A Pair of Octave fuzzes

[GizzWizzKing]

Build Rating

5.00 star(s)

The eEffectslayouts Ache. It's the EQD life pedal without the boost and with a foot switch for the octave effect. I am late to the party building these, but I don't think there are currently any build reports of this specific pedal here, so here's my two cents. It's awesome. This one has been in varying states of unbuilt for a long time. Multiple rounds of troubleshooting for various reasons. Fake Fets, backwards Russian diodes, bad wiring, etc. these were all my fault and the build really shouldn't have been that hard. And then it sat for quite a while without any art. Went with a white rat in a spiral with little robots. I'm getting better at the graphics but my oven is too hot so there's bubbling on the graphic. Not too bad but I will get a heat gun in the future to avoid this. Film free waterslide. But it is finally done. I only regret my drilling which meant that one of the footswitches is slightly off. I tried to push myself to make this one fairly tidy, and enjoy the red and white peppermint vibes. No real mojo. Germaniums are D9K and the IC is a TL071. I do love fitting two foot switches in a standard enclosure. Something feels special about that.
How does it sound?
Full disclosure, I have troubles liking Rat circuits, but this one is really smooth and has way more good settings than bad. Easily my favorite Rat so far (at least one more to come soon). I find myself always gravitating towards the more open clipping diode options and keeping the gain fairly high. And then the octave side is terrific. It does all the fun synthy tricks and stays clangy and rich all over the neck. This one was inspire by thewintersoldier (what happened to that guy anyways?) from way back when I only was lurking and reading about the cool stuff others could do. It was worth the wait. It may even bump my favorite octave fuzz off the board...


And now my favorite octave fuzz, the Octavia. This one has been on and off my board for a long time and was one of the first pedals I got working. There are some substitutions to try and keep the noise down, but just things I gathered cruising the forum. A funny note, I boxed this year's ago and have played it often and moved it around on my board a lot. But when I opened to unbox it for a decal I discovered that I had never soldered the power supply (gutshot shows when it unsoldered when I opened it). Surprisingly it never had any issues. The sound? It's amazing. Roll back your volume knob and you can get synth sounds for days. It cuts. It crushes. I especially like it with a phaser going at the same time. Tried and true this one kills. Highly suggested. I went with Boris Karloff as The Monster as the first in my collection of classic monster decals. Nostalgia to the max.

Thanks for reading.

 

[cooder]

Great builds. Those 'backwards' markings on Russian diodes can trick ya...

 

[GizzWizzKing]

Great builds. Those 'backwards' markings on Russian diodes can trick ya...

I should have known better. A single mistake is worth more than hours reading on forums though. This build single handedly helped me with my annoyance of unboxing and reboxing a build. I probably took it out and put it back in around 10 times and prior to this build that was something I always got a bit gun shy about. This helped me to not be so lazy.

 

[pricklyrobot]

I like how the stomp switch looks like a 3rd neck bolt

Did you go ahead and solder those power wires?
You could get arcing (and gradual pitting of the metal) over time, even if they’re working now.

 

[GizzWizzKing]

3rd neck bolt

I actually thought that as I boxed it up.

Did you go ahead and solder those power wires?

I did go ahead and solder it. But I think this will be my new way to test since I generally finish the wiring in the box. That way I can still take it out to troubleshoot if necessary.