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Oh wow! Thanks again guys! If I started making more it would be "divorce at dawn!!

I do have 2 more custom builds coming along soon...both in tube stylies.

Thanks very much everyone!

Thanks folks!

Lol...thanks! Sometimes I gotta "go big or go home"! My business is special effects so my prop making hat goes on.

This is my Decopunk/Atompunk style Valvecaster pedal.

I love the sound of an overdriven tube amp but I also love the convenience of a battery powered, solid state amp. What to do? Enter Matsumin Valvecaster. This is a simple, low voltage pedal that drives a 12AU7 tube to pretty convincing overdrive.

I like the retro feel of tubes and I thought this clever and rich pedal circuit needed a stylish home in keeping with the feel of its main component.

I spotted 2 vintage Weston electrical meters online and the idea hit me, mount the valve externally and make a show of it. I took cues from the shape of the upper plinth and the meters viewing window and after some careful measuring of the tube, socket and meters body I made a template and cut 6 cooling fins from 2mm aluminium. After further measuring I drilled the tube hole and mounting points. I used 5mm hex stand offs between each fin. After a lot of sanding and finishing the radiator was done.

I removed all of the meters guts and external fittings and drilled where I needed to for the power input (no room for an internal battery) and pilot light ( a fender amp jewel light with a led imbedded in it with translucent silicone for diffusion. The Valvecaster has 3 controls, volume, tone and gain. The meter had 4 terminals so I fitted a 4th pot that switches on and can set the brightness of a 3mm led that illuminates the tube from below emulating a tubes glow. I drilled out the meters original brass terminal screws and used them as control knobs.

The input and output jacks fit amazingly well owing to the efficient and space saving point to point wiring of the circuits components onto the valve socket itself. I used a daughter board on the foot switch which makes true bypass, ground connections and hook ups a cinch.

And there we have it, a real tube based, Machine age style overdrive emulator pedal...as used by The Rocketeer!

Thanks M-Kresol!

Feels GREAT to have it finally cooperating and it does sound fantastic! Very happy with the way it came out.

Final build pics...

Here are some shots of my Valve-e-tizer...90% done. Going to redo the graphic...needs tweaking...add some graphics for in and out and power and then give it a satin finish.

Guybrush, you said....

I settled on a EHX AT7 that Thomas sold me as the JJ's I bought from ebay just didn't produce any gain. The AT7 sounds great and I added a couple of extra caps at Thomas' suggestion to add a bit more dirt.

....could you give me an idea what's caps, values and where they ended up?mid love to get more "dirt" as well! Thanks.

Thanks very much for all this help...I shall be "cap in hand" today...sorry... 

What would you say the value range we are talking about here say, smallish to large-ish?

I'm rocking the AX7 myself at the moment. Sockets aren't a problem. Never really fully understood cap values vs tone and where to put them etc.

Do you think trying low (?) cap values in any particular position c15 vs c17 (?) would result in ....something (?)

I built up the distortion version of the v1.5.

Got my Valvetizer 1.5 boards on the weekend and built a pedal today....LOVELY! The board takes solder so well!

I did notice that the output is a bit boomy. Does anyone have any suggestions to get a wider tonal range? Could use a LOT more in the brighter range.