First November Build in the Books!

I've been anxious to get November's build done, so I've been hovering over the forecast from Google, MyRadar app and Weather.com's 10-Day forecast. Today, Friday the 3rd of November 2023, looked to be the best day for quite a while. That was until Friday started to march closer, then the few days following seemed to progressively look better and better. So much so that I hatched a plan in my mind to build one of the smallest builds today, and, because it will be even warmer, I plan to undertake a bigger build on Monday. That is pending the weather holding out and not being anywhere near as breezy as it was today.

Now I understand it might seem foreign to some people that I prefer to solder outside, but that's the way it is. My soldering schedule revolves around the weather no matter what the project is. I have been known to do some very brief indoor soldering, but my space is so limited I prefer to keep indoor soldering to an absolute minimum, if at all. The setup for doing November and December builds was that I chose projects so small they could be done indoors, but I still prefer them be done outside. In this case I originally chose two, an Emerson Paramount and Emerson Drive clone. While scrolling through layouts I decided to add a third to that in the form of an EHX Screaming Bird clone. All three are very small, very simple and rather quick builds.

Remember when I literally just said simple and rather quick? Well that is unless it's 55 degrees (12c) and breezy. One tends to forget how the body refuses to cooperate when you're sitting in that type of climate trying to actually do something productive. I started off by swapping some potentiometers from previous builds where I used good enough for the correct, required values. That took me five minutes or so, and it was only three changes. Then I setup the Emerson Paramount and got to work. Everything was slightly more frustrating than it normally is, because my fingers kept forgetting how to bend. You may be saying to yourself 55 degrees (12c) isn't that cold, and you're right! It's when there is an unrelenting wind constantly pushing it into your skin that causes problems.

After twenty minutes of trying to get my fingers to bend and work correctly I finally had a finished circuit built in November. When I first tested it the tone wouldn't work, but some xacto knifing through the gaps seems to have fixed that, even though I didn't see any bridges. Which, really quick, is an odd thing that even though you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there when it comes to solder bridges. Anyway, it sounds like a light overdrive on preliminary testing. I'll have to do the Kali test to really see how this pedal sounds. So far it's not bad. If the weather holds up I plan to build a Boss SP-1 clone on Monday, which I'm excited for. Do you remember my topless Behringer HellBabe? Since it doesn't have the treadle it has that cocked-wah sound and I found that really added something to my tone that I really liked. I'm hearing the SP-1, and hopefully clones thereof, can achieve that type of sound. I guess I'll find out on Monday.

Apart from the wiring it looks pretty nice

Added 5th November after publishing

Verdict: When it's not pushing the amp, it sounds poorly biased. This could be because I chose to use a 2.2meg instead of a 2meg, and an MPSA12 instead of MPSA13. When I set Kali's volume to the point I normally test overdrives at things sounded better. I set the tone a tiny bit above mid way, volume at about 9 o'clock and adjusted the gain to taste, backed off slightly on the guitar's volume and this circuit sounds pretty damn good! It does bug me that it can sound poorly biased, but an overdrive is really best suited for what ended up making this clone circuit sound the best anyway. I'll most likely just leave it as is, and learn what it does best just the way it is.