MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I never heard of this pedal before seeing @Manuel Ammon's recent build report. The fact that his looked so cool really got me intrigued with the pedal.
I did some searching and found @Chuck D. Bones build report.
Sounded like a interesting pedal so I ordered one.
I actually had the enclosure drilled and the parts together ready to go last Sunday planning to build it something during the past week, but I got sidetracked with trouble shooting my Fingers Overdrive, recording pedal demo's and learning what a "spoke" on a PCB ground pad is.....
Anyway, I decided to get "started" on it this afternoon....and I guess it's no surprise that it's very difficult for an OCD-ish person to "start" something like a PCB build and not finish it
Super smooth build and it fired right up, restoring my confidence and the "rightness" of things in the universe.
So I wasn't quite sure what to make of this pedal when I was researching it, and kinda still don't after playing it. I mean I REALLY love it but I'm not sure why. It's a great sounding boost, but I have a boatload of great sounding boosts. It's kinda a compressor/limiter but the effect is pretty subtle. I have to have the Limiter knob up around 2-3 O'clock to hear any effect. But once there it acts like a very subtle optical compressor which is pretty cool.
So somehow it's more than the sum of its parts when put all together.
I was playing around with it pushing the front of a couple of different dirt pedals. It sounded really good pushing the Van Pelt drive. Low-to-medium gain but a lot of "kerrang" going on with the bridge Filtertron in my Gretsch.
It also sounded really good pushing the Golden Falk into high gain modded Marshall territory. Huge sound.
I also tried it with my Tater Tot, with somewhat lesser results, since it's already such a compressed, saturated pedal, boosting it with the CCBL kinda of made it go "splat".
I have yet to try it with my real amp, maybe tomorrow I can find some time to fire up the tubes.
I am not an AC/DC fan and have never had any desire to sound like Angus Young. So the "lore" behind the origins of the pedal is only some thing learned about recently. Whatever, the back story, this is a cool pedal. I need to see how it's going work downstream from a dedicated compressor but it may find a permanent home on my desktop.
I followed @Chuck D. Bones suggestion and installed the option 120p input cap but left out the optional 10u smoothing cap. I don't think I need it but I can always throw it in later.
Used low profile electrolytic caps from Electronic Goldmine (thanks for the tip @Chuck D. Bones!) I found some cool stuff there but mostly low profile E-caps for my 1590 builds (and some cheap Silver Mica caps for guitar circuits)
I used a 1u tantalum for the same reason, height reduction. (haven't found any lo-pro e-caps in 1u yet) But in the end there was no "electrolytic cap contortions" needed. It all fit, which is very new experience for me!
Can you tell I'm using up odd ball knobs? The green knob is the compressor, just in case you wondered if there was rhyme or reason hahah/
I did some searching and found @Chuck D. Bones build report.
Sounded like a interesting pedal so I ordered one.
I actually had the enclosure drilled and the parts together ready to go last Sunday planning to build it something during the past week, but I got sidetracked with trouble shooting my Fingers Overdrive, recording pedal demo's and learning what a "spoke" on a PCB ground pad is.....
Anyway, I decided to get "started" on it this afternoon....and I guess it's no surprise that it's very difficult for an OCD-ish person to "start" something like a PCB build and not finish it
Super smooth build and it fired right up, restoring my confidence and the "rightness" of things in the universe.
So I wasn't quite sure what to make of this pedal when I was researching it, and kinda still don't after playing it. I mean I REALLY love it but I'm not sure why. It's a great sounding boost, but I have a boatload of great sounding boosts. It's kinda a compressor/limiter but the effect is pretty subtle. I have to have the Limiter knob up around 2-3 O'clock to hear any effect. But once there it acts like a very subtle optical compressor which is pretty cool.
So somehow it's more than the sum of its parts when put all together.
I was playing around with it pushing the front of a couple of different dirt pedals. It sounded really good pushing the Van Pelt drive. Low-to-medium gain but a lot of "kerrang" going on with the bridge Filtertron in my Gretsch.
It also sounded really good pushing the Golden Falk into high gain modded Marshall territory. Huge sound.
I also tried it with my Tater Tot, with somewhat lesser results, since it's already such a compressed, saturated pedal, boosting it with the CCBL kinda of made it go "splat".
I have yet to try it with my real amp, maybe tomorrow I can find some time to fire up the tubes.
I am not an AC/DC fan and have never had any desire to sound like Angus Young. So the "lore" behind the origins of the pedal is only some thing learned about recently. Whatever, the back story, this is a cool pedal. I need to see how it's going work downstream from a dedicated compressor but it may find a permanent home on my desktop.
I followed @Chuck D. Bones suggestion and installed the option 120p input cap but left out the optional 10u smoothing cap. I don't think I need it but I can always throw it in later.
Used low profile electrolytic caps from Electronic Goldmine (thanks for the tip @Chuck D. Bones!) I found some cool stuff there but mostly low profile E-caps for my 1590 builds (and some cheap Silver Mica caps for guitar circuits)
I used a 1u tantalum for the same reason, height reduction. (haven't found any lo-pro e-caps in 1u yet) But in the end there was no "electrolytic cap contortions" needed. It all fit, which is very new experience for me!
Can you tell I'm using up odd ball knobs?
The green knob is the compressor, just in case you wondered if there was rhyme or reason hahah/
