Geisha Drive Clone - the "Steggo-san Overdrive"

[Fingolfen]

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...

[Thewintersoldier]

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!

[Fingolfen]

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.

[jimilee]

Nice! There's nothing like deciding you want a board and then making it without having to wait for one to be mailed.


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[Bio77]

That's a top self build!  Congrats! 

[gordo]

Very nice work there inside and out.  There's a certain satisfaction to etching your own stuff.  Dig around thru the Etchers paradise here too, there's some nice stuff.  One of the core pedals in my live rig is the Bahaman's LA2A Limiter.  The etch looks like the dog's breakfast but its never failed me.

[alanp]

I love the artistry of the enclosure, white, grey, a bit of black, and red highlighting. It has a lot going on, but still feels a bit understated.

The instant gratification of etching is pretty sweet, I imagine, I just really hate the idea of disposing of used etchant

[nzCdog]

I really like this... Congrats dude, looks great!

[storyboardist]

Fantastic looking build, and that etch is disgustingly clean. lol Well done!

[TeleCrunch]

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

[Fingolfen]

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.