- Build Rating
So I built my first pedal ever. I had chanced upon the review of the Fairfield Barbershop on YouTube and liked it, and became fascinated with JFET overdrive then discovered PedalPCB and the forum! Got super into reading all the old threads, particularly Chucks Boneyard where they talked about the Monarch, which became the Viceroy. I had actually picked that for my first pedal, but then when I saw that this one was a fair bit simpler, with trimmers for bias, and I had liked the sound of the Barbershop on YouTube, I decided to build this.
It went OK. I literally hadn't soldered things on a circuit board in at least 20 years, but the old soldering station worked great. I had read enough of the forums to know that you have to be careful, so I measured all the resistors and capacitors as I put them in. I was concerned that I'd fry the diode and transistors soldering them, so I socketed these. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the leads from the diode, which were rather thick, wouldn't fit the little pin socket, so I had to de-solder that and managed to pull the via out doing it. First bodge wire, but OK. I got the pedal together, with the wrong pots as the right ones hadn't come in yet, and got it working with the circuit on a breadboard for power, etc. and it sounded great.
The right pots came in, but, and you know this is coming, when I desoldered the wrong pots I managed to yank out a couple of vias. A few more bodge wires, tracing out the circuit -- took a bit to figure this out as I had originally thought the JFETs were DGS but they are DSG in pinout. All good.
Got the enclosure drilled -- the template worked great with double-sided tape to hold it on, and I drilled tiny pilot holes first so the stepper bit wouldn't wander. Next mistake, when tightening the stomp switch I wasn't holding it well and it rotated and pulled a couple of wires out along with the vias. A couple more bodge wires fixed that.
Working pedal! As you can see I didn't bother to trim the leads to the switch or power -- these were the wires I used to hook it up for testing on the breadboard before putting it in the enclosure. I went with unfinished, to honor the source, and I like the gold aluminum knobs. Unlabeled, because like an old steam locomotive, if you don't know what the knob is, you shouldn't be messing with it.
Interesting note on the JFETs. I have a tester, not sure how actually accurate it is, but I had originally tried putting the JFETs that had the lowest Idss measurement into both positions. Sounded good. However putting a JFET with a higher Idss for the first one sounded better -- higher headroom and it seemed to "breathe" more. Definitely socket your JFETs on this build! You will want to play around with them.
The pedal sounds great. I particularly like the tone switch, where you can get a nice almost carpet-ripping sound with the heavy-treble-round-off and a bridge humbucker. Doesn't like to be pushed that much -- when pushed hard with a boost before the pedal the distortion can be raspy unless you use the switch to round off the highs, and then it can sound thin. This is a pedal for "edge of breakup", not "Van Halen". As an "edge of breakup" pedal it can sound really spectacular, and really brings out a nice quality with single-coils where the grit merges with the chimey sounds nicely.
I'm liking the quality of the overdrive for how articulate it is -- you really hear every note and it's very responsive to volume control and pick attack and pickup selection. Definitely worth it as a first project!!!
It went OK. I literally hadn't soldered things on a circuit board in at least 20 years, but the old soldering station worked great. I had read enough of the forums to know that you have to be careful, so I measured all the resistors and capacitors as I put them in. I was concerned that I'd fry the diode and transistors soldering them, so I socketed these. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the leads from the diode, which were rather thick, wouldn't fit the little pin socket, so I had to de-solder that and managed to pull the via out doing it. First bodge wire, but OK. I got the pedal together, with the wrong pots as the right ones hadn't come in yet, and got it working with the circuit on a breadboard for power, etc. and it sounded great.
The right pots came in, but, and you know this is coming, when I desoldered the wrong pots I managed to yank out a couple of vias. A few more bodge wires, tracing out the circuit -- took a bit to figure this out as I had originally thought the JFETs were DGS but they are DSG in pinout. All good.
Got the enclosure drilled -- the template worked great with double-sided tape to hold it on, and I drilled tiny pilot holes first so the stepper bit wouldn't wander. Next mistake, when tightening the stomp switch I wasn't holding it well and it rotated and pulled a couple of wires out along with the vias. A couple more bodge wires fixed that.
Working pedal! As you can see I didn't bother to trim the leads to the switch or power -- these were the wires I used to hook it up for testing on the breadboard before putting it in the enclosure. I went with unfinished, to honor the source, and I like the gold aluminum knobs. Unlabeled, because like an old steam locomotive, if you don't know what the knob is, you shouldn't be messing with it.
Interesting note on the JFETs. I have a tester, not sure how actually accurate it is, but I had originally tried putting the JFETs that had the lowest Idss measurement into both positions. Sounded good. However putting a JFET with a higher Idss for the first one sounded better -- higher headroom and it seemed to "breathe" more. Definitely socket your JFETs on this build! You will want to play around with them.
The pedal sounds great. I particularly like the tone switch, where you can get a nice almost carpet-ripping sound with the heavy-treble-round-off and a bridge humbucker. Doesn't like to be pushed that much -- when pushed hard with a boost before the pedal the distortion can be raspy unless you use the switch to round off the highs, and then it can sound thin. This is a pedal for "edge of breakup", not "Van Halen". As an "edge of breakup" pedal it can sound really spectacular, and really brings out a nice quality with single-coils where the grit merges with the chimey sounds nicely.
I'm liking the quality of the overdrive for how articulate it is -- you really hear every note and it's very responsive to volume control and pick attack and pickup selection. Definitely worth it as a first project!!!
