Sexy little resistors: AionFX Aphelion (MXR Distortion+)

Hetari Gotoh

Active member
Build Rating
4.00 star(s)
First custom Tayda drilling and UV printing for my first AionFX build. All in all I'm pretty happy with the results, thanks to the people from the Tayda UV Printing thread and to Hugo & co. for their precision with all the drilling and layering.

The build itself is simple, but it requires some homework because of the various versions you can build (Distortion+, `77 Gray 250, `78 Gray 250, `79 Gray 250, `82 Yellow 250, `97 Yellow 250, `02 YJM 308, Micro Amp, Vox 1901 / Guyatone Zoom Box, Hitachi HV-260). A significant part of my love goes to @UtilityBeltFX for his demo of the clipping options, a great help for all who wonder what to do with D4-D5-D6-D7.

First thing I did was to solder the germanium diodes, treating them like they were made of glass :)unsure:) and expecting them to explode right away. But thankfully.
Now, I appreciated some aspects of the Aion project, but I found myself swearing more than once. Since this is a highly versatile and customizable build, I opted for the highly versatile and impactful pearl of the polish language that is 'KURWA', yelling it repeatedly with abandon.

aphali_furonto.jpg aphali_gattsu.jpg aphali_DC.jpg

The completed pedal sounds fine and I had fun comparing the clipping settings, even though it will probably stay on the stock distortion+ germanium setting most of the time. the distortion pot also acts as the tone pot, seemingly cutting lows as it goes up. in fact it sounds like ass unless it's almost cranked. options! yay!

The Tayda enclosure is Grey, with a white layer under the graphics and gloss varnish. The theme is the Karen Bee arc from Nisemonogatari, the show that changes forever your concept of dental hygiene. This of course makes it so that there's sexy little bees inside (the resistors) and outside. It also makes me more of a despicable person.
 
Looks great! The white honeycomb at the top is a nice touch.

I haven’t played a straight distortion + clone, but the EQD White Light is in that family and it’s a favorite. (PPCB Irrlicht)
 
Thank you, the honeycomb should have been darker to offset the "heavy" part below, but the color I picked was a shot in the dark, based on the pantone color specified by Tayda for their grey color. Maybe it's better like this after all. I guess I'll ask for help in the aforementioned thread, just for future reference.

The Irrlicht was already in my wishlist, in case it wasn't obvious I have a problem.
 
Nope, that would have been quite ordinary. Instead you can tell the situation is serious when someone from italy carefully picks the spell "Power Word: Kurwa" from his grimoire. Besides, being italian helps with rolling the R. You gotta roll the R for at least 2-3 seconds to get the magic going, right?

Also, pedals. In fact I believe that spell name would be a great name for a pedal. I feel inspired now. :ROFLMAO:
 
Nope, that would have been quite ordinary. Instead you can tell the situation is serious when someone from italy carefully picks the spell "Power Word: Kurwa" from his grimoire. Besides, being italian helps with rolling the R. You gotta roll the R for at least 2-3 seconds to get the magic going, right?

Also, pedals. In fact I believe that spell name would be a great name for a pedal. I feel inspired now. :ROFLMAO:
I know how to roll my Rs. Source: am Italian living in Poland.
 
Wow! Looks killer! Makes me want to do an anime themed design. I've got the vfe dist+ version to build up and might just have to follow suit.
 
Great, looking forward to it! I'll probably do more like this myself, à la Guardians of the Analog.

There's something soothing about anime aesthetics, even knowing what's behind it in cultural and psychological terms. The same goes for the related J-pop genre, which is part of the same industry and stems directly from western '60 pop music, retaining part of that spirit at the present time. Our Japanese friends are good at taking something, preserving it and elevating it to an art form. But they know how to innovate as well, as in the case of many of the circuits we build here.
 
... the distortion pot also acts as the tone pot, seemingly cutting lows as it goes up. in fact it sounds like ass unless it's almost cranked. options! yay!

...

That's a common aspect for the basic circuit and its variants.

Wampler has some mods, one of which addresses that peculiarity by moving the GAIN to inside the feedback loop of the op-amp, should you want to address it:





Such a fantastic beeuild!
 
Thanks a lot, Feral Feline!


"R3 is labeled as a gain control, however you’ll notice that it changes the tonality depending on its setting. This is because it is changing the frequency response of the opamp at the same time. With the gain control all the way up it only clips frequencies 723hz and higher, though it is at max gain. In its minimum gain setting it is boosting and clipping almost all frequencies (3.4hz and higher) though it has much less gain. This is why it sounds muddy and undefined when the the gain is lower and why it thins out when you turn the gain up".

I see. This is all starting to make sense, albeit slowly.
Me and this circuit are gonna spend some quality time on the bedbo... I mean, breadboard. The place where the breads meet the bees. 🐦🐝
 
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