mkstewartesq
Well-known member
This is my build of the BBW, a PedalPCB board based on the BBE Stomp - which was itself, I believe, a pedal format version of the BBE Sonic Maximizer rack effect.
I actually don’t know a whole lot about this pedal – the documentation for the original pedal that I can find online is rather vague, but it is definitely an “exciter“ of sorts. Kind of a mixture of EQ and very slight compression to excite the signal. Again, because the online documentation is vague, it appears to me that the “contour” knob basically affects bass response while “process” seems to affect high frequencies more (and can get somewhat extreme, and not in a good way, if turned fully clockwise). I keep it at the very end of my chain as a sweetener with the dials each set to about in the middle - so I can tell it is on but not exaggerating the output.
The effect is, as noted in some review I saw of the BBE, much like “removing a blanket from over the amp”. All that being said, I don’t know that this pedal is terribly necessary for my signal chain anymore since I have the General Tso compressor at the front end as an “always on“ pedal and it seems to do most of the good things for my signal chain that this pedal does at the end.
Build: Not really much of note to report here – easy build, the effect does what it is supposed to, and it’s quiet. The only oddity I had was that the LED would burn out very quickly after the effect was initiated. At first I thought maybe I was somehow causing a short with the LED, but the LED was popping even when I had it out of the box so then I figured that I must’ve made a mistake with the CLR. I tested the CLR on the board and it was fine but I replaced it with a new 4.7 K just to be safe. No change whatsoever - LEDs still popping. Since I couldn’t figure out the issue and my budget for LEDs is not infinite, I just wired a second CLR in line to the LED and that seemed to fix the problem – since it is not causing the LED to be any more dim even though there are now ostensibly two 4.7K CLRs on the LED, my speculation is that there is something about this circuit (or my build) where the CLR on the board is being bypassed or otherwise nullified.
Enclosure: as I’ve mentioned in other threads, I went through a phase of pedal building where I was making my pedals obliquely Queen-themed. For this one I did a bit of an homage to the cover of the 1978 “Jazz” album (picture included for reference). One interesting thing about this build is that I asked Hugo at Tayda if it was possible to do two gloss layers - I wanted everything on the front in matte, with the exception of the word “Stomp”, which I wanted in gloss. He told me that they had never done that before but he would give it a shot – and thanks to his efforts, it came out perfectly.
Thanks for looking!
Mike
I actually don’t know a whole lot about this pedal – the documentation for the original pedal that I can find online is rather vague, but it is definitely an “exciter“ of sorts. Kind of a mixture of EQ and very slight compression to excite the signal. Again, because the online documentation is vague, it appears to me that the “contour” knob basically affects bass response while “process” seems to affect high frequencies more (and can get somewhat extreme, and not in a good way, if turned fully clockwise). I keep it at the very end of my chain as a sweetener with the dials each set to about in the middle - so I can tell it is on but not exaggerating the output.
The effect is, as noted in some review I saw of the BBE, much like “removing a blanket from over the amp”. All that being said, I don’t know that this pedal is terribly necessary for my signal chain anymore since I have the General Tso compressor at the front end as an “always on“ pedal and it seems to do most of the good things for my signal chain that this pedal does at the end.
Build: Not really much of note to report here – easy build, the effect does what it is supposed to, and it’s quiet. The only oddity I had was that the LED would burn out very quickly after the effect was initiated. At first I thought maybe I was somehow causing a short with the LED, but the LED was popping even when I had it out of the box so then I figured that I must’ve made a mistake with the CLR. I tested the CLR on the board and it was fine but I replaced it with a new 4.7 K just to be safe. No change whatsoever - LEDs still popping. Since I couldn’t figure out the issue and my budget for LEDs is not infinite, I just wired a second CLR in line to the LED and that seemed to fix the problem – since it is not causing the LED to be any more dim even though there are now ostensibly two 4.7K CLRs on the LED, my speculation is that there is something about this circuit (or my build) where the CLR on the board is being bypassed or otherwise nullified.
Enclosure: as I’ve mentioned in other threads, I went through a phase of pedal building where I was making my pedals obliquely Queen-themed. For this one I did a bit of an homage to the cover of the 1978 “Jazz” album (picture included for reference). One interesting thing about this build is that I asked Hugo at Tayda if it was possible to do two gloss layers - I wanted everything on the front in matte, with the exception of the word “Stomp”, which I wanted in gloss. He told me that they had never done that before but he would give it a shot – and thanks to his efforts, it came out perfectly.
Thanks for looking!
Mike
