MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
So I took 60 minutes of "temporary early retirement" (otherwise known as a lunch break) to get my soldering fix in today.
Since this was such an easy build I figured it would be a good candidate for getting buttoned up by the evening.
Aside from putting the transistor in backwards the first time, it went smooth and quick.
I had never heard of this pedal until seeing @jjjimi84's Demo and Build report.
It sounded pretty awesome and right in my wheelhouse, so I added it to my last PPCB order.
I was originally going to do the same combo build that @jjjimi84 did with the Katana/Cleaver boost but after giving it some thought, decided to build it standalone for more flexibility.
The board is tiny, not much more than the size of a postage stamp. I also breifly gave some thought to putting it in a 1590A (I have one enclosure that I have yet to use). But until I can crack the code on doing top mounted jacks on a 1590A I think I'm going to hold off using it.
Anyway, as small as it the board is it looks kinda lonely even in a 1590B. I decided to forgo the 3PDT wiring board as I'd wind up having a rather untidy bit of wiring anyway and the 3PDT board wouldn't help much, so I wired the switch directly. Also, since I had so much room to work with, I decided to use up an orphan set of funky vertical PCB mount jacks that I bought very early on in my building when I had no clue what I was buying
It might have been in my very first pedal parts order for my first pedal build. (Holy cow, hard to believe that was only 5 months ago!)
Anyway, this a great sounding pedal especially given its simplicity in design and low parts count.
I saw a couple of other video demo's of the pedal in addition to @jjjimi84's demo and had an idea how it was going to sound. What I didn't realize was how the one single knob control would work. When I first fired it up (after fixing the backwards 2n5809) I thought I had made some other mistake as well. Turning up knob didn't really produce the volume or output I was expecting. I usually run my pedals at unity gain and when I'm sitting at my desk testing a pedal for the first time or recording something, that's usually with the level knob 9 o'clock or so. When I was way up past noon I started to hear some gain and drive but it wasn't blowing me out of my chair with volume like most overdrives will by then.
Referring to the schematic I missed the fact the volume/gain/level knob is actually a bias control for the transistor. Now it started to make a bit more sense.
Going back to a clean amp sound dialing up the knob on the Je T'aime fattens up to the tone in a very nice way until around 1-2 O'clock where the gain starts to kick in, like pushing a tube amp hard into output tube distortion. I played the pedal with both my Strat with my PRS 594, of course the hum buckers push it into breakup a bit sooner.
Running my General Tso's compressor and Modus Operandi boost in front of it gave a nice full amp-like gain and sounded pretty great. By itself it won't get you into a super gainy territory but this pedal stacks really well with another drive or a boost in front of it. I can understand why @jjjimi84 built it as a combo paired with the Cleaver/Katana boost.
Does it sound like a JTM? uhm...no not really. I've not really found a pedal that can do the JTM thing as well as some of the plexi pedals can do the plexi thing.
Maybe the JHS Charlie Brown comes close. Having said that, the Je t'aime is a great sounding pedal and is quite amp-like in how it sounds. Low-medium gain, pushed amp, type sounds it does very well. Totally cranked, that last 10% of the pots sweep actually does a lot and pushes you into transistor fuzz-is territory. Makes me wonder if the Je t'aime wouldn't be better served with an log pot as opposed to linear. I'm not sure but that last bit of the pot sweep is a little weird.
I got the chance to use the Tayda Army Green 1590B, ironic that it's sitting on my desk pedal chain next to my Pot & Kettle build with the same color scheme.
Since this was such an easy build I figured it would be a good candidate for getting buttoned up by the evening.
Aside from putting the transistor in backwards the first time, it went smooth and quick.
I had never heard of this pedal until seeing @jjjimi84's Demo and Build report.
It sounded pretty awesome and right in my wheelhouse, so I added it to my last PPCB order.
I was originally going to do the same combo build that @jjjimi84 did with the Katana/Cleaver boost but after giving it some thought, decided to build it standalone for more flexibility.
The board is tiny, not much more than the size of a postage stamp. I also breifly gave some thought to putting it in a 1590A (I have one enclosure that I have yet to use). But until I can crack the code on doing top mounted jacks on a 1590A I think I'm going to hold off using it.
Anyway, as small as it the board is it looks kinda lonely even in a 1590B. I decided to forgo the 3PDT wiring board as I'd wind up having a rather untidy bit of wiring anyway and the 3PDT board wouldn't help much, so I wired the switch directly. Also, since I had so much room to work with, I decided to use up an orphan set of funky vertical PCB mount jacks that I bought very early on in my building when I had no clue what I was buying
It might have been in my very first pedal parts order for my first pedal build. (Holy cow, hard to believe that was only 5 months ago!)Anyway, this a great sounding pedal especially given its simplicity in design and low parts count.
I saw a couple of other video demo's of the pedal in addition to @jjjimi84's demo and had an idea how it was going to sound. What I didn't realize was how the one single knob control would work. When I first fired it up (after fixing the backwards 2n5809) I thought I had made some other mistake as well. Turning up knob didn't really produce the volume or output I was expecting. I usually run my pedals at unity gain and when I'm sitting at my desk testing a pedal for the first time or recording something, that's usually with the level knob 9 o'clock or so. When I was way up past noon I started to hear some gain and drive but it wasn't blowing me out of my chair with volume like most overdrives will by then.
Referring to the schematic I missed the fact the volume/gain/level knob is actually a bias control for the transistor. Now it started to make a bit more sense.
Going back to a clean amp sound dialing up the knob on the Je T'aime fattens up to the tone in a very nice way until around 1-2 O'clock where the gain starts to kick in, like pushing a tube amp hard into output tube distortion. I played the pedal with both my Strat with my PRS 594, of course the hum buckers push it into breakup a bit sooner.
Running my General Tso's compressor and Modus Operandi boost in front of it gave a nice full amp-like gain and sounded pretty great. By itself it won't get you into a super gainy territory but this pedal stacks really well with another drive or a boost in front of it. I can understand why @jjjimi84 built it as a combo paired with the Cleaver/Katana boost.
Does it sound like a JTM? uhm...no not really. I've not really found a pedal that can do the JTM thing as well as some of the plexi pedals can do the plexi thing.
Maybe the JHS Charlie Brown comes close. Having said that, the Je t'aime is a great sounding pedal and is quite amp-like in how it sounds. Low-medium gain, pushed amp, type sounds it does very well. Totally cranked, that last 10% of the pots sweep actually does a lot and pushes you into transistor fuzz-is territory. Makes me wonder if the Je t'aime wouldn't be better served with an log pot as opposed to linear. I'm not sure but that last bit of the pot sweep is a little weird.
I got the chance to use the Tayda Army Green 1590B, ironic that it's sitting on my desk pedal chain next to my Pot & Kettle build with the same color scheme.
