EisengesisFX
Well-known member
- Build Rating
THE SOUND
The Zvex Machine is crazily splattery and shitty, and not generally meant to be used on its own. But it's exactly because of its bizarre, abrasive character and its intended tandem use with other gain pedals that I wanted one in my arsenal. My bandmate asked me to build him one and I instantly wanted another for myself after hearing the completed circuit.
THE BUILD
Really straightforward electronically speaking; both the first build and my personal one worked on first attempt. I socketed all the transistor points in my build but haven't yet auditioned alternate ones. Definitely open to any suggestions!
THE PEDAL
My usual laser printer/transparency paper/oil paint pen underside painting/clearcoat techniques were used.
For the Machine Fatigue, my Holdsworth megafan bandmate wanted to combine titles from Metal Fatigue and Heavy Machinery with the album art of the latter. He did the layout as he's far more adept at Photoshop than I. And the road sign graphic looks pretty damn crisp, if I may say. Not too tedious to paint. What was godawfully tedious was the white bubble lettering. Paint pens plus the sticky adhesive underside of the Maco paper I use make for an unforgiving medium. I had to toss an entire decal's worth of painting after I slipped and fucked up the lettering.
For my own, I opted for a simple monochrome graphic (no damn painting involved!) and another Voivod theme. "Lost Machine" isn't whatsoever as noisy a tune as this circuit (The Outer Limits is one of their better rock-leaning albums), but any chance to use Away's art is one I'm gonna hop on. The graphic here was a fun challenge: the highest resolution I could find was a scan of a promotional 12" single, and per the pulp magazine theme of the album it had red and green print so you could use the included 3D glasses. To undo that to a place where I could desaturate to monochrome, layer style and opacity fuckery was the name of the game. I also used vectorizing to make as clean a print as my mediocre laser printer could muster.
The tough part was that the white powder coat my LMS enclosures come with of course exposes every last speck of schmutz that invariably lands on the pedal during clearcoating, even though I cover it when it's drying. But when I'm making these pedals I always remind myself of what my drama teacher would say about sets (and maybe costuming)-- "does it read well from ten feet"? I hope so
