keeping all of these small parts organized in some meaningful way is, at best, a challenge. I've posted some photos in the past of my organization scheme for diodes, transistors, and ICs, but unfortunately I never had a great place to hang those organizers. They therefore tended to sit on the floor along with the bins for my resistors and capacitors. Given I have multiple hobbies, desk space is at a premium, and since I have also some larger electronics projects I want to work on, I needed something to give me additional work space and storage space for all of my bits. I settled on some sort of cart, and immediately went shopping. Unfortunately the closest thing I could find was a cart at Ikea which, like just about every useful piece of furniture there, was out of stock. I therefore figured since I'm already working on some insane woodworking projects with a friend, I may as well add a bespoke electronics cart to the list.

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.

Steggo Studios Reverb Shop is Now LIVE

I've decided to try and sell some of my pedals through Reverb. I'm not sure how well it is going to work, but I guess we'll see! My personal shop on Reverb is now under the Steggo Studios banner, and I'll slowly add a few pedals to the page as I get them built. 

Ukrainian Army BMP Auction is LIVE!

My Ukrainian Army BMP serial number 2 went up for auction on the Pedals for Ukraine Instagram site this morning. Bidding starts at $50 and goes through Thursday May 7 at 11:59PM. The bidding takes place via replying to the comment with the most current high bid. I'm hoping that the pedal will bring in some decent money for relief efforts in Ukraine.