Heir and a Spare? Cloning the Prince of Tone

The Analogman Prince of Tone is a single channel version of the King of Tone - which is a two-channel pedal based on the Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal. While more common, and lower priced, than the King of Tone, the Prince of Tone still commands in excess of its $150 retail price on the secondary market. Since I'd built its big brother, I figured it was worth trying to build single channel version as well!

Harmonic Percolator Double Take - Albini Mod!

Steggo's new Harmonic Peolorosaurus board will not only build the "standard" version of the Harmonic Percolator, but the Albini modified version as well. I went ahead and built both versions of the circuit. This build report is therefore essentially and addendum to the previous one as there are only a few component changes.

Steggo's Take on the Harmonic Percolator!

One of the first pedals I built was AionFX's Particle - a modified version of the vintage Interfax Harmonic Percolator. It was a really neat Fuzz pedal, and AionFX provided recipes for both the normal unit and a version modified by Steve Albini. When I first started to learn to lay out my own boards, I wanted to get as much practice as possible. So I went ahead and laid out my own version of this circuit.

An Original Layout of an Amazing Boneyard Overdrive!

Learning to use the EasyEDA tool has opened up a lot of new opportunities for laying out unusual or unique designs. Recently there was a post on PedalPCB's Chuck's Boneyard detailing an update to an older Apocalypse Audio design. It looked interesting, so I decided to go ahead and test it out and all I can say is "Wow!" It is an amazing overdrive with a really strong and tight low-end.

A Famous 1980's Vintage Chorus - With a Purple Dinosaur???

As a college student in the late 80's and early 90's, it was amazing to witness the tectonic shift in musical styles over such a short period of time. One of the seminal releases of the era was Nirvana's Nevermind, released in 1991, which almost overnight ended the reign of hair bands and ushered in the era of alternative rock spearheaded by the Seattle grunge scene. The second single from the album, "Come as You Are," featured an iconic watery guitar riff played through the original iteration of the EHX Small Clone chorus pedal (with some post production) which was only built from 1979 to 1883. While you can get a modern version of the Small Clone today, there are some differences to the circuit which result in a different sound from the pedal. AionFX has released a modified version of the original as the Lithium project, so I absolutely had to build at least one!

The Dimetrodon Distortion - In Miniature!

Last June Steggo released the first original in-house pedal - the Dimetrodon Distortion. In one version or another it's become a permanent fixture on my pedal board able to do anything from overdrive to serious doomy distortion all in one package. I've made a lot of them, but I'd really love to see the pedal really take off and sell at a level that some of the medium-sized boutique makers reach (in the range of 50-100 pedals / year as opposed to 10-20). Given my current time constraints, I'd need to find a way to streamline some of the production of a version of the Dimetrodon to reach that production level (as I don't want to just continually make one pedal). I'd followed a recent release from Supercool Pedals (the Thneed - which is a great pedal BTW!), and that pedal is entirely SMD. Looking at that pedal as an example, I wondered if I could do something similar with the Dimetrodon without sacrificing the tone, so the Dimetrodon Mini was born!

Quick 5F2-A Update!

Late last month I posted my first amplifier build - a Mojotone 5F2-A Tweed Princeton. I've got to say, a month in and I'm absolutely loving that amp. I decided to put it in our upstairs family room and sell the Fender Champion 20 amp I had up there (and to be honest had rarely played because I honestly didn't like the amp that much). With the Tweed upstairs, I've actually been splitting my practice time a lot more between my downstairs office (where most of the guitars and amps live) and the family room (where I only have the one amp, no pedals - gasp! - and one guitar). That being said, there was one detail missing from the amp...