Hetari Gotoh
Active member
- Build Rating
Hello, everybody. I am an ignorant, horrible person and I reside in Italy. I came across this site before Christmas while I was bedridden and killing time on the web. I was researching the Klon because even though I'm a bassist I'm trying to understand how guitarists work an why they're obsessed with some particular pedals.
Pretty soon I found out that one must kindly remember that the ridiculous hype that offends so many is not of his making and that a buffered bypass is almost always better, but most importantly that people actually build their own clones of Klons.
Fast forward one day and I have 30 open tabs on my browser and a folder full of DIY pedal pictures. Who would have thought that printed circuit boards could be so aesthetically pleasing? Box capacitors are so cute. Resistors look like sexy little bees. People are arranging them in such lovely patterns!
I could see the truth with the clarity that only a feverish mind can achieve: playing music is less important than creating such beauty with one's own hands. The urge to collect unreasonable amounts of guitar pedals must be sated and the fact that I cannot even play guitar makes the endeavor absolutely pure.
After three months of lurking and sourcing parts from 5 different foreign countries I selected my first experiment and procured an Amentum boost kit from Musikding. I wanted something tiny and simple because I was determined to box it befored I rocked it, relying on luck and the random bits of information I gathered along the way.
The build process itself was enjoyable and had a pleasant scent of pine. Looking at the end result I clearly used my nose more than my eyes. Seriously, the hard part was feeding the solder where it was needed instead of three pads away. I wasn't sure how much time I had before killing everything I touched with the tip of the iron, so I played it safe and slow, especially with the electrolytic capacitor and 3PDT switch. I definitely used more solder on the soldering tip than the parts. Wiring everything up in the box was... interesting, even with the help of the breakout board.
When I powered it up the LED showed no sign of life, but as much as I expected a failure I knew from reading other build reports that sometimes a dead LED is a dead LED, so I went on and listened through an amp. Endless, devastating buzz. Still I hit it with the saddest, fattest E minor I had and it was there. I played with the pot and it did something. Some sort of electronic circuit was doing something. Anyway, endless devastating buzz is something I had previously encountered and in fact, the culprit was the wiring on the in/out jacks: tip and sleeve were reversed.
The pedal now boosts as intended (I guess) and I kinda like what it does. It looks... a bit basic and messy but hey, there's a *white washer* and the notch on the footswitch is correctly oriented, according to the teachings of Robert himself. I will probably rehouse it at some point and fix the LED since it's not easily accessible without taking everything apart or doing some serious surgery.
Thank you all, this is fun. Next stop, a testing rig.
Pretty soon I found out that one must kindly remember that the ridiculous hype that offends so many is not of his making and that a buffered bypass is almost always better, but most importantly that people actually build their own clones of Klons.
Fast forward one day and I have 30 open tabs on my browser and a folder full of DIY pedal pictures. Who would have thought that printed circuit boards could be so aesthetically pleasing? Box capacitors are so cute. Resistors look like sexy little bees. People are arranging them in such lovely patterns!
I could see the truth with the clarity that only a feverish mind can achieve: playing music is less important than creating such beauty with one's own hands. The urge to collect unreasonable amounts of guitar pedals must be sated and the fact that I cannot even play guitar makes the endeavor absolutely pure.
After three months of lurking and sourcing parts from 5 different foreign countries I selected my first experiment and procured an Amentum boost kit from Musikding. I wanted something tiny and simple because I was determined to box it befored I rocked it, relying on luck and the random bits of information I gathered along the way.
The build process itself was enjoyable and had a pleasant scent of pine. Looking at the end result I clearly used my nose more than my eyes. Seriously, the hard part was feeding the solder where it was needed instead of three pads away. I wasn't sure how much time I had before killing everything I touched with the tip of the iron, so I played it safe and slow, especially with the electrolytic capacitor and 3PDT switch. I definitely used more solder on the soldering tip than the parts. Wiring everything up in the box was... interesting, even with the help of the breakout board.
When I powered it up the LED showed no sign of life, but as much as I expected a failure I knew from reading other build reports that sometimes a dead LED is a dead LED, so I went on and listened through an amp. Endless, devastating buzz. Still I hit it with the saddest, fattest E minor I had and it was there. I played with the pot and it did something. Some sort of electronic circuit was doing something. Anyway, endless devastating buzz is something I had previously encountered and in fact, the culprit was the wiring on the in/out jacks: tip and sleeve were reversed.
The pedal now boosts as intended (I guess) and I kinda like what it does. It looks... a bit basic and messy but hey, there's a *white washer* and the notch on the footswitch is correctly oriented, according to the teachings of Robert himself. I will probably rehouse it at some point and fix the LED since it's not easily accessible without taking everything apart or doing some serious surgery.
Thank you all, this is fun. Next stop, a testing rig.
