A Truly Steggo Geisha Drive Clone

Fingolfen

Well-known member
Build Rating
5.00 star(s)
About a year ago, I posted a build using a hand-etched board cloning the out of production Way Huge Geisha drive. It was a really fun build, but recently I've been having trouble with my photoresist which has made creating hand-etched boards very difficult. I have an alternative in the works, but it's not ready to go yet, so watch the blog for more info there! In the meantime, South Obolon FX (AKA a friend of mine in Ukraine) had laid out a version of the Geisha, and was kind enough to create a Steggo version of the board.

SOFX - Steggo-san - 01.jpg

The layout of this board is fairly open, but it does include multiple connection points so all of the jacks can be individually grounded to the board. For this build I used all 1% metal film resistors (Yageo and KOA Speer). The one jumper in the upper right-hand corner of the board is the current limiting resistor for the LED, I decided to jumper it because I wanted to do something a little different with the LED on this build. The film capacitors are WIMA, Panasonic, and KEMET, and the few electrolytic capacitors are all Nichicon. The socketed IC is a JRC4741D - these are hard to find at this point, but I have several I found from an allegedly reliable source. The diodes are all modern production as well.

SOFX - Steggo-san - 02.jpg

For this build I'm using the 3PDT daughter board with an LED brightness control laid out by Drunk Beaver Pedals. I've used this board for a couple of other builds. It's nice because it allows you to easily place the LED on either side of the stomp switch depending on where it works best for the build. It also includes space for a trimmer resistor so that the brightness of the LED can be adjusted. In the past I hadn't used that feature, I'd simply jumpered the spot for the trimmer, but this time I used a combination of a 1K ohm resistor and a 10K trimmer to create a functional brightness control.

As I mentioned above, there are enough connections to ground the audio and DC jacks to the board itself, so I went that route with this build. It does make the interior of the build look very clean with the very short wire runs. I also connected most of the hook-up wires to the bottom as well to keep things clean in the enclosure. All of the jack connections are insulated with heat shrink tubing.

SOFX - Steggo-san - 03.jpg

The knob locations on this board is different than the Effects Layouts board, but I really loved the original art I'd used for this pedal. I therefore just moved a few elements around to accommodate the controls, and I think the end result is absolutely awesome.

In terms of the sound, it sounds like my previous builds with the JRC4741D - at least so far. I need to run it through a few tube amps to get a feel for it, and I also really need to start getting good sound demonstrations going.

Original blog entry: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/03/updated-geisha-drive-clone.html
 
About a year ago, I posted a build using a hand-etched board cloning the out of production Way Huge Geisha drive. It was a really fun build, but recently I've been having trouble with my photoresist which has made creating hand-etched boards very difficult. I have an alternative in the works, but it's not ready to go yet, so watch the blog for more info there! In the meantime, South Obolon FX (AKA a friend of mine in Ukraine) had laid out a version of the Geisha, and was kind enough to create a Steggo version of the board.

View attachment 43672

The layout of this board is fairly open, but it does include multiple connection points so all of the jacks can be individually grounded to the board. For this build I used all 1% metal film resistors (Yageo and KOA Speer). The one jumper in the upper right-hand corner of the board is the current limiting resistor for the LED, I decided to jumper it because I wanted to do something a little different with the LED on this build. The film capacitors are WIMA, Panasonic, and KEMET, and the few electrolytic capacitors are all Nichicon. The socketed IC is a JRC4741D - these are hard to find at this point, but I have several I found from an allegedly reliable source. The diodes are all modern production as well.

View attachment 43673

For this build I'm using the 3PDT daughter board with an LED brightness control laid out by Drunk Beaver Pedals. I've used this board for a couple of other builds. It's nice because it allows you to easily place the LED on either side of the stomp switch depending on where it works best for the build. It also includes space for a trimmer resistor so that the brightness of the LED can be adjusted. In the past I hadn't used that feature, I'd simply jumpered the spot for the trimmer, but this time I used a combination of a 1K ohm resistor and a 10K trimmer to create a functional brightness control.

As I mentioned above, there are enough connections to ground the audio and DC jacks to the board itself, so I went that route with this build. It does make the interior of the build look very clean with the very short wire runs. I also connected most of the hook-up wires to the bottom as well to keep things clean in the enclosure. All of the jack connections are insulated with heat shrink tubing.

View attachment 43674

The knob locations on this board is different than the Effects Layouts board, but I really loved the original art I'd used for this pedal. I therefore just moved a few elements around to accommodate the controls, and I think the end result is absolutely awesome.

In terms of the sound, it sounds like my previous builds with the JRC4741D - at least so far. I need to run it through a few tube amps to get a feel for it, and I also really need to start getting good sound demonstrations going.

Original blog entry: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/03/updated-geisha-drive-clone.html
Wow.... great looking pedal.... Stunning...
 
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