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Topics - BricksnBeatles

#1
Some of you may know about this pair here.
These two pedals are a long time off from when I hoped to be sharing them— I built the pink one this Monday and the blue one last night. I was hoping to have these completed for May the Fourth of 2021, but my dumb pseudo-perfectionist mind kept going back and slightly tweaking the graphics every other week between summer of 2020 when I had the idea, and November of 2021 when I finally placed my first order of UV prints from Tayda. A heavy semester of classes kept me from taking a crack at these until late may— I was hoping to build them in time for May the Fourth of this year or for the 45th anniversary of A New Hope, but I realized I forgot to order the pots, so now we're finally here in the present. As such, I present these to you on perhaps the most fitting date— I've been eagerly waiting since Monday to share these today for the...

FINALE OF THE OBI WAN KENOBI SERIES!

That's right folks, on this very day in which we will learn the outcome of Obi Wan's 9BBY adventures, you'll also learn a bit about the obscure fan theory that birthed the concept for these pedals.

For those of you who keep up to date with the animated side of Star Wars content, you'll hopefully already get where this is going, but for those of you who don't— there are spoilers ahead of you intend on watching the 2008 Clone Wars animated series in the future.


Korkie Kryze is the nephew of Satine Kryze, Dutchess of Mandalore, whom he lives with. His aunt Satine just so happens to have been in a brief forbidden love affair with a young Obi Wan Kenobi prior to his knighthood. The dutchess has no known siblings other than her young sister, Bo-Katan Kryze, who is also Korkie's aunt. Hmm... no established parents or even a mention of them, and he lives as nobility with his aunt who many years ago had a secret affair with a member of Mandalore's sworn enemies; the Jedi? And he happens to look quite a bit like a cross between his aunt and her former lover?

Yeah, so Korkie looks a bit like Obi Wan and Satine, and it's been speculated to death that Korkie is the secret bastard child of the two, with him being guised as Satine's nephew to avoid the political fallout of the Mandalorian Duchess having an illegitimate child with a member of a rival cult. It's a fun fan theory about one of the most minor characters in the series' run, but it probably doesn't hold much water. Nonetheless, when I first learned of the Benson Preamp pedal, despite having little interest in yet another JFET amp-in-a-box circuit, I immediately felt a compulsion to build a clone of it called the "Korkie Preamp". Why? This was my train of thought: Benson -> Ben's Son -> Ben Kenobi = Obi Wan Kenobi -> Obi Wan's (speculated) son = Korkie.

I've always liked word association chains- sue me!

Anyway, here are the Korkie Preamps!



The blue one (dubbed the "Bo-Katan Blue" edition) is built to the specs of the initial run of the benson preamp, with the addition of a selectable charge pump to offer both 9v and headroom-boosted 18v operations. The pedal features a similar powder blue coloring to my favorite-looking version of the benson preamp which first caught my eye back in 2020.





The pink one (dubbed the "Beskar Blush" edition), in addition to featuring the same selectable charge pump "headroom" switch, also omits the 10μF capacitors from the sources of Q2 and Q3 to ground for a significantly cleaner gain range, and a few slightly tweaked cap values to make it more suitable for bass. The shell pink coloring is inspired by the very popular limited edition version of the Benson Preamp that you used to see in nearly every Instagram-aesthetic pedalboard picture, and it was chosen because I absolutely love shell pink and would love to build a shell pink Marauder-styled Bass VI one day!





No demo for these unfortunately— I planned on recording an instrumental cover of the Kenobi theme, but I'm too busy with the end of my summer semester to record anything this week.

Hope y'all enjoyed, and may the Force be with you!
#2
Don’t think I’ve ever posted a build report here, so I guess now’s the time. This one is a build from this past weekend, but I did the enclosure design like 9 months ago, so it’s long overdue.
I took a long time to get this one done (well, started) for a few reasons. First, I ordered the UV print back in December, and that was all good, but then I decided I wanted to do relay bypass, and I couldn’t get my hands on the relays for quite some time. Wound up getting the relay when PedalPCB started stocking them last month, and once I saw it was orange, well… you give a mouse a cookie; I wanted to color coordinate the insides. Did carbon film resistors for their creamy beige coloring, but was missing a few essential values, so I had to order a cheap assortment, so that stalled things a bit. Some point around this time I also ordered repro 808 knobs from Thonk in the UK. Then when I was populating the relay board I realized I had forgotten the regulator, so I had to wait for the Tayda order to arrive, which took about a month. Got the regulator on Saturday, and got everything else loaded up, but then the power went out as I was starting the offboard wiring. Yesterday after finishing up some school assignments I was able to get the offboard wiring all hooked up and get this dude plugged in.

Please note that I’ve always been a big TS hater— back when I was playing my Strat for 90% of my stuff, I found that every TS I played just gave me that obnoxious SRV “blooze dad” tone. I had no interest in ever building a TS, and just came up with the design because I liked the visual concept— hey, I’m a sucker for a gimmick. Well, let me tell you— after plugging my LP into this thing, I was blown away. I guess I like tubescreamers after all, with the big caveat being that I only like them paired with humbuckers. A happy ending was had for all!

Oh, that’s right. You’re here to see guts n’ stuff. Here you go. [Note: I swear, the tone knob is perfectly centered over the text. The camera angle is playing tricks. My drill-skill is on fleek]





I’m sure most of you get the visual gag, but if not, I’ll explain: to the average guitarist, the mention of an 808 conjures up images of green boxes, magical op amps, and gigantic hats. To any other musician, the term “808” immediately evokes thoughts of the world’s most iconic drum machine, with its hi-hat rolls and tuned-kick sub-bass lines. See for yourself:



Now that you understand the visuals, you may be asking “but how does it sound?”

Probably not. You know what a tubescreamer sounds like, and this sounds like that. Nevertheless, I threw together a quick track featuring the Oops! Wrong-808 so yeah…

The track starts with four bars of the dry guitar, and then kicks into two different screamery tones— a mid gain one with a compressor after it for rhythm, and a pretty-much goosed one with oodles of echo for the lead stuff.

Henceforth and hitherto, let the demonstration of thine coveted screamer commence:
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/Tyze8q9h9ipJyLhz7
#3
General Questions / Uber Tuber running temperature
December 17, 2021, 07:52:30 PM
Hey folks!
I've got an Uber Tuber PCB that I'm planning to build soon, and I was just wondering if anyone knows how hot the 6111 tube and 5W resistor typically get? Thanks!
#4
Introductions / Greetings from Long Island
November 16, 2021, 09:30:42 PM
Hey everyone!
I'm Nick and I'm 22 years old. Been playing guitar since I was around 6 years old, and I've been building pedals since I was around 14 or 15— shortly after I completed my first guitar build (which curiously was completed after my second guitar build). I've been an avid woodworker since I was a kid as well, so sometimes I like to incorporate that into things— I got a lathe for my 21st birthday last year, and recently I've thought about making some cool wooden knobs for some of my pedal builds next spring.

I've been active on plenty of other forums for years, so I'm sure I'll recognize at least a few of you. I made an account on here a while ago, but only recently realized that I had never actually posted before, so here I am.

Just since I can't think of anything else to share, here are some fun facts:

•My favorite musicians include Frank Zappa, George Harrison, Adrian Belew/King Crimson, Joni Mitchell, Todd Rundgren, Ween, Rush, Oingo Boingo, Carole King, and Steely Dan.

•I'm pretty obsessed with Phasers, Fuzzes, and weird effects that have extremely limited practical use. I'm especially a big fan of some of the weird niche stuff that makes Adrian Belew and Henry Kaiser sound traditional in comparison.

•I've been designing way too many Star Wars themed pedals recently, and I should have a good a few of them to share soon. I'm currently working on graphics for a Touchstone— Bad Batch fans may have an idea of what I'm calling it ;)

•I like things that are needlessly complicated. Usually it doesn't pay off, but I'm in denial, so you can't convince me to stop.

•I love collecting posters from concerts I go to. Not a particularly interesting fact, but I felt like I needed one more.