New Allen Bradley Thagomizer I - With a Few Modern Replacement Capacitors

[Fingolfen]

Build Rating

5.00 star(s)

I knew the day would eventually come when some of the New Old Stock components I'd been using on my Thagomizers would start to dry up, I just didn't expect it to come so soon! While I'm pretty well set for resistors, tropical fish capacitors, ceramic capacitors, etc., it's the older validated (as opposed to dead) electrolytic capacitors which are drying up - which I guess shouldn't be a surprise. At this point the 22μF Bianchi - Phillips capacitors seem to be gone. I've therefore had to make a modern substitution, but it appears to be the same substitution my European source of parts is making on his sets with the Iskra and Phier resistors as well.



The replacement I'm going with is a Vishay / BC Components axial that has the same footprint and tolerance as the old version. Visually, at least from the top, the populated PCB looks the same as the old version, it's only if you shift to the side that you can tell half of the axial electrolytic capacitors are modern.



At low-gain settings, the new pedal is tonally indistinguishable from my personal Thagomizer I (the first Army Green Iskra resistor version I built). At higher gain settings, the new Allen-Bradley build seems to have a bit more distortion character than the all NOS Iskra. There could be a host of reasons for this, especially since all of the resistors are a different brand from one pedal to another. Unfortunately I no longer have THGC serial number 1 to compare it to...

Original blog entry here...

 

[coltonius]

This has a host of awesomeness to it! First, everyone knows the stegosaurus is the best dinosaur. Second, the Far Side reference, and finally: the mojo components.

Great work!