Pedal Season 2023 Coming to a Close

Yeah, I know, but it had to happen at some point. With thirty-six projects built, and three left to go, I just can't keep building pedals simply to have something to do. Looking back I wish I had built more delay and reverb pedals, but the few I did build I remember sounding pretty good. Although I still need to get the Belton brick to complete the Ghost Echo clone. I absolutely had to build the Noisy Cricket amp, or else I wouldn't have built any circuits this year, because my Fender Mustang Mini bit the dust and I just don't have time to look into what it needs to fix it. Ironic, huh? Here I am building pedal circuits but I don't have time to fix the amp I used to test the pedal circuits? Ah well, the world keeps spinning.

Once the building is done I still have a lot of troubleshooting to do. The Kay tremolo still needs the transistors sorted out so it's not a warbly overdrive. The Eric Johnson Fuzz Face clone still needs dialed in, transistors tested. A handful of builds need the correct potentiometer installed, as I used good enough to complete the build and get it tested. I even threw a lot of oddball projects at the wall to see if they would stick, and some of them did. Like my latest build was a slightly modified CMAT Mods Butah with more gain and clipping diode selection. Project 64 seems to have been ok. I built a TS style circuit using a 9 pin SIP IC preamplifier that sounded really good, except the 9th pin is a mute pin that doesn't release when tied to ground or left open, so I need to figure that out. Once that's all done I need to sort out enclosures for every single pedal I've built. Ever - single - one! With painted enclosures now close to $15 each, or more, go ahead and do the maths on that. Yeah, that's going to suck.

Currently there are three builds left on the to-do list: Shoot the Moon tremolo, Maxon DS-830 Distortion Master clone and, because I'm a glutton for punishment, a mystery project that seems like it's going to be extremely complex to pull off. Thanks to pictures of Gary Moore's pedalboard both the DS-830 and the mystery pedal were added to my list of builds. Another example was the Bad Monkey, which I fully admit was never on my radar until the whole JHS thing and Pedal Pawn buying Gary Moore's, then trying to flip it for thousands (did they actually sell it?). I decided if it was good enough for Gary Moore I'll make my own, so I did. 

This might seem to be a bit of a stretch but because Gary used a Deep Blue Delay I decided to build the Faux Analog Echo clone. Could I have built a Deep Blue Delay? Sure. As a matter of fact I may just put that kit together after writing this, but the Faux Echo got there first. Atleast the Deep Blue Delay has layouts, unlike the mystery project. I had to do a lot of research on what it was based on and its history. Now I'm doing my best to put together the material components to try and make a clone of it. Will it work? Doubtful. Will it function? To some capacity. Do I hope it works out smoothly? You better believe it, but I'm also a realist and under no delusion that it will, but I'll be sure to announce it when it's done. If you find pictures of Gary Moore's pedalboard and see an oddball pedal that looks complicated, that's most likely the one.