I spent yesterday on guitar projects, mostly stuff I've neglected for some time, like locking tuners for 2 guitars (I purchased the tuners a year ago) and both had a broken string for the last month or so. My PRS single cut trem I ran one of the Pickup adjustment screws too far out, and just shelved the guitar and played others. Had some time yesterday and was yearning to play these three again so I got it done, put on fresh strings and polished them, now the others are jealous!
And it's alive! As I believe is customary with VFE builds, I singed one cap a little bit, but at least I didn't notice any issues with the tone, so it's probably fine (it's a ceramic cap that is a little bit black on the top now).
I do admit I kinda like the control scheme with the 9mm pots sticking through, it's a nice way to have 6 pots without having 6 full size knobs.
As for the tone, it's an interesting little thing with sort of a RAT and TS in one box, with a mix control to balance between the two. The way I've been testing it so far is to have the RAT with quite a lot of gain (which also makes it more muddy), and while the TS gain is set to around the same, it's obviously a lower gain drive with much more clarity, so blending them something like 60 - 40 either way (or just 50 - 50) gives you an interesting mix of heavy girth and clarity with chords.
I'm obviously still in the honey moon phase so I'll save further comments until I've done more testing, and I think low-gain applications also have a lot of potential here. Definitely easier to dial in than the Frost Drive IMO (although that might also be just because I'm not a huge fan of TS-style pedals, while this one also has the RAT side to it).
Also I put in an OPA2134 and a LM208 because it felt like a good idea at the time. If I decide to sell it at some point I might swap in a TL072 and OP07 or whatever.
There are quite a few switching options on the table, and the next version will probably use two of the CT boards and a scary stereo mix matrix arrangement. It's not pretty inside, there are like six or seven different modules and a ton of off board wiring.
Thrift stores are dangerous for me and my wallet. Passed over a lot of things, took them in and out of the basket, but in the end only took home one thing that wasn't my intended target item (pyrex for etching).
Gonna need some work, but I don't mind going slow with this one. I have a tip-top Coleman for every other camping trip, but I really like the elevation the legs provide on this one. Should be fun. Haven't really tried to do anything except paper towel + water to see if I could find a date stamp. The 425B ran from '54–'61 but with light digging it seems the later models had the red tank; early ones have copper-ish colored ones. Couldn't find a stamp anywhere on the body or tank (even on the tabs), so who knows. Maybe I'll find it tomorrow.
Finally broke down and cleaned up the chaos station. Never realized how many lead snippets and scraps are stuck to the magnetic mat until you try to clean it.
Prepped and ready to start builds of my first design, the Tres Brujas. I’ll post a build report for it soon.
Same here, brother! I have an amp ready to wire up, a couple dozen enclosures drilled and ready, parts picked….just haven’t had the chance to fire up the iron in months it seems!
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Built this $100 shelf from Amazon yesterday and it changed my life. Everything you see on it was just piled up along the wall there.