Wampler Pinnacle Kit

[lego4040]

I've had some great results with the tag board stuff so I decided to give this a whirl

[Muadzin]

A: There's a Pinnacle clone kit? (which is awesome as its a good drive pedal) Where do you get one? And B: Does it come with matched JFET's? As those seem to be crucial.

[lego4040]

MKLEC has them, this is a verified kit that follows the tag board layout. As for the matched Jfrets🤔, I do know that is the whole crucial part. The kit comes with sockets for the Jfets though. I will reach out right after I reply here. Good quality parts so far, reviews on their kits was really good. The parts case was mine already and the pots came with condoms, I just cut the board to correct size(FYI, these are excellent strong boards

[Muadzin]

I've built two Pinnacles using layouts created by a tagboard member called MAO on their forum, as he made a layout that had trimpots that allowed for biasing the crucial JFET's. Because its next to impossible to find enough legit throughole J201's to sort them for matching pairs. Well, you can, but it would cost you so much to buy enough J201's buying a real Wampler Pinnacle is probably cheaper. MAO is tagboard's resident Wamplerholic, constantly doing Wampler pedal layouts on its forum.

[lego4040]

I will check that out Mauzdin, while doing some research on this. Did read a few articles about how builders were buying and jfets and mounting the on adapters. They were having a easier time finding matching them, I think I remember I read this in DIYSTOMPBOX

[flanagan0718]

Sabrotone has a pretty good layout for this too.

http://www.sabrotone.com/?attachment_id=3123




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[lego4040]

So i have a Transistor tester that will do Jfets but not exactly sure if this can get me there. I will build the one from tag board, there is the improved and greatly improved. Here is a photo of what I got. Might be a little hard to see those are 6 different J201's that cme with the kit

[sturgeo]

He made a layout that had trimpots that allowed for biasing the crucial JFET's.

I've read from "Zee Wampler" (a reference from the chasing tone podcasts) himself that using matched sets rather than re-biasing is critical in quite a few of his circuits to achieve the same tone. If a JFET biases to 4.5V with a 10K resistor and another biases to 4.5V with a 5K reistor they'll have different levels of gain.

My suggestion, depending on how many pedals you plan on making in the future and whether you are comfortable soldering teeny tiny parts that ping out of the tweezers and are never to be seen again, would be to buy a "decent" amount of SMD J201's and some adapter boards. I've also found from the SMD ones I've tested that tolerances are tighter and its easier to find matched sets, I don't know if its because they come on a reel so you know they're all from the same batch or due to the manufacturing process they are more consistent, who knows...

[Muadzin]

He made a layout that had trimpots that allowed for biasing the crucial JFET's.

I've read from "Zee Wampler" (a reference from the chasing tone podcasts) himself that using matched sets rather than re-biasing is critical in quite a few of his circuits to achieve the same tone. If a JFET biases to 4.5V with a 10K resistor and another biases to 4.5V with a 5K reistor they'll have different levels of gain.

MAO also came to the same conclusion.

My suggestion, depending on how many pedals you plan on making in the future and whether you are comfortable soldering teeny tiny parts that ping out of the tweezers and are never to be seen again, would be to buy a "decent" amount of SMD J201's and some adapter boards. I've also found from the SMD ones I've tested that tolerances are tighter and its easier to find matched sets, I don't know if its because they come on a reel so you know they're all from the same batch or due to the manufacturing process they are more consistent, who knows...

I do like the Wampler Pinnacle, and I've been stockpiling plenty of SMD J201's with adapter boards. And yet it seems like a very inefficient process and a lot of work when there are equally good hi gain drives out there like the Crunch Box that are easier to build. The process might have made sense when regular JFET's where a dime a dozen (did I say I used to use them for Millenium switches?), but with through hole JFET's now rarer and more expensive then gold, and SMD JFET's a lot of work to solder both the tranny and the legs to each adapter board, why bother?

Because it sounds good, you say? Sure. Until the next new dirt pedal becomes flavor of the month. I build dozens of them and they all sounded great. Until the next one comes along.

[lego4040]

These were my readings with the Jfet tester I bought
And this is where I am at now, we got weather coming so I won't be working on this for a few days maybe, maybe.

[lego4040]

Hot Damn! Rocked it before I box it. With all those flying leads and using a stray I picked up some noise. I set the 5 way switch in between and canceled the noise out and away we went. This is some distortion pedal circuit alright, I didn't measure anything yet(gotta remember what I am supposed to measure). I like the vintage /mod switch sound difference and the boost switch is sweet. I just might leave the boost switch on, jump it out and save switch for something else. Heading work now and will elaborate more on it later today