Based on jjjimi84's excellent build and demo, I had to build my own Celestial Drive. I can't really add anything that jjjimi84 didn't already say. Great drive, delightfully simple and easy build.
Celestial Drive
- Thread starter MattG
- Start date
Thank you! And thank you for the suggestion, I almost certainly wouldn't have picked this up if it wasn't for your awesome build report and demo.
I have three main rigs:
- A Peavey Classic 30 I keep at my band's rehearsal space (i.e. my buddy's house). This is actually where I first used my Celestial Drive. I had the pedal completely built, except for the LF351N, which I had ordered from ebay. The opamps showed up the day I had band practice, so I threw one in the pedal, and took it to practice with me. Worked and sounded great! I used my G&L ASAT Special that night (tele-style axe with single coils). I'm hoping to have practice this weekend too, and I'll use my other guitar for that, a Revered Kingbolt (humbuckers).
- My main at-home amp is the Trinity Triwatt (I built mine from the kit). I haven't actually gotten too much play time yet with the Celestial Drive and the Triwatt. I'm basically limited to weekends for playing through a real amp at home, since during the week the only other time to play is when my kids are in bed, so I'm mostly forced to use the headphone rig. Last weekend I didn't get to play due to being away from home. Hopefully this weekend I'll get to spend some more time with it through the Triwatt.
- A Mooer GE-200. This is basically a digital modeling amp, I use it with headphones so as not to disturb my family. While it has dozens of presets, plus all kinds of customizable digital overdrive effects, I like to use my DIY analog overdrives in front of it, and the base amp set pretty clean (using the Hiwatt DR103 sim). The subtleties and nuances of dirt pedals doesn't come through as noticeably with this rig, so it's not as fun as using a real amp. But it's my only practical choice when the family isn't willing to put up with the noise!
The only "problem" now is that I only have room for two dirt pedals on my board, but have three that I really like at the moment: this, the Chauffeur Drive, and Fuzz Aldrin (Hybrid Fuzz spec). Good problem to have!
The Chauffeur Drive is pretty unique, but so complex... Put the gut shots of that and the Celestial Drive side by side, it's like 5x the components. The Celestial Drive topology is certainly well-trodden ground, but somehow comes out sounding quite original (to my ears, anyway).
I feel like the drive on which the Celestial is based, the DMB Pedals Stellar Drive, didn't get as much praise as I'd expect. I've tried searching all the gear forums for discussions of the Stellar Drive, and they are few and far between. What's there is all praise though. I just expected more commentary.
I'd definitely be interested in the 4-knob version that adds the clean blend. I feel like that would add a lot of diversity to a pedal that's already quite capable.
Harry Klippton
Well-known member
Yeah we're gonna need pics of that triwatt
I'm too lazy to re-post them here, but I posted a bunch of pics in the Trinity Forum. I assembled the amp. The 1x12 combo cab was built for me by Trinity. Speaker is a Reeves Vintage Purple.
This is the first (and so far only) tube amp I've built. I think the wiring/lead dress is acceptable, but definitely not up to that classic Hiwatt "military spec" standard. I actually just received a Mojotone Custom 50 kit. I haven't had time to start on it. But I really want to try for that legendary Hiwatt ultra clean wiring. Though to be honest, I initially wanted to do that with the Triwatt, but I got impatient, and just wanted to start playing it!
Harry Klippton
Well-known member
Cool stuff. I just started my trinity TC15 that I bought almost a year ago and Im having a blast
