What's on the workbench?

Yep, it has pads for SMD clipping diodes but none are installed. This one uses a TL074 and apparently has a slightly different Tone switch arrangement than the original.
That's... Weird. The original didn't have a tone switch, not even internally. Second version had clipping and tone switches internally. I think the second one also had 2 or 3 pairs of SMD LEDs (definitely LEDs just unsure how many) for clipping, other mode was no diodes. Jesus Christ JPTR is changing his pedals without even writing notes on them what changed.

EDIT: found the gut shot I took of mine. 2 germanium diodes and a clear red LED per side in the OG. Second version was 3 SMD LEDs per side with a dip switch to bypass them.
 

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The current product page says LED clipping diodes and a 2-position tone switch.

This one has no clipping diodes and a 3-position tone switch.
 
Maybe it's not necessary, but if I'm selling a distortion pedal for $200 I'd be making sure that I had excellent solder flow and coverage. They're already using bigger high voltage caps where they're not necessary for mojo, so doing a little more pleasing soldering job should be included.
 
Maybe it's not necessary, but if I'm selling a distortion pedal for $200 I'd be making sure that I had excellent solder flow and coverage. They're already using BS "mojo" parts where they're not necessary, so doing a little more pleasing soldering job should be included.

So you flip the board over after soldering each component to make sure you had through flow? That’s next level.

What BS Mojo parts are you seeing?
 
Those 50v Mallory axial caps, obviously. What reason are they in there other than for someone to open it and think it looks cool? They could have used 25v film caps and had it still be safe for someone to run at 18v. They could have made the board smaller with a potentially quieter noise floor as well. Not to mention those caps are more expensive than your average film capacitor.
 
Those 50v Mallory axial caps, obviously. What reason are they in there other than for someone to open it and think it looks cool? They could have used 25v film caps and had it still be safe for someone to run at 18v. They could have made the board smaller with a potentially quieter noise floor as well. Not to mention those caps are more expensive than your average film capacitor.

2 things:

1.) Axial film caps are NOT mojo parts. They are modern, medium to high quality film caps.

2.) If you’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at data sheets for axial films, they only go so low in voltage values.

At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with using higher quality modern parts, just as there is nothing wrong with using JB or Arco box caps from Tayda.

Comparatively, yes, Illinois/CDE or Vishay are going to be more expensive but they are high quality parts and there is nothing wrong with them.

Also nothing wrong with critiquing others peoples stuff as long as the critiques are valid.
 
I see their QC is still shit... or they are lagging behind with the description updates.
If I were them I’d be plugging the *hell* out of the 3-way tone toggle, I haven’t seen it before in a pedal design and think it’s genuinely novel and a big selling point of the current version, and it’s also *super* useful - the high-pass filter mode lets you get kind of the aggressive tone-bypass Muff sound, but you can tighten up the bass to get a super useful angry sound, it’s my favorite of the three modes.

(Although I guess writing new ad-copy might be tricky because you can’t say “switch between Big Muff and Rat Tone Controls!” anymore. There any other historical distortion pedal that only had an HPF tone control they could name-drop?)
Maybe it's not necessary, but if I'm selling a distortion pedal for $200 I'd be making sure that I had excellent solder flow and coverage. They're already using bigger high voltage caps where they're not necessary for mojo, so doing a little more pleasing soldering job should be included.
The current version is SMD, which was for sure done for cost (a TL074 and zero diodes is like, what, a tenth the cost of two OPA2134s and some broken germaniums?), but was also maybe done for build quality and consistency; seems JPTR FX’s gutshots and builds get as much flack as DBA’s?
 
Brian at MBP got me going on top soldering boards for a while. Over time I got tired of it and it was twice as much flux that I never cleaned off...I mean that I worked really hard at...

I would never dissuade (hey spell check thinks its a word) anyone from using this approach (especially the are-you-experienced amongst us) because in the time that I did that I NEVER had soldering errors. I chalk up getting two Aion BlueShifts to work without breaking a sweat as proof.
 
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