MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
So some of you that have read my rambling typically overly verbose posts may recall that I got into pedal making because I wanted a King of Tone pedal and didn't feel like waiting 4 years or paying $800 from the flippers on Reverb.
About a year and a half ago, after finding this forum and the PedalPCB.com website, I decided to try my hand at building my own King of Tone in the form of the Paragon.
It was the very first pedal I made and it worked!! (once I remembered to put the IC's in hahaha)
My original intention was to just build the Paragon and move on......who the heck knew what kind of rabbit hole I'd fall down into!
I went on to build a number of other variants of the KOT/POT and built them for my buddy and my brother.
My final Paragon build was not long after my first one. Documented here.
I also built the variants from AionFX and PCBGuitarMania as well as the Paragon Mini and Pauper.
Having wrung that turnip dry I moved on to other pedals. And now some 240 pedals later, my build process and build quality has improved dramatically from those first few pedals. I decided to revisit the Paragon and Pauper (and maybe a Paragon Mini at some point).
The point was to see if I could do better now with some experience.
So I built a Paragon with some of my favorite mods. @ckaudioeffects "warmer tone" mods and @Chuck D. Bones "more gain range mod" and dropping the charge pump..
I also eschewed all the mini toggles exposing all the various modes that are on dip switches internally.
I've also incorporated a couple of other mods and learnings after playing these pedals a while. Like swapping the 4580 for a 4558 one one side of the Paragon for some more gain and compression. Also, one other thing I've learned about these somewhat bright and fizzy pedals is adjusting the internal presence trimmer to almost completely off. I used to think the presence trimmers were useless, but I've discovered that I really like how the pedal sounds much better with the presence trimmer just barely cracked open.
Ok so, that's the background of why I decided build new versions of these pedals. To get a snapshot of how I am building today as opposed to when I was just starting out 18 months or so ago.
So irony of ironies.......when I finished the new Paragon and fired it up...................it didn't work........heh.
No bypass, no effect. Turned out to be a bad 3PDT of all things. And I used one of the "good" SBP "Pro" ones, sheesh. And of course this is probably the absolute WORST project in the whole PedalPCB catalog to have to replace a footswitch! After some choice cursing in Chinese (and I don't even speak Chinese....) I thought about how best to remove the footswitch. My fallback plan was to do away with the daughterboard and do all the off board wiring manually. (and waste TWO footswitches). But before going down that route I thought I'd give a go at trying to remove it.
So I made liberal use of my Engineers Solder Sucker and got as much solder out as I could. I went about as far as I dared heating up the daughterboard trying not to pop a barrel or burn a trace. Then I used a hacksaw and a Dremel cutting wheel and slowly cut through the lugs. I finally got it off and replaced the 3PDT and voila! Success!
Actually I'm amazed that the pedal works at all, I scratched the mask pretty good in a few places. Anyway, it's got some battle scars but works, heh.
I still have a stash of my favorite diodes for these and used BA282's for the soft clippers and 1S1588's for the hard clippers.
I used a B250k pot for the gain instead of a B100k (per Chuck) which gives me a lot more gain range and have the dip switches set to soft clipping in channel 1 and hard in channel 2. I used a 4580 in Channel 1 and a 4558 in channel 2. A few Carbon Comp resistors in the signal path (@ckaudioeffects "mojo" mods)
Part of my surgery......
Some pretty serious scratches but it still worked!!
The Pauper:
I also built another Pauper. My first one is documented here. Built in March 2022.
I also bailed on exposing the DIP switches on toggles on this one as well as the effect they have is pretty subtle and I generally run them both on anyway.
The only mods on this was was the high gain mod (B250K pot) and using a 4558 in place of the 4580. The Opamp in these circuits seem to make a much bigger difference than I usually hear in other circuits. The 4558 seems to add significantly more gain to my ears.
I also used BA282's for the clippers in this one. No build issues for the Pauper thank goodness!
So how do they sound? Well......um....pretty much like my other ones, heh. But still glad I did it.
Along with the King's Hand (Kingtone Heavy Hand) these are still my favorite Bluesbreaker variants.
(I kinda liked the Pot & Kettle too but have such a sour taste from all the whining and melodrama from a certain pedal "designer" that I don't even want to play it anymore. Kinda the same reason I won't ever build a Vertex clone. I just can't separate the product from the associated douchebaggery, heh)
Anyway, I tried to record a demo of the Paragon and the Pauper. Well I actually DID record a demo but it's been one of those days where my hands and fingers are feeling their age and being totally uncooperative. So I'll ask for forgiveness in advance for the playing but the pedals sound great!
About a year and a half ago, after finding this forum and the PedalPCB.com website, I decided to try my hand at building my own King of Tone in the form of the Paragon.
It was the very first pedal I made and it worked!! (once I remembered to put the IC's in hahaha)
My original intention was to just build the Paragon and move on......who the heck knew what kind of rabbit hole I'd fall down into!
I went on to build a number of other variants of the KOT/POT and built them for my buddy and my brother.
My final Paragon build was not long after my first one. Documented here.
I also built the variants from AionFX and PCBGuitarMania as well as the Paragon Mini and Pauper.
Having wrung that turnip dry I moved on to other pedals. And now some 240 pedals later, my build process and build quality has improved dramatically from those first few pedals. I decided to revisit the Paragon and Pauper (and maybe a Paragon Mini at some point).
The point was to see if I could do better now with some experience.
So I built a Paragon with some of my favorite mods. @ckaudioeffects "warmer tone" mods and @Chuck D. Bones "more gain range mod" and dropping the charge pump..
I also eschewed all the mini toggles exposing all the various modes that are on dip switches internally.
I've also incorporated a couple of other mods and learnings after playing these pedals a while. Like swapping the 4580 for a 4558 one one side of the Paragon for some more gain and compression. Also, one other thing I've learned about these somewhat bright and fizzy pedals is adjusting the internal presence trimmer to almost completely off. I used to think the presence trimmers were useless, but I've discovered that I really like how the pedal sounds much better with the presence trimmer just barely cracked open.
Ok so, that's the background of why I decided build new versions of these pedals. To get a snapshot of how I am building today as opposed to when I was just starting out 18 months or so ago.
So irony of ironies.......when I finished the new Paragon and fired it up...................it didn't work........heh.
No bypass, no effect. Turned out to be a bad 3PDT of all things. And I used one of the "good" SBP "Pro" ones, sheesh. And of course this is probably the absolute WORST project in the whole PedalPCB catalog to have to replace a footswitch! After some choice cursing in Chinese (and I don't even speak Chinese....) I thought about how best to remove the footswitch. My fallback plan was to do away with the daughterboard and do all the off board wiring manually. (and waste TWO footswitches). But before going down that route I thought I'd give a go at trying to remove it.
So I made liberal use of my Engineers Solder Sucker and got as much solder out as I could. I went about as far as I dared heating up the daughterboard trying not to pop a barrel or burn a trace. Then I used a hacksaw and a Dremel cutting wheel and slowly cut through the lugs. I finally got it off and replaced the 3PDT and voila! Success!
Actually I'm amazed that the pedal works at all, I scratched the mask pretty good in a few places. Anyway, it's got some battle scars but works, heh.
I still have a stash of my favorite diodes for these and used BA282's for the soft clippers and 1S1588's for the hard clippers.
I used a B250k pot for the gain instead of a B100k (per Chuck) which gives me a lot more gain range and have the dip switches set to soft clipping in channel 1 and hard in channel 2. I used a 4580 in Channel 1 and a 4558 in channel 2. A few Carbon Comp resistors in the signal path (@ckaudioeffects "mojo" mods)
Part of my surgery......
Some pretty serious scratches but it still worked!!
The Pauper:
I also built another Pauper. My first one is documented here. Built in March 2022.
I also bailed on exposing the DIP switches on toggles on this one as well as the effect they have is pretty subtle and I generally run them both on anyway.
The only mods on this was was the high gain mod (B250K pot) and using a 4558 in place of the 4580. The Opamp in these circuits seem to make a much bigger difference than I usually hear in other circuits. The 4558 seems to add significantly more gain to my ears.
I also used BA282's for the clippers in this one. No build issues for the Pauper thank goodness!
So how do they sound? Well......um....pretty much like my other ones, heh. But still glad I did it.
Along with the King's Hand (Kingtone Heavy Hand) these are still my favorite Bluesbreaker variants.
(I kinda liked the Pot & Kettle too but have such a sour taste from all the whining and melodrama from a certain pedal "designer" that I don't even want to play it anymore. Kinda the same reason I won't ever build a Vertex clone. I just can't separate the product from the associated douchebaggery, heh)
Anyway, I tried to record a demo of the Paragon and the Pauper. Well I actually DID record a demo but it's been one of those days where my hands and fingers are feeling their age and being totally uncooperative. So I'll ask for forgiveness in advance for the playing but the pedals sound great!
