Fingolfen
Well-known member
- Build Rating
So, I wasn't able to lay my hands on an actual Brutalist Jr. business card PCB, but fortunately Effects Layouts has a version... and their version actually fits in a 125B enclosure! So allons-y!
I etched a couple of boards initially, but I've only populated one at this point. I had a little bit of resist lift on one of the boards this time around (the board on the right). It ended up being completely benign though as I only ended up losing a little bit of ground and a very short connection between a capacitor and a potentiometer. I was able to just leave the lead on the capacitor and connect it directly to the pot.
Otherwise, the construction is very much like most of my other projects. The resistors are all 1% metal film (Yageo or KOA Speer), the film capacitors are Panasonic and Wima, the electrolytic capacitors are Nichicon. One of the modifications suggested is replacing the TL072 op amps with TL082 op amps. I just happened to have found a few classic units at my local electronics heaven... errrrr... component store, so I went ahead and dropped them in.
As this was my prototype, I wanted to test a few construction techniques that would make any future builds easier. First off, I went ahead and used one of my standard AionFX drill templates (and an AionFX 3PDT / LED daughter board). This meant I could leave a couple of components off of the main PCB (the protection diode and LED pulldown resistor). This particular drill template leaves room for a battery, so I went ahead and included a battery snap.
For the enclosure I wanted to do something unique, but I feel as if I need to give the enclosure a little context. My wife has a degree in architecture, and when I hear the word "Brutalist" - I immediately think of Brutalist architecture. I didn't want to use the "Brutalist" term for my version of the pedal as that name was, well, taken. So I had to come up with something new. While Brutalist architecture was a minimalist offshoot of modernism (rising after the Second World War), International Style is technically an earlier modern architecture form that eventually rose to prominence in the 70s. It is perhaps the ultimate architectural embodiment of form following function (in many cases very far behind function!). Unfortunately a lot of International Style architecture can be sort of bland, but I figured juxtaposing a more brutalist building with a distortion pedal called "The International Style" was enough of a subversion of expectation to pass muster. The building itself is a heavily photoshopped version of a real Brutalist building, and the Steggo is actually a photo of our plush Stegosaurus mascot - again, heavily Photoshopped.
The pedal itself lives up to its original name. This is an absolutely hardcore, no holds barred, no apologies distortion pedal. If you want it loud and crunchy, this is the pedal for you.
More at the blog (mostly various ramblings about architecture, video games, and schools of thought in pedal building): https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/07/distortion-pedal-meets-business-card.html
I etched a couple of boards initially, but I've only populated one at this point. I had a little bit of resist lift on one of the boards this time around (the board on the right). It ended up being completely benign though as I only ended up losing a little bit of ground and a very short connection between a capacitor and a potentiometer. I was able to just leave the lead on the capacitor and connect it directly to the pot.
Otherwise, the construction is very much like most of my other projects. The resistors are all 1% metal film (Yageo or KOA Speer), the film capacitors are Panasonic and Wima, the electrolytic capacitors are Nichicon. One of the modifications suggested is replacing the TL072 op amps with TL082 op amps. I just happened to have found a few classic units at my local electronics heaven... errrrr... component store, so I went ahead and dropped them in.
As this was my prototype, I wanted to test a few construction techniques that would make any future builds easier. First off, I went ahead and used one of my standard AionFX drill templates (and an AionFX 3PDT / LED daughter board). This meant I could leave a couple of components off of the main PCB (the protection diode and LED pulldown resistor). This particular drill template leaves room for a battery, so I went ahead and included a battery snap.
For the enclosure I wanted to do something unique, but I feel as if I need to give the enclosure a little context. My wife has a degree in architecture, and when I hear the word "Brutalist" - I immediately think of Brutalist architecture. I didn't want to use the "Brutalist" term for my version of the pedal as that name was, well, taken. So I had to come up with something new. While Brutalist architecture was a minimalist offshoot of modernism (rising after the Second World War), International Style is technically an earlier modern architecture form that eventually rose to prominence in the 70s. It is perhaps the ultimate architectural embodiment of form following function (in many cases very far behind function!). Unfortunately a lot of International Style architecture can be sort of bland, but I figured juxtaposing a more brutalist building with a distortion pedal called "The International Style" was enough of a subversion of expectation to pass muster. The building itself is a heavily photoshopped version of a real Brutalist building, and the Steggo is actually a photo of our plush Stegosaurus mascot - again, heavily Photoshopped.
The pedal itself lives up to its original name. This is an absolutely hardcore, no holds barred, no apologies distortion pedal. If you want it loud and crunchy, this is the pedal for you.
More at the blog (mostly various ramblings about architecture, video games, and schools of thought in pedal building): https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/07/distortion-pedal-meets-business-card.html
