Chop Shop gift build.

Dan0h

Well-known member
Let’s get this out of the way first. The Chop Shop was not a board I would have bought, even after watching Mark Johnston’s amazing video about it. I just have too many overdrives. But luckily @MichaelW gifted me an extra board he had, so of course I’m going to build it, and…
Holy crap this thing is really really good. With the Sag and drive down this might actually be the clean boost/enchantment magic box I’ve been looking for and with the sag and drive up this thing kills in the transparent drive realm. It’s like a transparent fuzz face with clean fuzz is the best way I can describe it. The wild thing is with the two trim pots you can really take this thing so many places. I have mine biased so the clean is very clean until you really dig in and then it breaks up beautifully. But the crazy part is when I turn the drive up it also drives perfectly. Super clean no fizzy nasty over tones. It sort of reminds me of a very crisp clear benson preamp. And the real magic is the way this thing holds its cleanliness until you dig in hard and it starts to get really good. I’m very impressed that without a tone knob this thing is perfectly eq’d the Fairfield guys know what’s up.

Anyway, maybe it’s the mojo of being a gift, maybe it’s the magic of lucky by ear biasing. Or maybe it’s the combo of j201s (my personal favorite fets) & the 2n2222 combo that is the winning ticket. What ever it is it always blows me away when a low component count build delivers such awesomeness.

Huge fan of this thing. As an ode to @MichaelW I rocked it in a 1590b with top jacks. My first success doing top jacks in one of these.

Only negative is I thought I had another led bezel so I drilled for it but then didn’t. So my led hole is garbage. But when I get a bezel it will be fine.
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Nice. Like you Ive built too many od’s. but I have always wanted to build this one. When I go to buy pcb’s something shinier always catches my eye. I’ll have to place this one on my next ppcb order. Also, Mark Johnston has quickly become a go to for demos
 
Nice. Like you Ive built too many od’s. but I have always wanted to build this one. When I go to buy pcb’s something shinier always catches my eye. I’ll have to place this one on my next ppcb order. Also, Mark Johnston has quickly become a go to for demos
Mark is such a great presenter. I imagine if he has a day job he works in the tech industry giving amazing pitches. He reminds me of a good friend of mine.
 
I love the Chop Shop. Totally agree on it being super flexible. Really enjoy it as a low-gain boost to fatten up my signal.
 
It looks totally different from the board on the website. That one doesn't have any trimpots. Mmh...
 
The original version didn't have the trim pots and thus had a fixed resistor bias for the J201's. The biasing of this pedal is key to making it sound like the original Fairfield or sound how you want it to sound. There's a ton of flexibility in the overall sound that starts with biasing. Plus with the dearth of in spec J201's lately it makes a lot of sense to put the trimmer in there. Once biased the 3 knobs are highly interactive to make it sound like everything from a clean-ish boost to a gated overdrive approaching a fuzz. Very cool pedal.
 
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