MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Ok, I keep saying "I'm gonna take a break from building overdrives......" @fig thinks it's "cute".
I REALLY was planning a couple of modulation builds next and I've got probably the most challenging build attempted coming up in queue.
But when I I went to go gather the parts, I was STILL missing some stuff dagnabbit......hopefully I'll have everything here in the next couple of days.
In the meantime, I decided to get back to my series of MIAB's that I've been building. So far, I've built the Golden Falk, the JHS Charlie, and the XS Drive all of which are pretty awesome drives and do their own thing capturing that Marshall vibe in a pedal. This was one that popped on my radar not too long ago.
I've always liked Keeley's pedals although I don't have a ton of experience with them besides his compressor.
I do remember back in the day when he was selling modded DS-1's on Ebay and almost bought one just because both Steve Vai and Joe Satriani bought them.
Fast forward to now he's like a major player in the boooteeeek pedal world.
Anyway, the El Rey Dorado is his take on the Plexi in a box pedal and it sounds really pretty awesome! This pedal uses a quad op amp for the main push but then there's a toggle that roughly maps to a JTM45/100 Reissue (based on his own amp) and the other side of the toggle maps to a Super Lead.
Like the Golden Falk it's a pretty bass heavy sound, unlike the GF it's a bit hard to dial out that bass, so pairing it with the right guitar/amp will make a difference.
Or having some downstream eq pedal.
I'm not sure if this is just my build, my components, but there's a pretty massive disparity in volume between the "Lo Power" side of the toggle, which enables 3 Red Led clippers and the "Hi Power" side which enables the 3 BAT46 clippers. I was expecting SOME disparity but in order to match the volume between the two sides it's literally 9 o'clock vs 2 o'clock on my level knob. The demo's I watched were mixed on this. Mike Hermans demo looks like it acts like mine does where he has to make some wide compensation on the level and gain going from lo to high power. But other video's, including Keeley's own video on his website it doesn't seem like it's that huge a gap. But then, that might also be the video compression/limiter at play where it's not really coming through. Anyway, that's my only real complaint with the pedal, I'll just need to remember to compensate for the volume when hitting the toggle.
Very straightforward build, but this PCB looked a little different from the typical boards I've gotten from @PedalPCB, this one was all shiny
Maybe a different mfgr?
One hiccup I had was also a first for me. I have a 9v wall wart on my work bench that I use to do a quick power check or do rough biasing before moving into my office to fire up the pedal. Well, it wouldn't turn on when I did my bench check. So I whipped out my handy dandy DMM and everything seemed to be checking out and it was a real head scratcher. Turned out to be a bad status LED. It was actually turning on, just no light. I've NEVER had that happen before so I didn't think to check that until the very end. Swapped it out for a new LED and all is well.
Glad to add this to my growing collection of MIAB's, couple more to go hahaha!
I REALLY was planning a couple of modulation builds next and I've got probably the most challenging build attempted coming up in queue.
But when I I went to go gather the parts, I was STILL missing some stuff dagnabbit......hopefully I'll have everything here in the next couple of days.
In the meantime, I decided to get back to my series of MIAB's that I've been building. So far, I've built the Golden Falk, the JHS Charlie, and the XS Drive all of which are pretty awesome drives and do their own thing capturing that Marshall vibe in a pedal. This was one that popped on my radar not too long ago.
I've always liked Keeley's pedals although I don't have a ton of experience with them besides his compressor.
I do remember back in the day when he was selling modded DS-1's on Ebay and almost bought one just because both Steve Vai and Joe Satriani bought them.
Fast forward to now he's like a major player in the boooteeeek pedal world.
Anyway, the El Rey Dorado is his take on the Plexi in a box pedal and it sounds really pretty awesome! This pedal uses a quad op amp for the main push but then there's a toggle that roughly maps to a JTM45/100 Reissue (based on his own amp) and the other side of the toggle maps to a Super Lead.
Like the Golden Falk it's a pretty bass heavy sound, unlike the GF it's a bit hard to dial out that bass, so pairing it with the right guitar/amp will make a difference.
Or having some downstream eq pedal.
I'm not sure if this is just my build, my components, but there's a pretty massive disparity in volume between the "Lo Power" side of the toggle, which enables 3 Red Led clippers and the "Hi Power" side which enables the 3 BAT46 clippers. I was expecting SOME disparity but in order to match the volume between the two sides it's literally 9 o'clock vs 2 o'clock on my level knob. The demo's I watched were mixed on this. Mike Hermans demo looks like it acts like mine does where he has to make some wide compensation on the level and gain going from lo to high power. But other video's, including Keeley's own video on his website it doesn't seem like it's that huge a gap. But then, that might also be the video compression/limiter at play where it's not really coming through. Anyway, that's my only real complaint with the pedal, I'll just need to remember to compensate for the volume when hitting the toggle.
Very straightforward build, but this PCB looked a little different from the typical boards I've gotten from @PedalPCB, this one was all shiny
Maybe a different mfgr?One hiccup I had was also a first for me. I have a 9v wall wart on my work bench that I use to do a quick power check or do rough biasing before moving into my office to fire up the pedal. Well, it wouldn't turn on when I did my bench check. So I whipped out my handy dandy DMM and everything seemed to be checking out and it was a real head scratcher. Turned out to be a bad status LED. It was actually turning on, just no light. I've NEVER had that happen before so I didn't think to check that until the very end. Swapped it out for a new LED and all is well.
Glad to add this to my growing collection of MIAB's, couple more to go hahaha!
