Pedal building 2023 is off to a roaring start, but I must pace myself. If I fail to pace myself I will be out of things to build within a few months. Oh, that doesn't mean this year will have fewer builds than the previous years, no, in fact this year actually has more. And what's more is even though I've already prepackaged my builds for this years, I still plan to put more together. When you take into account that I built fourteen circuits each in the previous two years, and this year I've already built eight, with nine prepackaged circuits still to be built, this year is going to be the biggest yet. Hopefully that means I'll have more time to write songs with these pedals once they're all built.
This year does feel like it's going smoother than the previous years. I don't know whether that's due to experience, or just because I'm really excited to get this year's circuits built. That being said, I've also started experimenting with smaller things, such as BMP tone stacks and blend circuits. The blend circuit I put into my tremolo build turned out really nice, so now I'm wondering what else needs one. In anticipation I went ahead and built a few more that are awaiting their destiny.
As far as full circuit builds since my tremolo I've built a Colorsound inductorless wah pedal clone, which is actually really awesome. I'm having a hard time figuring out a way to make it into a function wah pedal but the circuit sounds really good. Then I built an orange squeezer clone that I'm really liking. Since I realized my Really Cheap Compressor pedal actually does work, I've been going compressor build crazy, which I'll talk more about in a second. Then I built a crunch box deluxe, which is a clone of the MI Audio Crunch Box, but with an external presence control. That is an amazing distortion. But if you really want to hear amazing, you need to try the Kingtone Blues Power. After just one demo video I decided I had to build a clone of it, so I did and I'm so impressed with how great this pedal sounds. The Blues Power clone may just become my main drive on my pedalboard.
Now, with both the Really Cheap compressor and the Orange Squeezer clone you would think I should have enough compression, but you would be wrong. Ideally I want to own a Keeley Compressor Plus, but since I can't, I would love to build one, but since I can't, I'll build something and make it as close as I possibly can. I already have optical, I already have FET and now I need to build The Engineer's Thumb! That's right, the closest circuit, in terms of control layout, I could find is The Engineer's Thumb. It may not be anywhere near the Keeley Compressor Plus, but it's something I want to build anyway. Most of this build is prepackaged and ready to go, but it still needs a few parts.
On the docket is also a pair of reverbs, which I'm excited to get done, but they also still need parts. Aside from one more wah pedal circuit everything else is a distortion pedal build this year. I wouldn't mind building a long delay, if there is a circuit layout out there for one. I built a Disaster Transport Jr. clone last year and it's great, but I'm looking for something with a longer delay so I can stack them. The unspoken builds consist of something I'm pretty sure won't even work, but since I have a SIP IC that I believe might work, it's worth a try. I'm trying to build more modulation circuits, but the reality is drive pedals are just so fun to build! We'll just have to see what sounds cross my path and make me want to build them.
No comments:
Post a Comment