Determination

In my previous entry I mentioned starting my July builds late, July 25th to be exact. My plan for the year was to only build a few pedals, but ideas kept coming to me and thus I kept building pedals. That caused the plan to change to one build per week, which was going great until weather stopped permitting me to get outside and solder. Here we are on the first of August and I did manage to shoehorn four builds into the final days of July. I don't like build dates being so close together, especially building one pedal per day back to back, but I made it happen.

On the 25th I built the Landgraff Dynamic overdrive clone, on the 28th I built the Engineer's Thumb compressor, which I'll get more into in just a moment, on the 30th I built a Krank Distortus Maximus clone and on the 31st I built an Ibanez MT10 Mostortion clone. I know, I said a long time ago I didn't need more drive/distortion pedals, and here I am building three within a week. The only circuit I'm disappointed in is the Engineer's Thumb. Ideally my desires were to build a Keeley Compressor Plus analog, because I'll never be able to afford the real pedal, but only after I built the Engineer's Thumb did I realize this circuit wasn't going to even come close.

I've done enough troubleshooting and Googling on the Engineer's Thumb that I can officially say I'll most likely never use this circuit. I searched many of the issues I'm having and found many forum posts from others having the same issues. Most of the replies simply stated "Yep! That's how it works! Like it or don't!", and I am here to tell you I don't. I've had to rebuild pedals from the ground up, I still have pedals from last year that don't even work, but I've never felt like I've been utterly and royally fucked by any circuit I've built aside from the Engineer's Thumb. Again, most of that is due to the fact I could research what any given pedal sounded like before I chose to collect the parts and cut the stripboard for the build.

Now, as far as the successful builds, they're awesome. The Krank Distortus Maximus is a really good distortion with a lot more range than I thought. I assumed it would be balls to the wall distortion all day long, and while it is, it can also be dialed back to a really nice overdriven tone as well. The Landgraff Dynamic overdrive is pretty much the exact same, with less gain on tap. The Ibanez MT10 is also pretty much the same, but with maybe a slight bit less gain on tap than the Krank clone.

So I guess it can be said that three out of four isn't bad. I just hate to feel like I wasted the parts building the Engineer's Thumb, but I really do feel like I wasted the parts building the Engineer's thumb. My Orange Squeezer clone sounds great, the Really Cheap Compressor sounds great, but the Engineer's Thumb has such a limited use on the Ratio and Threshold controls and if they're both in the wrong position it's distortion city, but no matter what I simply don't hear compression at all. Maybe I'll keep the circuit around as a warning to my future self.