MDMA & Viceroy: Dog & Butterfly?

jeffwhitfield

Well-known member
Two more I finished a few weeks back. These were more experimental than anything. The Boneyard Edition PCB's are intriguing and wanted to see what the Viceroy was like. I've also been playing with various Dumble pedals so the MDMA was an obvious choice.

The MDMA is a bit of a strange bird. It's not a really bright pedal. At first, I wasn't sure if it was even working right. But, after listening to some demos of the Wampler Euphoria and reading up on it a bit, I learned that unity Bass is with it all the way off. No wonder I was confused! After finally figuring it out and playing with it a bit, I found it to be an interesting pedal. It definitely has the Dumble-ish thing to it. Sounds great with both humbuckers and single coils. In fact, the extra bassy quality of this pedal kind of lends to it being a bit better for single coil guitars. Helps tame down the chime and smooth things out.

I had fun with the design of this one. Found a repeating graphic that had little pills with "weed" on them that worked perfect for the theme. I plan on sticking this one on Reverb. Bet there will be one person who will look at this, laugh, and buy it on the spot. :p

I haven't built many FED-based overdrives so I knew building this one would be educational. It's interesting cause looking at the original pedal it's based on, the EQD Monarch, I can see how all the improvements really take it to a new level. The added Presence and Juice controls definitely help in giving the pedal more flexibility.

I find the Juice function to be a bit less useful...but only in that I generally don't need to bounce back and forth between low and high gain settings in my home studio environment. In this context, Juice is just nothing more than a way to set the pedal into more of a high gain mode...which is fine. Sounds great when it's on and definitely adds a nice bit of extra of gain.

The Presence knob is always a nice welcome. I find it to be quite useful on my Brown Betty and mainly use it on amp models that are rather bassy and/or mellow and require some added top-end sparkle. Definitely a welcomed addition here too.

I wanted something that was a nod to the original but in a more colorful manner. I knew I wanted a butterfly and found a wonderful graphic of a Viceroy. Definitely inspired by the original. Really turned out quite nice. :D

These are great pedals and turned out to be an educational experience in terms of knowing how the circuits work and what impact they have on the sound. I'll probably end up tossing these on Reverb instead of adding them to my personal collection. Still a great exercise. Glad I built them!

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Ah, that was going to be my next question Jeff - is this a Tayda or Amplifyfun print. How does your experience compare?
 
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Ah, that was going to be my next question Jeff - is this a Tayda or Amplifyfun print. How does your experience compare?
I really like AmplifyFun. Great experience so far. Plus, I don’t have to jack with punching out the white layer.
 
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Two more I finished a few weeks back. These were more experimental than anything. The Boneyard Edition PCB's are intriguing and wanted to see what the Viceroy was like. I've also been playing with various Dumble pedals so the MDMA was an obvious choice.

The MDMA is a bit of a strange bird. It's not a really bright pedal. At first, I wasn't sure if it was even working right. But, after listening to some demos of the Wampler Euphoria and reading up on it a bit, I learned that unity Bass is with it all the way off. No wonder I was confused! After finally figuring it out and playing with it a bit, I found it to be an interesting pedal. It definitely has the Dumble-ish thing to it. Sounds great with both humbuckers and single coils. In fact, the extra bassy quality of this pedal kind of lends to it being a bit better for single coil guitars. Helps tame down the chime and smooth things out.

I had fun with the design of this one. Found a repeating graphic that had little pills with "weed" on them that worked perfect for the theme. I plan on sticking this one on Reverb. Bet there will be one person who will look at this, laugh, and buy it on the spot. :p

I haven't built many FED-based overdrives so I knew building this one would be educational. It's interesting cause looking at the original pedal it's based on, the EQD Monarch, I can see how all the improvements really take it to a new level. The added Presence and Juice controls definitely help in giving the pedal more flexibility.

I find the Juice function to be a bit less useful...but only in that I generally don't need to bounce back and forth between low and high gain settings in my home studio environment. In this context, Juice is just nothing more than a way to set the pedal into more of a high gain mode...which is fine. Sounds great when it's on and definitely adds a nice bit of extra of gain.

The Presence knob is always a nice welcome. I find it to be quite useful on my Brown Betty and mainly use it on amp models that are rather bassy and/or mellow and require some added top-end sparkle. Definitely a welcomed addition here too.

I wanted something that was a nod to the original but in a more colorful manner. I knew I wanted a butterfly and found a wonderful graphic of a Viceroy. Definitely inspired by the original. Really turned out quite nice. :D

These are great pedals and turned out to be an educational experience in terms of knowing how the circuits work and what impact they have on the sound. I'll probably end up tossing these on Reverb instead of adding them to my personal collection. Still a great exercise. Glad I built them!

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Really nice builds Jeff. Have you built the Son of Benson yet, and if so how would you compare it to the Viceroy?
 
Really nice builds Jeff. Have you built the Son of Benson yet, and if so how would you compare it to the Viceroy?
I have indeed built a Son of Ben. It's more of a preamp really compared to the Viceroy. I tend to use the Son of Ben as more of an amp running it into a cab emulator. My understanding is that the Benson Preamp is based off a Chimera 30W amp. So I figure it can be ran as an amp if you use a cab emulator. Does work quite well like that.

By comparison, the Viceroy feels more like a straight-up overdrive, which is pretty much how I use it.
 
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