Bricksnbeatles
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Demo pending— I was holding off on posting build reports until I could get some demos together, but I have an art fair that I need to work on stuff for, and I can't find my interface.
I'm back with another Star Wars pedal! As with my Little White Lye (Devi Ever Soda Meiser) build, when @BuddytheReow announced the Player Hater's Ball, it got me off my ass a bit and motivated me to build some stuff. While trying to come up with some ideas for projects to build, I found a UV printed enclosure that I had ordered from Tayda back in 2023 with a design I had previously used for two other builds of the Benson Preamp. They were called the Korkie Preamp in reference to a largely refuted but wildly popular fan theory regarding an obscure side-character from the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series. The build report for those two is linked below– I recommend checking it out before you read further for some context surrounding the concept behind the name/design (Spoiler Warning!) and my general thoughts on the two stock iterations of the circuit.
After some digging, I found that I also had a Son of Ben PCB to go with it–– I'm not totally sure, but I think I had planned on building another one (to the same specs as the blue one in the build report linked above) to give as a gift to someone, but I can't remember who, so I figured I'd just build a third one for the heck of it. Since I already have two builds of this circuit that are very similar spec-wise, I wanted to mix it up.
Years ago I saw posts in a DIY pedals Discord Server from dylan159 about a redesign/optimization of the Beson Preamp circuit, which he titled the Bonson Praemp. Actually, the joke is that the name changes every time you refer to it, and you can't call it a preamp, so it's also been called the Bonsai Praemp, Bunsen Permp, and a slew of other names that follow in the footsteps of the Benedict Cumberbatch name meme, but I'll refer to it as the Bonson Praemp here, since that's the title on the schematic that he published on the discord server and on FSB. The biggest changes that dylan159 made to the circuit have to do with the Bass control, and sclaing the impedances of the section to do away with the terrible B2M pot used in the original circuit, but there are a handful of other tweaks and optimizations that impact the overall character of the circuit. For further reading, you can check out Dylan's own thoughts and explanations regarding the changes he made over on the FreeStompboxes Forum. Schematic embedded below for any of y'all who aren't registered over at FSB:
Anyway, I figured I might as well build this Korkie enlosure and Son Of Ben pcb to Dylan's Bonson specs to see how they compare. Conveniently, at some point in the past I had this idea already, and back then I already did the legwork of noting all of the changes to the circuit as well as annotating an image of the PCB with the revised values, so putting this one together was a breeze–– No more difficult than building a stock Son Of Ben. Below are a jpeg of the modified board layout, as well as a table of the component values in relation to the PPCB Son of Ben RefDes. PM me if you want the full-res PDF version of the board or the .xlsx file for the table.
Now That We're past the technical stuff, we can take a look at the build and hear my impressions on it. When I first built this one I did a quick shootout between that and the two straight up clones of the Benson that I built a few years ago (rev 1 and rev2, or 1.0 and 1.1 if you prefer).
Like the two benson clones, it has a switchable charge pump for 9/18v operation. Some notes:
- it generally just sounds better
- it’s a lot louder
- the bass pot is a lot more dramatic in it’s effect, compared to the original circuit where it’s a lot more subtle outside of the upper and lower extremes. That said, with the bass pot cranked, it isn’t quite as woofy/flubby/subby as the original. I see this overall as an improvement, however I do find that characteristic of the original to be beneficial when using it on bass as a preamp to feed a power amp.
- the difference between 9v and 18v is quite dramatic on the bonson praemp, while virtually indistinguishable outside of a few subtleties on low gain settings for the original circuit. For one thing, there’s a noticeable boost in output at 18v that’s not there in the two stock builds.
The bias of the JFETs also shifts pretty dramatically, which I haven’t noticed on either of the original circuit ones I built. At 9v The drain voltage for Q1 is ~5v, and I biased Q2 and Q3 to 4v. At 18v this shifts to Q1 13.35v, Q2 12.25v, Q3 12.3v
I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I think in the two original ones the voltages scaled mostly proportionally. I think one of them was something like @ 9v: Q1 4.6v, Q2 4v, Q3 4.1v; @ 18v: Q1 10.6v, Q2 8.5v , Q3 9.1v (I'll take specific measurements at a later point and update this section)
Of course, I’d probably chalk this up to differences in the specs, since I just picked 3 random 201s out of my bin each time without checking them out. At some point I might do a comparison swapping out the FETs in each of them and rebiasing to see what if anything changes as far as the 9 vs 18v operation.
Anyway, just some quick unscientific impressions from someone who has built both the original circuit and dylan159's redesign/optimization of it. Overall, it's a great sounding pedal, and dylan159 knocked it out of the park with his modification of the Benson Preamp circuit. I enjoyed the stock circuit(s) when I first built it, and I still think they sound fantastic (especially on bass), but this iteration definitely feels like a strong improvement to me. For anyone planning on building a Son of Ben, I'd highly recommend that you check out my revisions under the spoiler tag about halfway up the page, and build it that way instead.
I may come back and add additional thoughts about this build soon. I feel like there's more to say about it, but I'm unable to think of anything else of value to add right now.
I'm back with another Star Wars pedal! As with my Little White Lye (Devi Ever Soda Meiser) build, when @BuddytheReow announced the Player Hater's Ball, it got me off my ass a bit and motivated me to build some stuff. While trying to come up with some ideas for projects to build, I found a UV printed enclosure that I had ordered from Tayda back in 2023 with a design I had previously used for two other builds of the Benson Preamp. They were called the Korkie Preamp in reference to a largely refuted but wildly popular fan theory regarding an obscure side-character from the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series. The build report for those two is linked below– I recommend checking it out before you read further for some context surrounding the concept behind the name/design (Spoiler Warning!) and my general thoughts on the two stock iterations of the circuit.
After some digging, I found that I also had a Son of Ben PCB to go with it–– I'm not totally sure, but I think I had planned on building another one (to the same specs as the blue one in the build report linked above) to give as a gift to someone, but I can't remember who, so I figured I'd just build a third one for the heck of it. Since I already have two builds of this circuit that are very similar spec-wise, I wanted to mix it up.
Years ago I saw posts in a DIY pedals Discord Server from dylan159 about a redesign/optimization of the Beson Preamp circuit, which he titled the Bonson Praemp. Actually, the joke is that the name changes every time you refer to it, and you can't call it a preamp, so it's also been called the Bonsai Praemp, Bunsen Permp, and a slew of other names that follow in the footsteps of the Benedict Cumberbatch name meme, but I'll refer to it as the Bonson Praemp here, since that's the title on the schematic that he published on the discord server and on FSB. The biggest changes that dylan159 made to the circuit have to do with the Bass control, and sclaing the impedances of the section to do away with the terrible B2M pot used in the original circuit, but there are a handful of other tweaks and optimizations that impact the overall character of the circuit. For further reading, you can check out Dylan's own thoughts and explanations regarding the changes he made over on the FreeStompboxes Forum. Schematic embedded below for any of y'all who aren't registered over at FSB:
Anyway, I figured I might as well build this Korkie enlosure and Son Of Ben pcb to Dylan's Bonson specs to see how they compare. Conveniently, at some point in the past I had this idea already, and back then I already did the legwork of noting all of the changes to the circuit as well as annotating an image of the PCB with the revised values, so putting this one together was a breeze–– No more difficult than building a stock Son Of Ben. Below are a jpeg of the modified board layout, as well as a table of the component values in relation to the PPCB Son of Ben RefDes. PM me if you want the full-res PDF version of the board or the .xlsx file for the table.
Now That We're past the technical stuff, we can take a look at the build and hear my impressions on it. When I first built this one I did a quick shootout between that and the two straight up clones of the Benson that I built a few years ago (rev 1 and rev2, or 1.0 and 1.1 if you prefer).
Like the two benson clones, it has a switchable charge pump for 9/18v operation. Some notes:
- it generally just sounds better
- it’s a lot louder
- the bass pot is a lot more dramatic in it’s effect, compared to the original circuit where it’s a lot more subtle outside of the upper and lower extremes. That said, with the bass pot cranked, it isn’t quite as woofy/flubby/subby as the original. I see this overall as an improvement, however I do find that characteristic of the original to be beneficial when using it on bass as a preamp to feed a power amp.
- the difference between 9v and 18v is quite dramatic on the bonson praemp, while virtually indistinguishable outside of a few subtleties on low gain settings for the original circuit. For one thing, there’s a noticeable boost in output at 18v that’s not there in the two stock builds.
The bias of the JFETs also shifts pretty dramatically, which I haven’t noticed on either of the original circuit ones I built. At 9v The drain voltage for Q1 is ~5v, and I biased Q2 and Q3 to 4v. At 18v this shifts to Q1 13.35v, Q2 12.25v, Q3 12.3v
I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I think in the two original ones the voltages scaled mostly proportionally. I think one of them was something like @ 9v: Q1 4.6v, Q2 4v, Q3 4.1v; @ 18v: Q1 10.6v, Q2 8.5v , Q3 9.1v (I'll take specific measurements at a later point and update this section)
Of course, I’d probably chalk this up to differences in the specs, since I just picked 3 random 201s out of my bin each time without checking them out. At some point I might do a comparison swapping out the FETs in each of them and rebiasing to see what if anything changes as far as the 9 vs 18v operation.
Anyway, just some quick unscientific impressions from someone who has built both the original circuit and dylan159's redesign/optimization of it. Overall, it's a great sounding pedal, and dylan159 knocked it out of the park with his modification of the Benson Preamp circuit. I enjoyed the stock circuit(s) when I first built it, and I still think they sound fantastic (especially on bass), but this iteration definitely feels like a strong improvement to me. For anyone planning on building a Son of Ben, I'd highly recommend that you check out my revisions under the spoiler tag about halfway up the page, and build it that way instead.
I may come back and add additional thoughts about this build soon. I feel like there's more to say about it, but I'm unable to think of anything else of value to add right now.
