- Build Rating
This is my build of the Aion Cepheus Amp Overdrive based on the Cornish CC-1. Aion's description of this pedal and Cornish pedals in general is good; he goes into even more detail in the tracing journal. The same board can be used to build the higher-gain GC-1; Aion's build docs have the BOMs for building either circuit.
I named this Egregiously Expensive Crunch. I just checked, and if you buy a CC-1 direct from Pete Cornish, it's 502 GBP, which is currently 666 USD (shout out to all my Iron Maiden fan friends!). His pedals appear to be pretty well built, but I do believe you're mostly paying for the name. I mean, you can buy two to four Boss pedals for the price of one Cornish pedal. Boss has a reputation for well-built pedals that last. And when/if they do fail, worldwide availability means you can generally get a replacement same-day. But if you've got Paul McCartney's budget, maybe "value" has a different meaning than it does for the rest of us.
Anyway, this worked great on first power-on. Like so many Aion boards, there are just enough circuit components on the bypass breakout PCB to make it non-trivial to use an alternate bypass mechanism. For anyone who's looked at my recent build reports, I moved away from 3PDT mechanical footswitches a while ago, and use either my microcontroller-based relay bypass circuit, or a CMOS hex inverter-based relay bypass, or more recently, a buffered electrical bypass, all of which use a "premium feel" soft-touch momentary SPST switch. In the past, I've created custom one-off versions of my bypass designs to work with Aion circuits, such as the Andromeda Deluxe and the Amethyst. I haven't yet created a custom bypass board for the Cepheus because I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not.
The "competition" for this pedal is Chuck D. Bones modified Dark Esbat. For a while, I've been looking for the perfect (for me) pedal that can do all of EQ shaping, edge-of-breakup, boosting another drive, sound good both at home and in a band mix, and do all these things with different guitars.
I just spent an hour or so comparing this Cepheus and the modified Dark Esbat, and the competition is close. It remains to be seen how the Cepheus will fare in a band mix. But it's capable of slightly more EQ neutrality (dare I say transparency) than the Dark Esbat mod. And I think the breakup/overdrive character sounds a bit more natural (dare I say amp-like). Where it struggles though, is that for about the same amount of dirt and volume, when being used as a boost/next-pedal-pusher, it has noticeably more noise than the Dark Esbat mod. The noise isn't too bad on my Illitch-equipped G&L ASAT, but on my P90 Yamaha Revstar, it borders on egregious. (Note that's only when pushing another drive - alone, both pedals have negligible noise.) More gain almost always means more noise, so I suspect that the Cepheus simply requires more gain to get the same amount of dirt as the Dark Esbat.
The other thing that's a minor nitpick is the available volume is noticeably lower than the Esbat. I mean, it can do unity gain and above, but when the volume knobs are maxed on both pedals, the Cepheus is loud, but the Esbat is crazy-loud. I don't need crazy loud, but I like to have the "sweet spot" for any pot to be roughly in the noon position, just because I find it comforting to know there's plenty of adjustment in either direction. Similarly, I generally like a little mid-push, so I found I generally like the Cepheus mid control to be past noon.
Despite my nitpicks, I really do like the drive character of this pedal. I definitely need more under-the-fingers time. It was definitely worth the time spent building it.
If you made it this far in my writeup, you may be wondering, am I going to build a custom bypass circuit for it? And the answer is maybe. I have some ideas for some custom mods which might address some of my issues that I might try to explore first. Or maybe I could convince @Chuck D. Bones to put this circuit on the breadboard.
It's not a ground-breaking circuit by any means, but as Kevin says in his tracing log, "Pete seems to have started with a largely blank slate here and designed something from the ground up rather than just combining well-worn circuit blocks."
I named this Egregiously Expensive Crunch. I just checked, and if you buy a CC-1 direct from Pete Cornish, it's 502 GBP, which is currently 666 USD (shout out to all my Iron Maiden fan friends!). His pedals appear to be pretty well built, but I do believe you're mostly paying for the name. I mean, you can buy two to four Boss pedals for the price of one Cornish pedal. Boss has a reputation for well-built pedals that last. And when/if they do fail, worldwide availability means you can generally get a replacement same-day. But if you've got Paul McCartney's budget, maybe "value" has a different meaning than it does for the rest of us.
Anyway, this worked great on first power-on. Like so many Aion boards, there are just enough circuit components on the bypass breakout PCB to make it non-trivial to use an alternate bypass mechanism. For anyone who's looked at my recent build reports, I moved away from 3PDT mechanical footswitches a while ago, and use either my microcontroller-based relay bypass circuit, or a CMOS hex inverter-based relay bypass, or more recently, a buffered electrical bypass, all of which use a "premium feel" soft-touch momentary SPST switch. In the past, I've created custom one-off versions of my bypass designs to work with Aion circuits, such as the Andromeda Deluxe and the Amethyst. I haven't yet created a custom bypass board for the Cepheus because I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not.
The "competition" for this pedal is Chuck D. Bones modified Dark Esbat. For a while, I've been looking for the perfect (for me) pedal that can do all of EQ shaping, edge-of-breakup, boosting another drive, sound good both at home and in a band mix, and do all these things with different guitars.
I just spent an hour or so comparing this Cepheus and the modified Dark Esbat, and the competition is close. It remains to be seen how the Cepheus will fare in a band mix. But it's capable of slightly more EQ neutrality (dare I say transparency) than the Dark Esbat mod. And I think the breakup/overdrive character sounds a bit more natural (dare I say amp-like). Where it struggles though, is that for about the same amount of dirt and volume, when being used as a boost/next-pedal-pusher, it has noticeably more noise than the Dark Esbat mod. The noise isn't too bad on my Illitch-equipped G&L ASAT, but on my P90 Yamaha Revstar, it borders on egregious. (Note that's only when pushing another drive - alone, both pedals have negligible noise.) More gain almost always means more noise, so I suspect that the Cepheus simply requires more gain to get the same amount of dirt as the Dark Esbat.
The other thing that's a minor nitpick is the available volume is noticeably lower than the Esbat. I mean, it can do unity gain and above, but when the volume knobs are maxed on both pedals, the Cepheus is loud, but the Esbat is crazy-loud. I don't need crazy loud, but I like to have the "sweet spot" for any pot to be roughly in the noon position, just because I find it comforting to know there's plenty of adjustment in either direction. Similarly, I generally like a little mid-push, so I found I generally like the Cepheus mid control to be past noon.
Despite my nitpicks, I really do like the drive character of this pedal. I definitely need more under-the-fingers time. It was definitely worth the time spent building it.
If you made it this far in my writeup, you may be wondering, am I going to build a custom bypass circuit for it? And the answer is maybe. I have some ideas for some custom mods which might address some of my issues that I might try to explore first. Or maybe I could convince @Chuck D. Bones to put this circuit on the breadboard.
It's not a ground-breaking circuit by any means, but as Kevin says in his tracing log, "Pete seems to have started with a largely blank slate here and designed something from the ground up rather than just combining well-worn circuit blocks."Attachments
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