MichaelW
Well-known member
Not sure how I managed to spend most of the weekend at my work bench and not winding up with an "Angry Wife Plus" heh.
It was too windy to go fishing, so I wound up building pedals.
First up is a Paragon Mini.
I incorporated some of the mods I messed with on my first full size Paragon build. I used @ckaudioeffects "warmer tone mod" but oddly enough the "Paragon Mini" doesn't seem to suffer from the brightness that the full size one does. I probably could have gotten away with just building it stock. As it is, I actually have the presence trimmers up about 50% but it sounds fantastic.
I also changed R3 and R20 to 10k as per AnalogMan's schematic. The gain pot is a B250k (per @Chuck D. Bones) for what I think is the more elegant "more gain" mod.
The biggest challenge (and goof I made) was trying to expose the clipping switches to external toggles. I was originally planning to only use 2 toggle switches with Boost, OD, Distortion modes for each side. But I found out I could not fit a DPDT On-off-On toggle between the pots.....AFTER I drilled the holes...duhhhh. So I wound up reverting to SPST micro switches and put the second pair on the side of the enclosure. After drilling THOSE holes it dawned on me that I "could" have just put all 4 micro-switches on the left side in a row. Ah well, holes were drilled already and it works. I may buy another enclosure on my next Tayda order and re-house the pedal with a neater toggle switch arrangement. It was a absolute biotch getting all the stuff to fit but well worth the effort. And it sounds awesome.
I socketed the diodes and currently have BA282's and 1S133's in there. I tried some BAT41's in series for the hard clippers and they sounded pretty good with less volume drop (but also 1/2 the gain). I may mess around some more with other combinations. But overall very happy with this pedal. I'm planning to build the whole "family" of KOT pedals in this color scheme. (Paragon, Paragon Mini, and Pauper).
It was too windy to go fishing, so I wound up building pedals.
First up is a Paragon Mini.
I incorporated some of the mods I messed with on my first full size Paragon build. I used @ckaudioeffects "warmer tone mod" but oddly enough the "Paragon Mini" doesn't seem to suffer from the brightness that the full size one does. I probably could have gotten away with just building it stock. As it is, I actually have the presence trimmers up about 50% but it sounds fantastic.
I also changed R3 and R20 to 10k as per AnalogMan's schematic. The gain pot is a B250k (per @Chuck D. Bones) for what I think is the more elegant "more gain" mod.
The biggest challenge (and goof I made) was trying to expose the clipping switches to external toggles. I was originally planning to only use 2 toggle switches with Boost, OD, Distortion modes for each side. But I found out I could not fit a DPDT On-off-On toggle between the pots.....AFTER I drilled the holes...duhhhh. So I wound up reverting to SPST micro switches and put the second pair on the side of the enclosure. After drilling THOSE holes it dawned on me that I "could" have just put all 4 micro-switches on the left side in a row. Ah well, holes were drilled already and it works. I may buy another enclosure on my next Tayda order and re-house the pedal with a neater toggle switch arrangement. It was a absolute biotch getting all the stuff to fit but well worth the effort. And it sounds awesome.
I socketed the diodes and currently have BA282's and 1S133's in there. I tried some BAT41's in series for the hard clippers and they sounded pretty good with less volume drop (but also 1/2 the gain). I may mess around some more with other combinations. But overall very happy with this pedal. I'm planning to build the whole "family" of KOT pedals in this color scheme. (Paragon, Paragon Mini, and Pauper).
