Another Amp Project - the Dino Deluxe 5E3!

Back in February I finished my first Amp project, a 5F2-A Tweed Princeton. It is an amazing amp and has taken over upstairs / family room duties as it sounds great and the volume isn't loud enough to scare everyone else out of the house. Eventually I'd like to build some higher end amps, like a Hiwatt DR-103 as used by David Gilmour, but those are notoriously difficult builds. I wanted to get a few intermediate builds under my belt before moving on, and I went in search of another project. I ultimately decided on another Tweed style amp - the 5E3 which has been used by many amazing guitarists including Neil Young and Billy Gibbons.

Capturing a Legend's Sound - Cloning the Cornerstone Gladio SC

Stevie Ray Vaughan was one of the greatest rock / blues guitarists of all time. Many people have attempted to capture his distinctive tone, and many pedals have tried to capture that tone as well. The Cornerstone Gladio SC standalone preamp takes a somewhat unique approach by allowing a blend of the clean and driven signals - along with volume and tone control. There is even a toggle that allows for compression to be added to a signal. The end effect is you can essentially get a tone which sounds like it is running through a dual amplifier set up with one clean amp and one overdriven amp. I had a request to build one, so I went in search of a PCB and got to it!

Steggo's Dimetrodon Distortion an Honorable Mention on Chappers' Top 10 Distortion Pedals List!

Steggo's first original pedal, the Dimetrodon Distortion recently got an amazing shout out from Rob Chapman on his YouTube channel! He was doing his round up of the Top 10 Distortion Pedals of all time. Many of which I know, agree with, and have built in the past. However, there were a few that I haven't had a chance to play with, so I have some more research to do. While the Dimetrodon didn't quite make the Top 10, it did get an "Honorable Mention."

A Custom Vintage Thagomizer!

Unless you've been under a rock, you'll know that the Colorsound Power Boost is one of Steggo's favorite pedals - especially with the volume knob mod. It can work anywhere from a mostly clean boost to a very nice dirty boost. It's also an essential piece of kit if you're wanting to try and replicate David Gilmour's pedal board. I've built several versions of the pedal, but the ones with vintage bits are usually my favorite. They're fun to build because, well if I'm being honest, I love to mess around with old components. To my ear they also sound a bit different, though I admit it could be confirmation bias. I don't think there's any inherent "mojo" in the bits, I just think they vary in different directions than modern components do. The vintage resistors and caps I've measured frequently tend to be a bit over spec, whereas most of the modern ones I've measured tend to be a bit under spec. 

An Interesting Take on the Klon Centaur - the Skelekloned Kentrosaurus

The Klon Centaur is one of the most popular overdrive circuits in the market today (largely because of the number of clones available). I've built several Klon clones of various types and by and large these all work extremely well. There is, however, an issue with the Klon. Because the design includes a charge pump, that charge pump and buffer can sometimes create interference when coupled with clock-driven modulation effects - like the vintage Electric Mistress and other similar effects. Since a lot of people (including me) like to couple a Klon with more vintage effects, I went in search of designs that eliminated the charge pump - and hopefully the interference with vintage modulation effects. I found a couple of options and this is the first one I've gotten built up.

Another Amazing Overdrive - Steggo's Layout of the Boneyard Emerald Green Overdrive

Chuck's Boneyard on the PedalPCB forum is an absolute wealth of information on pedal building as well as mods of famous (or not so famous) circuits. I've laid out boards for a few of the designs on the Boneyard and worked out a licensing arrangement to sell a few based on the schematics on the forum. All of the once I've breadboarded and laid out have been great pedals. A couple, however, reach the level of amazing pedals. The Celestial Engineering Timbre Man, which in Steggo livery is the Falcarius Overdrive, was the first to hit the "amazing" tier. The subject of this build report - Chuck's take on the Emerald Green Overdrive - is the second to hit that tier.

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!