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
