Bearhug Camp (not a typo), Snow Day Overdrive, & Little Penguin Fuzz

[midwayfair]

Bearhug Camp, commissioned by my buddy Keith for his nephew, who is a boy scout. Keith is basically giving him an entire rig -- a 100W Fender head, a 2x12 cabinet with Alnicos, an electric 12 string, and the Bearhug, along with an overdrive not yet determined.



And that is why you always hang up your food when you go camping. He wanted art kind of like Order of the Stick and xkcd combined.

Speaking of Bearhugs, here's one I built to send to Cyrus at Ovnilab for a possible review:


I also sent him an Engineer's Thumb and the Ghost Note (the Afterlife with threshold knob I built a while back), since those were on his "I want to review these" list.

Little Penguin Fuzz



This is an NPN MP38A Fuzz Face with no gain knob for a customer. He only wanted the volume external, but I talked him into some extra controls inside. Pregain, input bass control, bias ( of course), and switches to change the behavior of the pregain pot between Gagan's Easy Face and the Fuller mod. It's insanely loud -- the knob is set above unity. So it can do some legit treble booster settings. It sounded best to me biased pretty cold (6V). This is probably the only fuzz I've ever made that uses the "right" gain buckets and I can't say I'm exactly a fan of that, but it does sound pretty good and it behaves as expected.

And ... the Snow Day OD





I had the day off on Monday due to snow and thought I'd throw together an overdrive to pass the time. Instead I ended up designing a new project and spent the week working on it.

I'll do a project thread with some more info and a demo, but the short description is that it's a FET- and MOSFET-based amp simulation overdrive running on 18V that includes a switchable miniature compressor circuit and soft clipping in a "power tube" section. It has bits of several projects in it; and the really special thing about it (the mini compressor) isn't something I created (though I wish I had).

It sounds quite good. It goes from glassy "almost" cleans to either open or slightly compressed edge of breakup that feels very similar to one of my favorite amps, up to a medium gain compressed sound. It has lots of harmonics without sounding overly clipped, and a very wide dynamic range.

The art is inspired by (and borrows some images from) Calvin & Hobbes strips. The box came from John Lyons. It was pre-marked for three knobs and a switch (or second LED), and I actually designed the project specifically to fill this box ...

I also still need to do a build report for the Britannia from my demo, too, but unfortunately I didn't remember to take pictures before I loaned it to someone.

[selfdestroyer]

Awesome builds Jon, Im sure they are going to love them. Also, your snow day art work is great. I love the look and feel of your pedals. I still cherish my Nature Dweller I bought from you.

Cody

[m-Kresol]

Love the Snowman OD enclosure design you did! I wish I could draw like that with a brush

[Willybomb]

The Calvin and Hobbs Snowmen stuff is great.

http://www.chase3000.com/userpages/calvinhobbes/

[Jabulani Jonny]

Jon, these look great.  Can we look forward to a demo of the Snowman?  I'm really interested in that one. 

[lincolnic]

These are all great, but the Snow Day is especially rad.

[gtr2]

Great stuff!  I love how the bear attached the camp 

Josh

[eldanko]

I'm a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan, and recognized the second image instantly 

Awesome work. Can't wait to hear the demo on this one.

[thesameage]

The obvious name would be:

Snowdrive

[peAk]

Really Cool! Love it!