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Okay - some of my favorites...

Starting with a Madbean - Current Lover 2023:





Next - a PedalPCB Electrovibe (Univibe):





PedalPCB Duo Phase:





PedalPCB Whipped Cream (Aclam Woman Tone):





PedalPCB Conquerer Fuzz (White Pedal):





... and a Klon KTR Clone...





There's more, but those are some of my favorites... both in terms of how they sound and how they came out...

Man, that's killer. I didn't realize they were taking Brian's stuff, too.

The dinosaurs are taking over!

I've built tons of pedals, but I think this may actually be one of the first Madbean boards I've finished... though I've already built three (one for me, and a couple for friends)... and it won't be the last...

I had a friend who wanted an old-school Electric Mistress clone, but the only one I'd built was the PCB Guitar Mania one - which actually worked pretty well, but given it was essentially a copy of the Madbean version, I figured I'd go with the real deal going forward. Unfortunately the old Current Lover was out of stock... but fortunately he just released a brand new version. This new board includes a volume knob, support for multiple BBD chips, and multi-voltage support (up to 18V) - so I decided to get cracking!



As you can see from the board above, there are a lot of ICs that go into cloning the Electric Mistress. By and large these are all new production from Mouser, but I am using a vintage MN3007 BBD chip I picked up locally (...and by picked up I mean I bought them out). The rest of the components are all new as well. The resistors are 1% metal film Yageo and KOA Speer, the film caps are a mix of WIMA, Kemet, and one Panasonic. All of the electrolytic capacitors are from Nichicon. I socketed all of the ICs as well.

Because the build supports multiple BBD chips and voltages, you have to make a few decisions when populating the board (unless you want to socket a few extra components). There are a couple of places for jumpers in the middle of the board that let you set what type of BBD you're using. As I planned to run these using the MN3007 at 18V, I went ahead and hard wired the jumpers rather than socketing them, though that is an option. However if you change voltage and/or BBD, you'll need to completely recalibrate the unit (see below for details). There is also space for a regulator that is only used if you're running at 18V, but as with the jumpers it can be socketed. I hardwired mine.



Once the pedal is together, it has to be calibrated so I got Steggi to help with the that! The Madbean instructions are really very good and they walk you through the whole process - starting with basic transistor biasing and then setting the limit for the BBD and the clock rate. This can all be done by ear which makes things much easier than pedals you have to pull out the oscilloscope for!



The whole pedal fits snugly, but very comfortably in a 1590BB2 enclosure. Because I wanted to route the input and output audio wires as far away from the circuit as possible (to limit any tendency for the effect to pick up noise), I decided to go with Lumberg jacks rather than my normal Switchcraft as they kept the audio path well away from the PCB. You can just see the black and purple input / output wires running along the left hand side (from the bottom) of the enclosure around to the back where they connect in to the jacks. I went ahead and braided the power and ground wires together and hooked them into the DC jack. This design had well-placed pads for the audio jack grounds, so I used them to keep those lines short. All of the connections to the jacks are insulated with heat shrink tubing.



I wanted to do some thing fun for the enclosure, and our mascot this time is the Minmi - which is an Ankylosaur. The artwork here was done and published by Tuomas Koivurinne, who kindly gave me permission to use it on the pedal.



This new version of the Electric Mistress was originally commissioned by a friend who wanted their personal logo added, and decided to go with a slightly different LED - so his version is above.

In terms of the sound, it really captures the old school Electric Mistress perfectly, with some added functionality. It is also extremely quiet! While I could hear some very faint "swoosh" during initial testing, once I got the pedal actually boxed-up in the enclosure, that disappeared. While my previous build was reasonably quiet, you could still hear some slight modulation of the baseline audio signal in some cases. I haven't pushed this one to the limits yet, but it does seem to be a much better layout overall!

There's a bit more at the blog: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-new-electric-mistress-clone-with.html

I enjoy building all the various BMP variants out there (and there are so... many... of them). I'd intended to build a few of the Red Army variants and I'd sourced some diodes, transistors, and LEDs from Ukraine before... things... so I've rechristened the pedal just a bit. I'm using the Tayda board for this build, KT521A diodes, KT3102 transistors, and ex-Soviet Red/Green LEDs (since you can't get a bi-color). Honestly I really love the sound of this one more than my earlier AionFX build - but that one used US diodes and the Green/White dot transistors.     



The 3PDT daughter board is from Frog Pedals and actuates the two LEDs - the red one for when it is in bypass mode, and the green one for active mode. Because these are older Russian / Soviet LEDs, they are dimmer than what most people are used to modernly - especially the green one!



All of the connections to the jacks, as well as the wiring to the LEDs themselves is wrapped in tubular heat shrink to protect the solder joints.



The enclosure is a copy of the EHX-style enclosure that the Tayda boards are designed to go into. The potentiometers are all Alpha, and I'm using new production EHX knobs. The enclosure is hand decaled and painted in "Ukrainian" (definitely not Russian anymore) 4BO green with several coats of flat lacquer to give it a military appearance.



The photo above shows the unit in bypass mode while the one below shows it in active mode.



This is my second build in this configuration. The first one I'm keeping, the second is the one going up for auction. More at the blog: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/04/ukrainian-army-bmp-sn-002-going-to.html

Really nice graphics. All your builds on your site are impressive as well! I'd like to know more about how you go about creating your art files for the Tayda UV printing, you make it look so easy

Thank you!!!  On the art files, part of the secret is I bit the bullet and bought a copy of Adobe Illustrator to go with my Photoshop elements and other software. In some cases I'm using stock art, but often I have to take raster to vector, and Illustrator generally does a pretty good job of that. This particular one started life as a licensed Adobe image that I modified, added kanji, added text, etc. If you're looking for something specific, let me know and I can give you a "how to" guide.

Man, that etch is clean AF! nice looking enclosure too. I've always wanted to try one as I like a lot of Tripp's work. Also, welcome aboard!

Thanks! I really love Effects Layouts - I've never had any of their boards not fire up first time... well, at least that wasn't my own dang fault and easily traceable with an audio probe (oh... you know... I really should have soldered that bit in, eh?)

For the board I'm using the Micromark negative tone resist system I've used to make photo-etched parts for model kits in the past and ferric chloride (I'm a chemist by training, and first messed around with etching back in grad school). The micromark system is a little tedious, but I've gotten better results than I have out of the pre-treated positive tone resist boards you can get from Jameco, etc.

I was looking for a fun, out of production, pedal to clone and kind of liked the sound of the Way Huge Geisha Drive. It is a bit niche, but I thought it had some potential. I found a layout on Effects Layouts and proceeded to etch myself a couple of boards. Of course, after that, I find that PedalPCB has their own version as well, so I'm going to try that next and compare.



As you can see from the board above, this is sort of an "intermediate" level build - well, at least in the world of do it yourself etched PCBs. Compared to a conventional manufactured board, these are always more challenging. The grounding on the effects layout board is excellent, though with several locations available to attach in a ground.



Most of the components are fairly garden variety with a few oddball capacitors (like the 270n film capacitor to the left). The only piece that's hard to track down is the original JRC4741D quad op amp. I have some on order, but I'm not sure they're actually going to be the real deal. At this point I'm using LM348Ns, and the sound is pretty much what I'd expect based on the demos of the real thing I've seen so far. I do, however, want to compare once I put in what (is supposed to be) the original op amp.



For the enclosure, I wanted to do something fun and unique. So instead of the Geisha Drive, we now have the Steggo-san Overdrive pedal (with Steggo enjoying his walk through the forest bottom right). The Kanji is supposed to be "dinosaur," but given I speak little Japanese and read no Kanji, it could be "stinky cabbage" for all I know (Google seemed to indicate it was Dinosaur, though). This is certainly one of the best looking pedals I've put together - hopefully it will work well enough to find a semi-permanent place on the board!

A (little) more - including the other board I've populated - at my blog: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2022/04/cloning-limited-edition-way-huge-geisha.html...

Thanks for doing this! I'd built up a couple of Ukrainian themed pedals (with some bits that came out of Ukraine) and have been looking for a good way to give back. You should have the deets now.