greypilgrim76
Member
So my third or fourth pedal build was a Stewmac Two Kings KoT clone build, and I loved everything about how it turned out. I've never played an actual KoT, but the clone sounded so good. Based on my daughter's love of How to Train Your Dragon, I decided to do a fun riff on the original KoT design, which turned out like this:
I ended up going with the standard KoT settings for the DIP switch, gain resistors, and trim pots, but as someone who doesn't always know what I like right away, I found myself wishing it was easier to switch through all the setting options without taking the back of the enclosure off, and also to not have to make permanent choices on the low/high gain resistors. After some poking around, I came across @ckaudioeffects amazingly user-friendly and detailed instructions for his Court Jester mod, which moves nearly all of the internal selectors and adjustments to external controls. I knew right away that I had to give it a shot, and since Stewmac had sent me a second PCB because of a problem with the original breakout board, I ordered the rest of the components and started working through the instruction document. It was easily my most challenging build so far, and I really wasn't sure at times how I was going to squeeze everything into the enclosure, but (somewhat astonishingly) it worked perfectly the first time I plugged it in! The only minor deviation I took from the build instructions was to solder all the wires to the PCB before installing it in the enclosure, which gave me a chance to clean things up a bit before final assembly. (My only small goof was not testing my LEDs before installing them. I thought I was installing a red LED on the right side, but it ended up being white. No biggie.)
I decided to stick with the HtTYD theme for this one, so here's how my "Shade of Night" pedal turned out:
This was probably the most fun and rewarding build I've completed so far, and it's great to be able to switch between all possible settings and see what it can do. Thanks again, @ckaudioeffects for going above and beyond on the build documentation, and also for answering a few questions that popped up as I was building. I won't be parting with this one anytime soon!
I ended up going with the standard KoT settings for the DIP switch, gain resistors, and trim pots, but as someone who doesn't always know what I like right away, I found myself wishing it was easier to switch through all the setting options without taking the back of the enclosure off, and also to not have to make permanent choices on the low/high gain resistors. After some poking around, I came across @ckaudioeffects amazingly user-friendly and detailed instructions for his Court Jester mod, which moves nearly all of the internal selectors and adjustments to external controls. I knew right away that I had to give it a shot, and since Stewmac had sent me a second PCB because of a problem with the original breakout board, I ordered the rest of the components and started working through the instruction document. It was easily my most challenging build so far, and I really wasn't sure at times how I was going to squeeze everything into the enclosure, but (somewhat astonishingly) it worked perfectly the first time I plugged it in! The only minor deviation I took from the build instructions was to solder all the wires to the PCB before installing it in the enclosure, which gave me a chance to clean things up a bit before final assembly. (My only small goof was not testing my LEDs before installing them. I thought I was installing a red LED on the right side, but it ended up being white. No biggie.)
I decided to stick with the HtTYD theme for this one, so here's how my "Shade of Night" pedal turned out:
This was probably the most fun and rewarding build I've completed so far, and it's great to be able to switch between all possible settings and see what it can do. Thanks again, @ckaudioeffects for going above and beyond on the build documentation, and also for answering a few questions that popped up as I was building. I won't be parting with this one anytime soon!
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