Tonepad El Griton

Build this from the stock my good buddy Marc's gave me because he couldn't find time for it anymore. Thanks Marc! The effect is destined for another good buddy, Bert. Bog standard Tube Screamer, TS808 style. More info on the PCB on the Tonepad site.

So the MKI ended up with Bert. The MKII which is a modern voiced TS9 style clone is now part of Sancho's elusive effect rack.

Wanted to mimic a bit the font Mark Bell used for the cover art of an EP of one of my bands, Stage Banter. Within the scope I chose for I have to admit I didn't have massive inspiration so I kept it simple.

MKI and MKII live in action.

The MKIII has been spotted too, albeit as a prototype though, still. Yes it's an El Griton PCB but with some extra's: diode selector switch (silicon/germanium), sync/async switch and a voicing switch (TS808/TS9). The diode selector switch was quite a challenge, there was only one single supplier who had short lever 3PDT switches on stock. But Love My Switches delivered swiftly, awesome job, thanks!

Yeah, looks like a mess but it works. Had to place the PCB diagonally otherwise it wouldn't fit. I like this one, lots of great sounds on tap. Maybe I'll redo the diode switching part though and swap out the germs for LED's. The germs are cool but not what I expected, they sound too transparent to me. That's probably also because I didn't use two germs in series as a replacement for one silicon diode. Top notch components though despite the spaghetti chaos, Wima and Panasonic caps, C1815 transistors for the buffering, glass 1N60 germanium diodes, JRC4558 opamp… Yeah, nice stuff.