Another Awesome Vintage Fuzz - Steggo's Take on the Octavia!

I didn't plan this on purpose, it just happened to be when the various projects got done. A couple of weeks ago I finally finished up my first Fuzz Face builds, and today I've just finished up another amazing vintage fuzz - the Octavia. This is another fuzz effect made famous by the legendary Jimi Hendrix. Originally designed by his sound engineer Roger Mayer, the pedal blends an octave up signal with a distorted signal to create one of the first (if not the first) octave-up fuzz effects.

An Alternate Brachyceratops Overdrive

A little over a month ago I posted a new combo pedal build I'd gotten a request for - a combo I likely should have done long ago - a Klon plus a Bluesbreaker circuit. I sort of went all out on that original build as I used one of the amazing Tone Geek Mini-Taur boards and paired it with a brand new in-house layout of the Bluesbreaker that provides early and late tone options along with clipping options. It came out really well, and included an order reverse switch. However, I wanted to do a version using the same technique I had used on my BMP / power-boost combo pedal. In that version, there are four jacks - you can't reverse the order on the fly - that has to be done with patch cables, but you can use the pedals independently or include some sort of effects loop between them. 

Steggo Finally Builds a Fuzz Face!

Introduced in 1966 by Arbitrer Electronics, the Fuzz Face is one of the earliest guitar effect pedals. It gained a great deal of popularity because Jimi Hendrix made extensive use of the pedal. The circuit itself is fairly simple, only consisting of 2 transistors, 4 resistors, 3 capacitors, and 2 potentiometers. The catch is the gain and leakage of those two transistors is vitally important to the overall final tone of the effect. In modern clones, variable resistors are used to help individually bias the transistors to ensure good tone for both the silicon and germanium versions of the circuit. I'd always wanted to put together a fuzz face, but which one?

Fortunately and PedalPCB has a great board called the Twin Face which combines both the silicon and germanium versions into one pedal!

Another Plateosaurus Preamp!

I'd previously built a couple of the PedalPCB clones of the Benson preamp - one for a friend to gig with, and one for myself. As these are a little tricky to get set up right, I only make them on request as a part of a custom order. Another regular had requested one as a larger batch of pedals, so I pulled out my last PCB and started working!

Another Cool Custom Pre-amp! Cloning the Peavey Decade

I got a request for a pedal that recreated the pre-amp portion of the Peavey Decade amplifier. The Peavey Decade is an old-school solid state amp that has been used by a lot of bands. It has waxed and waned in popularity over the years, but it is popular enough that there are a couple of fairly boutique guitar pedals that emulate it's preamp section. PedalPCB makes a preamp board, called the Decadence Preamp. So with board in hand, I got cracking!

The Very Model of a Modern Master General? A New Steggo Fuzz Clone!

Steggo had gotten a request for a clone of the EQD Fuzz Master General. That pedal is an update of the vintage Ace Tone FM-2 Fuzz Master Professional, which was famous for it's fairly untamed octave up character. Fortunately PedalPCB had a board ready to go in the Fuzz Cadet, so I grabbed a couple of boards and got cracking!

A New Combo Pedal - The Brachyceratops Overdrive

Sometimes I get a request for a pedal and then immediately wonder why I hadn't already done something along those lines. One popular combination pairs a Klon Centaur with a Marshall Bluesbreaker. I've done several different versions of the Klon Centaur over the years, and I really enjoy building them. I've also recently done a new dinosaur version of the Bluesbreaker, the Blues Brachiosaurus. In the background I'd been working on my own version of the Bluesbreaker, so when I got a request for the combo pedal, I decided to go all out with the new Bluesbreaker board and one of my favorite Klon boards as well!