MichaelW
Well-known member
So one of recent "employee value benefits" at the company I work for is that during the summer months we have 3 months of what's called "Summer Fridays".
Basically, if you're reasonably caught up with what's on your plate you get to knock off at noon every Friday from June thru September. I totally spaced out and missed the announcement this year and a colleague that I was chatting with reminded me today (because I was trying to schedule a meeting on a Friday afternoon.)
So I was like WOOT! "I get the afternoon off! Ima build me a pedal
"
I had never heard of Snouse before (not a huge surprise coming from someone that never played a Rat or a TS until joining this forum hahah).
When I saw @PedalPCB's "What's on the Workbench" post with a picture of it I was intrigued. Digging around a bit I found out that it was a "YABB".
I really like my MBB variants (Paragon, Pauper, Kings Hand, Pro-10 Blue) but don't like my "actual" Bluesbreaker much (AionFx Cerulean).
Reading the Snouse website it sounded like there are some cool mods to the MBB circuit they did so I snagged the board during the last sale. Of course there were the many "This is the next big thing....." threads on TGP. I always fall for that.........hahah
Anyway, it's a great sounding BB variant with a lot of tonal range in it. Like the Paragon-family you can do the clean boost thing and you get actually get into some high gain sounds. And as with most of MBB variants I've built, while there IS gain on tap, it doesn't sound very good maxed out without some additional eq to tame the fizziness. The P&K is no different, the pedal sounds it's best with the gain knob from low to noon.
@PedalPCB exposed the rather confusing internal dip switches as toggles which is always a plus for me! Saves me the headache of modding it myself and I've never been one to leave well enough alone when it comes to internal dip switches
The controls are not the most intuitive and there might be something wrong with my build, I'm not sure because there's no schematic for it (I'll get to that in a sec).
(@PedalPCB any chance you can post the schematic for this?)
The 3 main knobs (Level, Gain, Passive tone control) all work expected. There's also a "Presence" and "Preamp" pot. The Toggles are "Smooth" (Which toggles a bright cap on/off I think) "Clip" which adds the clipping diodes for a more compressed sound with the accompanying volume drop) and "Boost"which toggles between normal and Boost mode. In Boost Mode the "Preamp" knob becomes effective. Otherwise it does nothing. According to the manual this is supposed to act like a pre-gain level to goose the gain setting. It "kinda" does that but this is where my first issue is. In Boost mode, the preamp pot maxes out at around 1 o'clock with no additional output beyond that, which is not unusual, however, in full CCW it turns the whole pedal's volume completely off. Not sure if it's supposed to work this way or not but it doesn't seem right.
The second issue is similar to the first, with the Presence knob.
The control functions and behaves exactly like the Preamp knob. It doesn't really add any presence. In fact it doesn't change the EQ at all, but it's another secondary gain control. In full CWW it turns the pedal output completely off. So given that the Preamp is a B250k and the Presence is an A50k something definitely seems amiss.
I'm just running it right now with the Preamp and Presence knobs full CW and adjusting the eq and clipping levels with the toggles and the main 3 knobs.
I would be very interested if anyone else has already built this pedal and compare notes. Or if someone has a schematic for this so I can have a looky loo at how it's supposed to be working.
Anyway, it's a nice low-mid gain drive. It leans more towards the tonality of a real MBB than some of the other variants I've built. I built it off the BOM.txt with no substitutions. I also went through my whole stash of 2N5457's and actually found 5 that were in spec (yeehawww) and used a couple of them in this build. I "believe" it's an output gain stage but I could be wrong.
The Matte Army Green Tayda enclosure looks pretty cool. I'm seeing more and more of this Olive Green, Olive Drab on instruments lately, Chicago Music Exchange has a number of Fenders and Squiers in this color. I didn't think much of it at first but it's starting to grow on me. Still, I'm not sure I'd want a guitar in that color but I think the Green/Cream knobs on this pedal looks pretty cool. (Sigh of course like most of the matte colors from Tayda, it scratches if you even LOOK at it funny.....)
Basically, if you're reasonably caught up with what's on your plate you get to knock off at noon every Friday from June thru September. I totally spaced out and missed the announcement this year and a colleague that I was chatting with reminded me today (because I was trying to schedule a meeting on a Friday afternoon.)
So I was like WOOT! "I get the afternoon off! Ima build me a pedal
"I had never heard of Snouse before (not a huge surprise coming from someone that never played a Rat or a TS until joining this forum hahah).
When I saw @PedalPCB's "What's on the Workbench" post with a picture of it I was intrigued. Digging around a bit I found out that it was a "YABB".
I really like my MBB variants (Paragon, Pauper, Kings Hand, Pro-10 Blue) but don't like my "actual" Bluesbreaker much (AionFx Cerulean).
Reading the Snouse website it sounded like there are some cool mods to the MBB circuit they did so I snagged the board during the last sale. Of course there were the many "This is the next big thing....." threads on TGP. I always fall for that.........hahah
Anyway, it's a great sounding BB variant with a lot of tonal range in it. Like the Paragon-family you can do the clean boost thing and you get actually get into some high gain sounds. And as with most of MBB variants I've built, while there IS gain on tap, it doesn't sound very good maxed out without some additional eq to tame the fizziness. The P&K is no different, the pedal sounds it's best with the gain knob from low to noon.
@PedalPCB exposed the rather confusing internal dip switches as toggles which is always a plus for me! Saves me the headache of modding it myself and I've never been one to leave well enough alone when it comes to internal dip switches
The controls are not the most intuitive and there might be something wrong with my build, I'm not sure because there's no schematic for it (I'll get to that in a sec).
(@PedalPCB any chance you can post the schematic for this?)
The 3 main knobs (Level, Gain, Passive tone control) all work expected. There's also a "Presence" and "Preamp" pot. The Toggles are "Smooth" (Which toggles a bright cap on/off I think) "Clip" which adds the clipping diodes for a more compressed sound with the accompanying volume drop) and "Boost"which toggles between normal and Boost mode. In Boost Mode the "Preamp" knob becomes effective. Otherwise it does nothing. According to the manual this is supposed to act like a pre-gain level to goose the gain setting. It "kinda" does that but this is where my first issue is. In Boost mode, the preamp pot maxes out at around 1 o'clock with no additional output beyond that, which is not unusual, however, in full CCW it turns the whole pedal's volume completely off. Not sure if it's supposed to work this way or not but it doesn't seem right.
The second issue is similar to the first, with the Presence knob.
The control functions and behaves exactly like the Preamp knob. It doesn't really add any presence. In fact it doesn't change the EQ at all, but it's another secondary gain control. In full CWW it turns the pedal output completely off. So given that the Preamp is a B250k and the Presence is an A50k something definitely seems amiss.
I'm just running it right now with the Preamp and Presence knobs full CW and adjusting the eq and clipping levels with the toggles and the main 3 knobs.
I would be very interested if anyone else has already built this pedal and compare notes. Or if someone has a schematic for this so I can have a looky loo at how it's supposed to be working.
Anyway, it's a nice low-mid gain drive. It leans more towards the tonality of a real MBB than some of the other variants I've built. I built it off the BOM.txt with no substitutions. I also went through my whole stash of 2N5457's and actually found 5 that were in spec (yeehawww) and used a couple of them in this build. I "believe" it's an output gain stage but I could be wrong.
The Matte Army Green Tayda enclosure looks pretty cool. I'm seeing more and more of this Olive Green, Olive Drab on instruments lately, Chicago Music Exchange has a number of Fenders and Squiers in this color. I didn't think much of it at first but it's starting to grow on me. Still, I'm not sure I'd want a guitar in that color but I think the Green/Cream knobs on this pedal looks pretty cool. (Sigh of course like most of the matte colors from Tayda, it scratches if you even LOOK at it funny.....)
. Except I don't charge extra for my extra switches
