Fingolfen
Well-known member
- Build Rating
A little while back, I'd taken apart one of the Custom "Modern" versions of the Mad Professor Stone Grey Distortion pedals to see what modifications they'd made to the pedal. The main component side was unchanged, but while I could see essentially what had been done (SMDs were added in parallel with three components) - I lacked the tools and knowhow to remove and identify the SMD components. So, I sent it to Robert who kindly (and carefully) removed the components, identified them, reattached them, and then not only shared the updated schematic, but made a new revision to the Graphite Distortion board with the "Modern" modifications in a separate box on the PCB where they can be added, or not, per your taste! So, it was time for a new build!
Back in February I built the AionFX clone of Mad Professor's Stone Grey Distortion pedal. It was a neat pedal, but the clone wasn't 100% accurate as I ended up using clipping diodes rather than transistors (essentially used as diodes) in the original. This time I wanted to try and go all original with transistor clipping and add the modern modifications.
As with all of my builds of modern circuits, this one uses 1% 1/4W metal film resistors (mostly Yageo and KAO Speer), which are ironically a bit tighter than the ones used in the original. The film capacitors are all WIMA and KEMET, and there are KEMET and other high-end MLCC capacitors as well as a couple of Nichicon electrolytic capacitors. The ICs are genuine and socketed. I'm using a Star Ground per my normal practice, but as I'm using the older AionFX drill pattern, I was able to just use a four-prong pin header to attach the 3PDT daughter board to the main PCB rather than ribbon cable.
My previous version of the pedal followed the layout and appearance of the original pedal - with some slight modifications to the art and name of course. That being said, I really liked the name, but wanted to come up with something more fitting the "dino" theme, or at least something fun and prehistoric!
So... I decided to go all out and create a cave painting for the enclosure! I used various bits of licensed art as well as created some of my own in the same style in Photoshop and combined it into a fairly busy, yet fun, whole with some dinos thrown in (tongue firmly in cheek). I went ahead and picked up genuine Davies oxblood knobs from Love My Switches as I thought they'd go best with the overall enclosure.
When I tested the pedal, it fired up first time without issue. This was one of those rare times when I could actually play my pedal and compare it directly with an original. I'm happy to say that I honestly can't tell the two apart - at least using my Chapman and Boss Katana amp. Needless to say, Steggo and Steggi are very proud of this one. Steggi did the initial tear down of the real thing, and then wisely indicated that she wasn't up to messing with SMDs. The clone is a bit bigger than the original, but pretty much all of my pedals are 125B with top mounted jacks anyway, so having smaller pedals doesn't help much.
More (included some photos of the actual Mad Prof pedal) at the blog: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/09/king-of-stone-age-cloning-limited.html
Back in February I built the AionFX clone of Mad Professor's Stone Grey Distortion pedal. It was a neat pedal, but the clone wasn't 100% accurate as I ended up using clipping diodes rather than transistors (essentially used as diodes) in the original. This time I wanted to try and go all original with transistor clipping and add the modern modifications.
As with all of my builds of modern circuits, this one uses 1% 1/4W metal film resistors (mostly Yageo and KAO Speer), which are ironically a bit tighter than the ones used in the original. The film capacitors are all WIMA and KEMET, and there are KEMET and other high-end MLCC capacitors as well as a couple of Nichicon electrolytic capacitors. The ICs are genuine and socketed. I'm using a Star Ground per my normal practice, but as I'm using the older AionFX drill pattern, I was able to just use a four-prong pin header to attach the 3PDT daughter board to the main PCB rather than ribbon cable.
My previous version of the pedal followed the layout and appearance of the original pedal - with some slight modifications to the art and name of course. That being said, I really liked the name, but wanted to come up with something more fitting the "dino" theme, or at least something fun and prehistoric!
So... I decided to go all out and create a cave painting for the enclosure! I used various bits of licensed art as well as created some of my own in the same style in Photoshop and combined it into a fairly busy, yet fun, whole with some dinos thrown in (tongue firmly in cheek). I went ahead and picked up genuine Davies oxblood knobs from Love My Switches as I thought they'd go best with the overall enclosure.
When I tested the pedal, it fired up first time without issue. This was one of those rare times when I could actually play my pedal and compare it directly with an original. I'm happy to say that I honestly can't tell the two apart - at least using my Chapman and Boss Katana amp. Needless to say, Steggo and Steggi are very proud of this one. Steggi did the initial tear down of the real thing, and then wisely indicated that she wasn't up to messing with SMDs. The clone is a bit bigger than the original, but pretty much all of my pedals are 125B with top mounted jacks anyway, so having smaller pedals doesn't help much.
More (included some photos of the actual Mad Prof pedal) at the blog: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/09/king-of-stone-age-cloning-limited.html
