u/islandcatman

I got this back late last year from my Local Shop. When I first saw it, I thought it was green. It's blue, for sure but it can pick up other colors around and it shifts.

I changed a few things right away. I prefer the feel of Grovers and the bridge pickup was a bit too muddy for my tastes. I had a TV Jones bridge PU out of a early Brian Setzer in my box of parts. That got it to where I like it. I had a bit of inspiration to make a fandango psychobilly version of "Smoke".

Here are a pair of ?tm I put together. This time I wanted to pay homage to the original design while still respecting the brand. I think part of the fun of clones is naming them. I do think the brand I shall not name did them dirty. These were super fun to make. Paint is very unforgiving, it hard to be fully happy with it.

For these I messed around with Jfet and BJT matching. Since there was so many in it I figured, why not. All of the jfets are matched and all of the BJTs are paired and grouped. The BJTs in the circuit only seem to have two pairs that might matter if they are matched. And I say might because I don't really know. Either way it was done. Both got the same treatment. The pedals kinda match in art, the guts match better than the art. So they are a "matchy" kinda. Does it make a difference? Well I would say I was able to raise the bias more on both compared to the last one I made. I seem to get more effect with less woosh. They seem a bit brighter as well. Now am I biased? Of course, I spent some time on these. So I suspect I might favor them. I can say objectively they are a lot quieter, noise wise. That also could be the difference of using shielded wires. There is zero clock noise, and only a minimal amount of woosh. I'm totally happy with how they came out. I will also mention that the Cliff brand jacks seem to be the best for bending up. The bend doesn't effect the tension like the on neutriks. I used all Wima and Panasonic for these, I think the circuit deserves quality components. Full props to Dan Coggins, awesome design. And thank you AionFx.

A little multi board Rangemaster, there's a charge pump board sticky taped bellow the main board. Was tight getting it in. The jacks are a bit crowded. I hadn't considered the underside of the screw tab on the box and the body of the jack. I had to employ the "hole stretcher" which is just a deburring tool. That's the thing that looks like a pen (third picture). I haven't seen anyone mention using one yet, so maybe they aren't well known. The squiggly thing on the end rotates and has a blade. It will cut a Hammond box very quickly, you can go all the way around to make the diameter of a hole larger. Or you can focus on one side and oval a hole. It goes faster than setting up the step bit again on a drill. Very handy. I drill my own, so I use it all the time to clean up step drilled holes.

The Rangemaster sounds good. The switch is a mid boost. I started with a three way, but I swapped it out to a mini toggle. I doesn't need a bunch of sounds. I almost gave the box a red bandana and a cowboy hat. Turns out I was just hungry.

I'd like to imagine New Jersey from Buckaroo Banzai played though one of these. A bit different than the JC chorus, a little more robo-combfilterish. It really opens up in stereo. I had to get it just for the push button transmission, like a old Chrysler. A cool, unique pedal from Boss.

Simple Rangemaster build. I used polystyrene and a tropical fish for caps. A USSR transistor hfe 70, leakage .183mA. Bias is set at 6.88v. I had some imitation gold leaf leftover from another project and just used a paint pen for the base. It came out alright, I did it on the fly so the design is a bit messy. I didn't know what I was going with when I started. I didn't have a gold toggle handy, I will have to order some. I do love the feel of the Dakaware knobs, it's different than plastic. It sounds great, I really like Rangemasters, I think this one came out better that the last one I made.

I some how ended with a disposable camera that day. I kinda remember things got a little crazy at this one. So much rubbish at the end, wild. Notice how the front tops of Mike cabs are caved in. That doesn't happen with normal use, needless to say. Fun times.

I literally bought this pcb because of the rotary switches. It was pretty fun to make. The board ended up sitting in the box kinda wonky. Partly because of the height of the rotary switches vs. the pots. Perhaps long leg pots would be better. I only have those in one value because I ordered the wrong thing from Tayda. I also didn't straighten the board out before I marked a drilled the anti turn pin holes. So once that's done you kinda just got go with it. Unless you want to fill the hole with JBweld and go again, which I already did on the top of the case. There was a spot on the drill template thats there you don't use and I had center drilled it.

The circuit is pretty cool, a three head style echo with a pretty short delay. It will feedback pretty quickly and go into self oscillation fairly low on the feedback knob. The delay signal has a clipping diodes off it, it's pretty fuzzy so I added trim pots to the resistors mentioned in the build notes. They control the grit amount and gain of the wet signal

I used a 5k and a 50k trims for adjustments. I ended up leveraging the DIP8 socket near by, stacking a 16 pin with half the pins removed to mount the trims on to. Worked pretty good. You can get this thing in full oscillation if that your bag. The other switch on it does just that, instantly. It's a bit much unless you want that. The rotarys change where the effect loop comes in and what delays are synced together or not. It's has that hollow reverb sound you get from digital but it's also bit too fuzzy. I can see messing with the clipping diodes a bit or maybe even remove them entirely. Seems ripe for mods. Fun build over all, the Pt2399 a fairly inexpensive for a delay so why not three, I guess.

(From top, ccw.) We have a Big Cheese, Echoplex Preamp, Sunn Beta Preamp, Harmonic Perc., and a Hudson Broadcast, Clone action fun time from AionFx. I was inspired by the the Broadcast big caps. I have them, why not? I used the biggest I had where I could. Except in the Beta, I made that right before the Broadcast. The HP-1 is my favorite of the bunch, it sounds excellent! They all sound very different from each other. The Ep-3 being the least interesting, but it should be in this context. All fun to put together. Thanks Aionfx and all those involved in getting these circuits out there.

I'm pretty happy with how this one came out. I had found some vintage color dry transfers with little pictures. They are a little hard to read on plain Hammond gray. Fun anyways. I saw that scissors on the margin of of one of the dry transfers, ah serendipity.

At first I tried a Russian surplus Ge, it measured Hfe 64, with strangely 0 leakage. It sounded like gated amp death, which is cool for other things but not what I was going for. I ended up putting in a 2n404a Hfe 115 leakage @ .180's ųA. Sounds pretty good, lots of variation in tone. The gain responds well to the guitar's volume knob. I suspect it would pair with a bass very well. I ended up trying to put as many big caps as I could ( that I had ) into it. That inspired me stuff big caps into everything I was working on at the time. So I got a small batch of " Big caps" pedals made. There not tube amp big, just the biggest I had.