Fuzzonaut
Well-known member
Well, well, well ... this is a pretty amazing box of sounds.
The original from Smallsound/Bigsound was supposed to be a homage to the Thermionic Culture Vulture, a two-rack British, tube-powered device that offers two separate channels of distortion/overdrive featuring three distortion types and a filter to spice things up.
What SS/BS said:
"Pretty Years is a high-gain subminiature tube based distortion/fuzz with an interstage resonant lowpass filter to not only filter frequencies, but also shape the texture of the distortion. Combining switchable pentode/triode mode, low-voltage biasing, switchable feedback and active bass/treble controls – most drive textures from subtle to complete destruction are available."
In good old Deadend fashion the PCB layout with the foot switch on the side and the jack placement (top/side) wasn't my cup of tea, so I went one bigger with the enclosure, moved the Volume and made it all top jacks. That gave me some space for a jewel light too.
Still, it's a very tight fit, especially when measuring and drilling by hand like I did.
The tubes are from Slovakia.
After completing it I had some issues, sometimes there was sound in all its glory and sometimes the signal was very weak. I left it for a while, came back and touched up some solder joints, mainly in the power section. Now it's fine and yes ... The sounds! Delivered as promised.
There is that lovely "valve induced harmonic distortion" that you can shape with Lowcut (3-way), Clip (3-way) and the pentode-triode switch. Then there are the 2 GAIN pots and the BIAS pot - and BASS/TREBLE. The distortion/fuzz alone is worth the price of admission.
But there is a LOT more: the whole Filter section. Wow, that's just crazy, all the possibilities, soooooo many different sounds. From rumbling dub stuff to screeching highs and bleeps and blops and what not .... amazing stuff!
There's a small taste, just scratching the surface of what it can do, after the pics, my bass test loop going through it, while I switch and turn a few things.
The original from Smallsound/Bigsound was supposed to be a homage to the Thermionic Culture Vulture, a two-rack British, tube-powered device that offers two separate channels of distortion/overdrive featuring three distortion types and a filter to spice things up.
What SS/BS said:
"Pretty Years is a high-gain subminiature tube based distortion/fuzz with an interstage resonant lowpass filter to not only filter frequencies, but also shape the texture of the distortion. Combining switchable pentode/triode mode, low-voltage biasing, switchable feedback and active bass/treble controls – most drive textures from subtle to complete destruction are available."
In good old Deadend fashion the PCB layout with the foot switch on the side and the jack placement (top/side) wasn't my cup of tea, so I went one bigger with the enclosure, moved the Volume and made it all top jacks. That gave me some space for a jewel light too.
Still, it's a very tight fit, especially when measuring and drilling by hand like I did.
The tubes are from Slovakia.
After completing it I had some issues, sometimes there was sound in all its glory and sometimes the signal was very weak. I left it for a while, came back and touched up some solder joints, mainly in the power section. Now it's fine and yes ... The sounds! Delivered as promised.
There is that lovely "valve induced harmonic distortion" that you can shape with Lowcut (3-way), Clip (3-way) and the pentode-triode switch. Then there are the 2 GAIN pots and the BIAS pot - and BASS/TREBLE. The distortion/fuzz alone is worth the price of admission.
But there is a LOT more: the whole Filter section. Wow, that's just crazy, all the possibilities, soooooo many different sounds. From rumbling dub stuff to screeching highs and bleeps and blops and what not .... amazing stuff!
There's a small taste, just scratching the surface of what it can do, after the pics, my bass test loop going through it, while I switch and turn a few things.
