AionFx Cepheus (Cornish CC-1)

apierz

Member
Build Rating
5.00 star(s)
After falling in love with the Chop Shop and making it my main overdrive for the past few weeks, I was “forced” to find another overdrive to pair it with, providing me with a perfect excuse to look through the pcb stack and find something new to build. This one appealed to me because I like my clone of Cornish’s ST-2 a lot and the circuit was different from anything I had built. It’s also a diode clipper, so I figured it would give me a different feel from the Chop Shop’s JFETs.



Build:

It’s a Cornish clone, so @aionfx has packed the PCB full of components, there’s some weird resistor values and I had to use some less-than-ideal sized capacitors, but it all came together well. With five pots I decided to solder the pots to PCB before mounting the board. I hadn’t done it thisaway in a while and promptly soldered the first one to the wrong side. It wasn’t a fun desolder, but that was the only real hiccup. I hardwired the daughter board for buffer always-on.



Sound:

It’s a good overdrive with an active three-band Baxandall EQ so it has a pretty good range of tones. The closest pedal I have is a Mostortion clone. It resolves my two biggest problems with the Mostortion, (too quiet and too compressed), which is great. It sounds good across its range of gain.



Design:

I liked how my ST-2 clone came out, so I did a similar thing with this one. This is my first time using LED lamp shades and I dig the look. The pot spacing on the top row isn’t quite big enough for the normal MXR style knobs, but I found those mini ones which help it match the look of the original.



Overall, I don’t know what would put it ahead of the hundreds of other overdrives you have to choose from, but if you are interested, definitely give it a shot, it won’t disappoint.
 

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Nice build! It looks like you hard-soldered it to buffered bypass... this is the way. :) I really like this drive too, enough that I created my own custom PCB for it. I would never pay $600 for a retail version, but it's worth a DIY build for sure. It does appear to be a somewhat unique circuit - familiar ingredients, but two stages of soft-clipping plus the 3-band Baxandall make it fairly original. To my ears it's fairly EQ neutral by default ("transparent"), so can do the "my amp plus more" thing pretty well too.
 
With five pots I decided to solder the pots to PCB before mounting the board.
You're a madman.

The closest pedal I have is a Mostortion clone. It resolves my two biggest problems with the Mostortion, (too quiet and too compressed), which is great
The Mostortion is one of my most disappointing builds. With Buk and so many other session guys gushing over it, I had high hopes and built it with good components and attention to detail. It's fine, I guess. It doesn't sound bad, but it's as boring as taking a dump without reading material.

A+ on the Cornish aesthetic. I started one like that for a Superfuzz pedal I built. I ultimately went in another direction, but here's where I got with it.

cornish.jpg
 
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