A Vintage Style Dimetrodon!

The Steggo Dimetrodon Distortion is based on the vintage Distortion+ circuit, but up to this point I'd only used all modern components in my Dimetrodon builds. Given the original Distortion+ dates from the 70's I thought it would be fun to look for old gut shots of the pedal to see what sort of components were used on the early iterations of that pedal and test out the Dimetrodon with something similar. I had also recently built a couple of Dimetrodon Distortion pedals with the Sovtek tone stack, but I didn't have one for personal use, so this build let me sort of kill two birds with one stone!

Old School MXR Distortion + PCB - Image from Premier Guitar

The Return of the King (of Tone)

One of my earliest builds was a clone of the boutique Analogman King of Tone pedal. The King of Tone itself is a very sought after double overdrive pedal, with a variety of clipping options (most of which are set using internal DIP switches). The "real thing" is currently in Version 4, and on Reverb they still tend to start at around $600 for a real one and go up from there. The waiting list for an original remains long as well. My first build was in my "pre-dino" days - and I'd bought a kit from Germany that included an unpainted enclosure, the PCB, and all of the parts. I substituted some good matches for the original diodes rather than using the stock ones with the kit, though, as depending on who you ask the King of Tone has "magic diodes" much in the same way the Klon Centaur / KTR does. I'd always wanted to circle back and make a real "dino" version of the pedal, so I finally took the plunge.

Return of the Queen - A Special Saurus Regina!

Back in July I completed my first clone of the Lizard Queen pedal - it's really a decent old school fuzz pedal, and I've built a few here and there. I'd ordered some more enclosures and unfortunately one of them was misprinted at the factory. This is a fairly rare event, and Tayda always makes things right, but I wondered if it might be possible to use this particular enclosure for something fun - so enter a special version of the Saurus Regina pedal!

An Updated IVP Preamp! With a Really Loud Dinosaur!

One of the most complex builds I've done in the past is the AionFX Intersound IVP pre-amp. I finished one up almost two years ago. It was a beast of a build. I was happy with the build itself, but the enclosure I used was both fairly unimaginative and had a minor error in the UV printing. I had recently gotten a request for an IVP build, so I decided to go all out this time and come up with something really amazing.

Special Dinovember 2023 Edition Dimetrodon Distortion Build Report!

A while back I had a Dimetrodon Distortion enclosure that had a bit of a problem. It had gotten scratched up, although the UV printing on the face of the enclosure was just great. I'd had mixed results trying to paint enclosures in the past, but I found some powder coat spray paint (rather than having to go through the powder coating process) and I figured this would be a great opportunity to see if I could recover a damaged enclosure - and then I decided to take it a few steps further!

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

Seeing Red - Cloning a Unique Overdrive Pedal

I was looking for a unique and fun overdrive project when I came across the PedalPCB Bloodshot overdrive. It's a clone of the Heavy Electronics Red Eyes - which is a very cool pedal. Not only is it a really responsive dirty overdrive pedal, but on the originals the red LED clipping diodes are mounted to the front of the enclosure, so you can see them as the pedal is used. I didn't go that route with my build, but it looks like it might be possible with a little creative wiring.