Fingolfen
Well-known member
Ryan has completely outdone himself this time. I just finished up his "Above Top Secret" project - an amazing clone of the always expensive, but now ridiculously expensive Ibanez TSV808 Vemuram.
As is typical for most Tone Geek builds, he includes a BOM of recommended components to as closely as possible replicate the original. I went with his BOM which includes a variety of high end resistors (including a couple of 1/2W resistors), mica capacitors, axial film capacitors, and solid polymer capacitors rather than traditional electrolytic capacitors. The only modification from the original circuit I went with is the recommended change of the reverse polarity protection diode - using a 1N5817 rather than a 1N4148. This gives the pedal a bit more headroom. The only issue I encountered is there is a misprint on the silkscreen on the first run of PCBs (though the BOM and instructions are correct) - the silkscreen calls out a JRC4558D op amp when it should be an OPA2134PA.
There is no daughter board for the 3PDT switch, so it has to be hand wired. For the poles of the switch which had to be connected, I just went ahead and used jumper wire and saved pickup wire for the longer runs. While there are holes set up on the board for input and output grounds, the recommended wiring diagram utilizes a star ground on the input like most AionFX boards.
As with most Tone Geek projects, this one includes a face plate as well, and from that faceplate you can see genius of this particular design. Rather than the Bass and Saturation controls being small trimmers requiring a screwdriver on the back of the unit, they're pots which can be adjusted as easily as the rest of the controls. The same goes for the clipping dip switches, they're now on the front of the unit as well.
More backstory and gory details at the blog: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/07/above-top-secret-cloning-vemuram-tsv808.html
As is typical for most Tone Geek builds, he includes a BOM of recommended components to as closely as possible replicate the original. I went with his BOM which includes a variety of high end resistors (including a couple of 1/2W resistors), mica capacitors, axial film capacitors, and solid polymer capacitors rather than traditional electrolytic capacitors. The only modification from the original circuit I went with is the recommended change of the reverse polarity protection diode - using a 1N5817 rather than a 1N4148. This gives the pedal a bit more headroom. The only issue I encountered is there is a misprint on the silkscreen on the first run of PCBs (though the BOM and instructions are correct) - the silkscreen calls out a JRC4558D op amp when it should be an OPA2134PA.
There is no daughter board for the 3PDT switch, so it has to be hand wired. For the poles of the switch which had to be connected, I just went ahead and used jumper wire and saved pickup wire for the longer runs. While there are holes set up on the board for input and output grounds, the recommended wiring diagram utilizes a star ground on the input like most AionFX boards.
As with most Tone Geek projects, this one includes a face plate as well, and from that faceplate you can see genius of this particular design. Rather than the Bass and Saturation controls being small trimmers requiring a screwdriver on the back of the unit, they're pots which can be adjusted as easily as the rest of the controls. The same goes for the clipping dip switches, they're now on the front of the unit as well.
More backstory and gory details at the blog: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/07/above-top-secret-cloning-vemuram-tsv808.html