Last night I was going through Brian Wampler‘s Pedal Mod book. I realized I had never snipped C11 in my Phase 90 to mod it. While I had the pedal open, I went in and swapped out the LED. I had extra gold LED’s from my RAT clone pedal.
Then tonight I opened up the analog chorus and swapped out the LED to a pink one. I never liked how insanely blinding the blue LED was in there.
I had just watched some videos about the Steel String Clean Drive pedal made by Vertex. It sounded killer! I was curious to learn about its design. To my surprise PedalPCB.com makes their version of the pedal. I purchased the PCB and went through the parts list. I ordered what I needed through Mammoth Electronics. In total I spent under $40. The last of the parts showed up last Friday. I woke up early on Saturday and got to work. I was done by 2 p.m.
The pedal has a great texture to it. I’ve never put together pedals with JFETs. I guess there are a lot of pedals that finely tune JFETs to get “amp like” tones.
I’m excited to plug this one into my 5150 half stack. I forgot to buy knobs for this build. I pulled these off a pedal I’m not using right now.
This pedal is a mashup of a few different pedals.
I like the idea of the Double Barrel, where you have two distortions with an order selector. This way you can slam one into the other for different tones. I used a 4PDT toggle and this wiring diagram I found HERE
The left hand side pedal is my version of LPB-1 Boost. I added a toggle to the input capacitor value. 220nF or 47nF. This comes in handy when I slam the boost into another pedal on the Neck pickup. The 47nf cuts off some the low end to let it breathe. I also added a clipping diode selecting toggle. It’s similar to the tube screamer side of the Double Barrel. The CENTER position is off. The DOWN position is Silicon Diodes. The UP position is Red diffused LED’s.
The right hand side pedal is my version of an EM Drive. I added another clipping diode selecting toggle. This time a negative germanium diode remains in the circuit, but the toggle chooses between a positive Silicon or a positive Red Diffused LED.
I put together the tube screamer last night. I couldn’t turn it on until today, because I was still waiting on the IC chip to arrive. The mail came, I popped it in, and I love it! I was expecting the pedal to be brighter, but from what I’ve read the RC4558 is supposed to be warmer.
Most of the parts were purchased from Mammoth Electronics. The PCB is from General Guitar Gadgets, and I used a few GGG’s ideas for mods. The left toggle is a fat switch. The right toggle is a on-off-on that lets you switch from (asymmetrical 914 diode clipping, no clipping – boost, red led’s – crunch). I also used the list supplied by GGG to switch out some parts like the Keeley Mod.
This was the first pedal project that I housed in a 125 size enclosure. It’s a third of an inch taller than the standard 1590b size. With that extra space I tried top mounting the jacks like Wampler!
I’ve never owned a tube screamer. I was never drawn towards them. The closest I’ve ever gotten, was when I played through a Double Barrel by JHS. I didn’t like it. If felt as though the bass was cut. I just recently learned that Stevie Ray Vaughan used to stack two in his signal path. That fact alone spiked my curiosity. I just got all the parts today, except for the RC4558 chip. I’m expecting that to show up tomorrow.
I was excited to work on a pedal today. I sort of rushed through drilling all the holes. The result of my haste is wonky holes. I’m not too happy with how the holes are spaced. I might buy a new enclosure and re-case this pedal, if I like the way this pedal sounds.
It’s done! This is an EHX big muff – 73 Ram’s Head Clone. I used the pcb from GeneralGuitarGadgets.com and the parts from MammothElectronics.com
To be honest, this pedal has been done for a while. I was just waiting on the Hello Kitty stickers. I made it all pink with the stickers as a tribute to my old hello kitty guitar, which I originally purchased 10 years ago. I thought it was hilarious to play hardcore shows with it. Here’s a few photos from the “good ol days”.
T.K.I.D. my old band – July 2007. The Alley – Fullerton, CA – Photographed by: Christopher Rendon
T.K.I.D. – Sept. 2007. Awakenings Coffee House – Lomita, CA – Photographed by: Christopher Rendon
It’s Done!
The case showed up yesterday in the mail. I got started drilling the holes and soldering.
I was genuinely surprised it all worked on the first try. My circuit builds usually take a few tries. I used 2N3904 transistors for the brains.
Just breadboarded a NPN Fuzz Face clone. I used GGG‘s schematic.