Fingolfen
Well-known member
I'll go ahead and admit it. I'd never actually tried the Earthquaker Devices Plumes pedal. I knew it was insanely popular with people buying multiple copies chasing some of the rarer enclosure colors. It was inexpensive as well at only around $100 US, and while you can build it for cheaper, I just had never gotten "around to it" - either from a purchase or a build standpoint. I'd seen some decent demos and it looked like a solid pedal, so I decided to go ahead and take the plunge with the Greengage Overdrive board, and honestly this is one of those builds that I'm kicking myself for not doing sooner...
As the Plumes is an inexpensive pedal, there is nothing exceptionally complex about the build. All of the parts are fairly basic, with no exotic magic diodes, rare transistors, or out of production IC's to add cost and complexity to the build. The circuit is also fairly straightforward with the distortion clipping being done by two 3mm red LEDs or three 1N4148 diodes on the silicon side. There are a pair of TL072 op amps and TC1044SCPA to handle the voltage switching. As always, I went with the highest quality parts I could justify in this build (1% Yageo / KAO Speer resistors, WIMA / Kemet capacitors, Nicicon Electrolytics). All of the ICs are socketed as well.
The hookup wiring follows my current best practice using a 3PDT daughter board from PedalPCB to run four strand ribbon cable between the switch and the main PCB itself. I'm using a star ground on the input jack. Both the input and output jacks have had their locator holes in the enclosure sanded back to expose metal so there is a solid ground to the enclosure itself. All of the connections on the DC jack and input/output jacks are covered in heat shrink tubing to protect them.
At this point I'm just using a standard true bypass 3PDT switch for the pedal. I have read that the original has a momentary switch that can be used as both instantaneous boost / distortion or tripped normally. I haven't played with the "real thing" (beyond seeing several YouTube demos to ensure I got the sound right) to see if that's true - so for any future pedals if that mod is possible I may go that route if it is.
So for the enclosure...
As it turns out, many dinosaurs which we originally thought of as scaly reptiles actually have more in common with birds. This was noted in the original Jurassic Park movie in the 1990s, but it wasn't until later that the fact that many dinosaurs, like the velociraptor, actually had feathers became well-known. So the "turkey" line from the original movie was actually more accurate than first realized!
So in honor of feathered dinosaurs and large predatory terror birds of ages past, I give you the "Plumage" overdrive! All of the art for this pedal is adapted from licensed Adobe stock images. At the bottom we have a friendly terror bird and velociraptor in a lovely pastoral setting as wispy clouds float overhead. I found a font that was close enough to the original Plumes font so the DNA of the pedal is clear...
More, including paleontology, at the blog...
As the Plumes is an inexpensive pedal, there is nothing exceptionally complex about the build. All of the parts are fairly basic, with no exotic magic diodes, rare transistors, or out of production IC's to add cost and complexity to the build. The circuit is also fairly straightforward with the distortion clipping being done by two 3mm red LEDs or three 1N4148 diodes on the silicon side. There are a pair of TL072 op amps and TC1044SCPA to handle the voltage switching. As always, I went with the highest quality parts I could justify in this build (1% Yageo / KAO Speer resistors, WIMA / Kemet capacitors, Nicicon Electrolytics). All of the ICs are socketed as well.
The hookup wiring follows my current best practice using a 3PDT daughter board from PedalPCB to run four strand ribbon cable between the switch and the main PCB itself. I'm using a star ground on the input jack. Both the input and output jacks have had their locator holes in the enclosure sanded back to expose metal so there is a solid ground to the enclosure itself. All of the connections on the DC jack and input/output jacks are covered in heat shrink tubing to protect them.
At this point I'm just using a standard true bypass 3PDT switch for the pedal. I have read that the original has a momentary switch that can be used as both instantaneous boost / distortion or tripped normally. I haven't played with the "real thing" (beyond seeing several YouTube demos to ensure I got the sound right) to see if that's true - so for any future pedals if that mod is possible I may go that route if it is.
So for the enclosure...
As it turns out, many dinosaurs which we originally thought of as scaly reptiles actually have more in common with birds. This was noted in the original Jurassic Park movie in the 1990s, but it wasn't until later that the fact that many dinosaurs, like the velociraptor, actually had feathers became well-known. So the "turkey" line from the original movie was actually more accurate than first realized!
So in honor of feathered dinosaurs and large predatory terror birds of ages past, I give you the "Plumage" overdrive! All of the art for this pedal is adapted from licensed Adobe stock images. At the bottom we have a friendly terror bird and velociraptor in a lovely pastoral setting as wispy clouds float overhead. I found a font that was close enough to the original Plumes font so the DNA of the pedal is clear...
More, including paleontology, at the blog...
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) I've built two of these now, one for myself and one for my brother who uses it regularly on his board playing live. I still have a PCB version from PCBGuitarMania (purchased before I knew about their "issues") that I may build put at some point. Amazing graphics as always!
