MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I posted about the shipment from JLCPCB that @szukalski had drop shipped to me to distribute to his US based "customers"...
This is the first board of the batch that I decided to build after Dave suggested it. I think he knows me too well....hahaha....I haven't had this much fun with an overdrive pedal in quite a while! Absolutely love it! He totally knocked it out of the park with this.
He told me that it was essentially a modified blues breaker but it sounds like no BluesBreaker variant I've ever played.
It's based on a Japanese boutique pedal called the "Minerva" by Vivie Effects. I spent some time on the website looking over what the controls do and still don't quite understand what's going on. But it sounds fabulous. It's actually a rather higher gain pedal and it's one of the few overdrives that I prefer it the gain set high.
There's a On-On toggle that switches in a 220k resistor (as opposed to a diode clipping control) that according to the website is supposed to configure the pedal to be either played through a combo amp or a Head/stack. They call it the "JC vs MS" mode. (JC-120 vs Marshall Stack).
It's a subtle change thats hard to hear unless the gain is cranked but one position definitely has more compression. I didn't have an On-On DPDT so I used an On-Off-On. The "off" position offers yet another bit of flavor which is interesting.
Something about these Japanese boutique pedals really appeal to me. The Providence SOV-2 (Bullrush) and Altero Kaede (Acer overdrive) are a couple of my favorite lately. There's a warmth to them without being muffled that's really cool. The Wise Sheep is the same way but with a lot more gain.
But the real star of the show is the rich harmonics of the gain. They just seem to jump off the fretboard. It's a very lively pedal.
So far I've only been messing with it through a clean amp but according to @szukalski it does a great job driving a crunchy amp as well.
Super stoked about this pedal! Looking forward to building the others.
This is the first board of the batch that I decided to build after Dave suggested it. I think he knows me too well....hahaha....I haven't had this much fun with an overdrive pedal in quite a while! Absolutely love it! He totally knocked it out of the park with this.
He told me that it was essentially a modified blues breaker but it sounds like no BluesBreaker variant I've ever played.
It's based on a Japanese boutique pedal called the "Minerva" by Vivie Effects. I spent some time on the website looking over what the controls do and still don't quite understand what's going on. But it sounds fabulous. It's actually a rather higher gain pedal and it's one of the few overdrives that I prefer it the gain set high.
There's a On-On toggle that switches in a 220k resistor (as opposed to a diode clipping control) that according to the website is supposed to configure the pedal to be either played through a combo amp or a Head/stack. They call it the "JC vs MS" mode. (JC-120 vs Marshall Stack).
It's a subtle change thats hard to hear unless the gain is cranked but one position definitely has more compression. I didn't have an On-On DPDT so I used an On-Off-On. The "off" position offers yet another bit of flavor which is interesting.
Something about these Japanese boutique pedals really appeal to me. The Providence SOV-2 (Bullrush) and Altero Kaede (Acer overdrive) are a couple of my favorite lately. There's a warmth to them without being muffled that's really cool. The Wise Sheep is the same way but with a lot more gain.
But the real star of the show is the rich harmonics of the gain. They just seem to jump off the fretboard. It's a very lively pedal.
So far I've only been messing with it through a clean amp but according to @szukalski it does a great job driving a crunchy amp as well.
Super stoked about this pedal! Looking forward to building the others.
I picked up a pedal the other day and realized I had no memory of building it and no memory of what it did. It was like Christmas in July 
