More Progress

Progress, progress, progress, that's what's been going on lately, if you asked. The pedal building season has hit a high point in that I've finally built the Melter clone. It's been planned and ready to go, including the enclosure, since before the 2023 season started. I decided to go with a 125B sized enclosure on this one and since it's the only 125B enclosure I have I've been using it to decide what enclosure to buy for a couple of other projects as I built them. I knew if I completed the Melter clone the enclosure wouldn't be available for me to use as a guide anymore, so I put it off until I couldn't put it off any more, and I'm fucking stoked that it's finally built.

I've chosen to refer to mine as the Bleep Bleep Melter, but it is based on the Pussy Melter pedal which was formerly promoted by Satchel from Steel Panther. Then it was changed to the Butthole Burner, which also seemingly dropped off the map, and from there I'm not sure if it went anywhere under a different name or not. In keeping with the original motif of the pedal this is a clone of I chose pink on pink with a bright pink LED. The enclosure was a much lighter pink on the website I ordered it from, but once I had it I couldn't use it for anything else. To be perfectly honest I love it!

It's really a damn good distortion that's smooth and harmonically rich. This circuit actually urges me to play faster because notes sound so good at a higher speed. Admittedly I've lost my dexterity over the years but even so playing at higher speed sounds so good through this distortion. Pinch harmonics and just squeals in general sound really good through this distortion too! It's also another one of my favorite circuits in the fact that it allows you to take all the distortion away and just it as a clean boost. You have control of the Distortion, Volume, Bass, Treble and there is even a switch in the middle that allows for added distortion, which really isn't needed but it's there anyway.

All season I've built circuits, dropped them into test boxes and once they've passed the Kali test I pack them away to await their enclosures at a later date. Since the Bleep Bleep Melter was all ready to go, this meant it was the first pedal this season I had to wire up completely. I had forgotten how frustrating wiring up an entire enclosure was, but I'm glad I suffered through and made it happen. In a way all the frustration was paid off with the confidence boost of having done it right, and the fact I have a really awesome 80's distortion pedal. As the building season still has at least a few months left in it I find myself running out of projects to build. I currently only have five kits that I've put together and four that I've yet to put kits together for. I'm really excited about a single project that puts combines two of those kits together. Hopefully soon I'll be able to reveal whether that was a success or failure.