Well hey there, welcome to the Diynot build dump, I mean, report. Predominantly Madbean boards that I have been moved to build based on their love here on the forum. One of these has been hanging around the bench for a good long while waiting for me to realize a grand idea for artwork that just didn’t come to fruition. That said, first up is the MBP Sludge Hammer:
This is a clone of the bass players standard, the Sansamp Bass Driver. A great pre with pretty powerful tone shaping capabilities and a great grind/grit for bass overdrive. Build is easy enough aside from tight drilling tolerances and a lot of jack wiring. Currently replacing the dying preamp on my POS Crate bass amp from the 90’s. Theme was going to be Pink Elephants (a la Dumbo) “Driving under the influence of bass”, maybe one day…..
Next up is the well regarded MBP Gas Tank bass overdrive. Great tones here with plenty of mid to fire gain levels with the all important clean blend all (respectable(?)) bass players demand. Really, the main reason bass players need a clean blend is to counteract the loss of low end with most dirt pedals, but even with the clean all the way down this thing rumbles. The hard/soft clipping option provides equally fantastic but vastly different dirt. Nice thing is, there isn’t a massive volume jump when switching between the two. In retrospect I should have dropped that on a footswitch. Easy build and the little bread buddy board for the 1/8in jack (explain in a minute) was genius.
Next is the MBP Junk Trunk, a really great OTA based envelope filter. Definitely different than my other EFs. A little more synthy with more control over the attack time to give some slow swelling tones. All of the knobs are very interactive and dialing it in feels like a bit of a learning curve, especially with the reverse sweep, but well worth the effort. Build was nothing excruciating.
So what’s the deal with the 1/8 switching jacks you ask? So for bassists looking for a truly synth tone you need a good octave, a fuzz/dirt, and an envelope filter. However, feeding an envelope filter a hot signal from a fuzz/dirt can make it less responsive so to mitigate that, “The ENV jack let’s you fix that by feeding the input section of the GasTank directly to the envelope follower of the JunkTrunk. So, you still have the fuzz going into the JunkTrunk, but the envelope reacts as if it’s being fed a clean signal. Neat, huh?” (From the MBP build doc). So do the 2 together make for some juicy grinding beep/bloop, yes, yes they do.
Next is the MBP Glasshole not gonna say much here since there are plenty of build reports and demos around here. This is MBP take on the Mutron phase 2 with a few tweaks. Love being able to have the option of 2/4/6/8 phases, gets me some tones that I didn’t know I needed. Have not tried attaching my Wavelord to access different waveforms yet, but will be interested to see how it stacks up to my DEFX Calypso build which uses a taplfo chip to provide multiple wave forms, but is a fixed 8 stage phaser. Build requires a little more attention since it is a mix of 1/4 and 1/8 watt resistors and you have to install a jumper on the back to bridge a missing connection. Also a great place to use that giant ass knob you’ve been waiting to use!
Lastly, an AionFx Hypercube. Again, this has been done better by other people here, but was curious ab the hype and was drawn to the stacked board nature (that honestly doesn’t seem necessary given the low-ish part count) of the project. It is a really cool sounding fuzz. The octave is not overbearing and the fuzz itself isn’t a sizzle the eardrum sort of fuzz. At first I thought I had botched my SMD soldering because I got fuzz in the middle and right switch positions and then just clean in the left, but after re-reading the build doc realized it’s meant to be a sort of clean boost (an odd choice for inclusion on a fuzz pedal, but you do you Boss). Fun build either way and a worthy addition to the fuzz ranks in my collection.
Sorry, there are a lot of header connections on that top board that I didn’t feel like prying apart and risk damage, so all you get is the back of my dirty, filthy as flux boards.
Really liking these new Tayda colors and the BB2 from SBP for the Glasshole is pretty sweet. These will def get some jank dymo labels (esp the Sludge Hammer). But thems what I’ve been working on lately. To be honest though, this doesn’t clear my workbench totally since I still have a combo build to finish and that will be just in time for my Equilux mini and Muirodea boards to get here.
This is a clone of the bass players standard, the Sansamp Bass Driver. A great pre with pretty powerful tone shaping capabilities and a great grind/grit for bass overdrive. Build is easy enough aside from tight drilling tolerances and a lot of jack wiring. Currently replacing the dying preamp on my POS Crate bass amp from the 90’s. Theme was going to be Pink Elephants (a la Dumbo) “Driving under the influence of bass”, maybe one day…..
Next up is the well regarded MBP Gas Tank bass overdrive. Great tones here with plenty of mid to fire gain levels with the all important clean blend all (respectable(?)) bass players demand. Really, the main reason bass players need a clean blend is to counteract the loss of low end with most dirt pedals, but even with the clean all the way down this thing rumbles. The hard/soft clipping option provides equally fantastic but vastly different dirt. Nice thing is, there isn’t a massive volume jump when switching between the two. In retrospect I should have dropped that on a footswitch. Easy build and the little bread buddy board for the 1/8in jack (explain in a minute) was genius.
Next is the MBP Junk Trunk, a really great OTA based envelope filter. Definitely different than my other EFs. A little more synthy with more control over the attack time to give some slow swelling tones. All of the knobs are very interactive and dialing it in feels like a bit of a learning curve, especially with the reverse sweep, but well worth the effort. Build was nothing excruciating.
So what’s the deal with the 1/8 switching jacks you ask? So for bassists looking for a truly synth tone you need a good octave, a fuzz/dirt, and an envelope filter. However, feeding an envelope filter a hot signal from a fuzz/dirt can make it less responsive so to mitigate that, “The ENV jack let’s you fix that by feeding the input section of the GasTank directly to the envelope follower of the JunkTrunk. So, you still have the fuzz going into the JunkTrunk, but the envelope reacts as if it’s being fed a clean signal. Neat, huh?” (From the MBP build doc). So do the 2 together make for some juicy grinding beep/bloop, yes, yes they do.
Next is the MBP Glasshole not gonna say much here since there are plenty of build reports and demos around here. This is MBP take on the Mutron phase 2 with a few tweaks. Love being able to have the option of 2/4/6/8 phases, gets me some tones that I didn’t know I needed. Have not tried attaching my Wavelord to access different waveforms yet, but will be interested to see how it stacks up to my DEFX Calypso build which uses a taplfo chip to provide multiple wave forms, but is a fixed 8 stage phaser. Build requires a little more attention since it is a mix of 1/4 and 1/8 watt resistors and you have to install a jumper on the back to bridge a missing connection. Also a great place to use that giant ass knob you’ve been waiting to use!
Lastly, an AionFx Hypercube. Again, this has been done better by other people here, but was curious ab the hype and was drawn to the stacked board nature (that honestly doesn’t seem necessary given the low-ish part count) of the project. It is a really cool sounding fuzz. The octave is not overbearing and the fuzz itself isn’t a sizzle the eardrum sort of fuzz. At first I thought I had botched my SMD soldering because I got fuzz in the middle and right switch positions and then just clean in the left, but after re-reading the build doc realized it’s meant to be a sort of clean boost (an odd choice for inclusion on a fuzz pedal, but you do you Boss). Fun build either way and a worthy addition to the fuzz ranks in my collection.
Sorry, there are a lot of header connections on that top board that I didn’t feel like prying apart and risk damage, so all you get is the back of my dirty, filthy as flux boards.
Really liking these new Tayda colors and the BB2 from SBP for the Glasshole is pretty sweet. These will def get some jank dymo labels (esp the Sludge Hammer). But thems what I’ve been working on lately. To be honest though, this doesn’t clear my workbench totally since I still have a combo build to finish and that will be just in time for my Equilux mini and Muirodea boards to get here.
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