Angry Troll: "Shoebill Boost" (w/Gerber)

[rwl]

Build Rating

5.00 star(s)

This is a report on my build on my version of the Way Huge Angry Troll boost, which I think is one of the more popular Way Huge pedals. It's a really nice dirty boost. You can find the gerber here.



Inspiration
I was wondering what bird is most troll-like and settled on the Shoebill. Frankly one of the ugliest birds, and one you could definitely imagine waiting for you under a bridge. There's a cool video about shoebills here. There's not a lot to say about the inspiration, it came together quickly, and I'm really happy with how it turned out, including the pink knobs and pink LED (the Shoebill has a pink/yellow bill). The design is UV printed on a Tayda cream background.

The Build
I built this with my own PCB (gerber linked above). I had no problems, this is a very straightforward build with a limited number of components. It worked well right away. As for all my boost/overdrive/fuzz pedals I used shielded input/output wires. I arbitrarily went with a black/white color scheme.

The Pedal
It's a great boost that really feels more like a a typical overdrive that's missing a tone knob. It's apparently based off of a LPB-1 and can add 50dB of volume. There's not much to say here - with gain up, it's got a really nice tone that I suppose sounds similar to a KoT to me. It feels a little muddy on a single coil neck pickup, but killer on my humbucker bridge pickup. It's not a gainy pedal, and there's very limited background noise even with volume and gain maxed out. In the end I'm not sure why Way Huge would call this pedal the"Angry Troll." Maybe "pleasant gremlin" is closer .

I'm not sure this rises to the top of the heap for me in terms of boosts/overdrives, but I can see it sticking around my board for a bit. It's a great balance between a simple build, few controls, and a reasonably wide range of tones.

Build rating: 5/5
Pedal rating: 5/5

 

[HamishR]

Lovely clean build. I've wondered about the Angry Troll so thanks for the description. If you are looking for an unusual looking bird google the Tawny Frogmouth. They live around my area, are nocturnal and look like a part of a tree during the day. They're often mistaken for an owl, but they're not related at all. I don't think I'd call them ugly but they're not swan-like! And we have a mating pair of black swans in my local lake so I see them often.

 

[rwl]

I love frogmouths, though I hadn't seen the tawny frogmouth before - so angry! In general I have a soft spot for ungainly or awkward birds.

I have a related bird in mind for a pedal but haven't been able to get the design good enough to meet my quality bar. But I'm excited about the design concept, I just need more time...

 

[Aleph Null]

How dirty does this thing actually get? looking at the schematic, it doesn't look like it should clip that much.

Also, shoebill definitely does look angry.

 

[Erik S]

Love it!

I was going to mention that “Shoebills are Metal” vid, but I see you already tagged it.

 

[rwl]

How dirty does this thing actually get? looking at the schematic, it doesn't look like it should clip that much.

Ok, I finally got around to comparing it to the Paragon Mini (KoT).

With the gain on the Angry Troll maxed out, I find it to be dirtier than playing the "soft clipping" KoT with one side active, gain maxed. It's less dirty than the the KoT with the same settings but "hard clipping".

The gain on the Angry Troll gets much more intense in the last 10-20% of the range. So between 4:00 and 5:00 it's a big difference, below that the change in gain is more subtle.

The overall volume is much louder than the KoT at comparable volume settings. The tone feels a little thinner and less rich.