The Cloneboard

MikeR

Guitar Challenged
Staff member
Since I've run out of room (according to my wife) in the house for building more guitars, I started building pedals instead. Here's my current cloneboard. All the pedals except the tuner and power supply were built copying existing commercial designs. From right to left is a Korg Pitchblack tuner, a Wampler Pantheon overdrive clone (called Parthenon), an Okko Diablo + clone, a Klon Centaur clone, a Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay clone and a BYOC Lil Reverb (the only kit of the group) which is similar in tone to a Strymon Blue Sky. Last is the Boxking rechargeable power supply (which lasts incredibly long powering a number of pedals). I don't have any of the real pedals, but comparing the sound to Youtube recording of those pedals seems to be close.

Cloneboard.jpg


I have a few more that I swap in and out as necessary. From left to right, a Hermidia Zendrive clone, a EQD Organizer clone and a Skreddy P19 fuzz clone.

Clones.jpg
 

PapaBear

Guit Fiddlier
Since I've run out of room (according to my wife) in the house for building more guitars, I started building pedals instead. Here's my current cloneboard. All the pedals except the tuner and power supply were built copying existing commercial designs. From right to left is a Korg Pitchblack tuner, a Wampler Pantheon overdrive clone (called Parthenon), an Okko Diablo + clone, a Klon Centaur clone, a Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay clone and a BYOC Lil Reverb (the only kit of the group) which is similar in tone to a Strymon Blue Sky. Last is the Boxking rechargeable power supply (which lasts incredibly long powering a number of pedals). I don't have any of the real pedals, but comparing the sound to Youtube recording of those pedals seems to be close.

View attachment 8391


I have a few more that I swap in and out as necessary. From left to right, a Hermidia Zendrive clone, a EQD Organizer clone and a Skreddy P19 fuzz clone.

View attachment 8392
Wow you’ve been busy
 

Dr. Ron

Nuthin’ But The Blues!
Yeah...where do find the time for that Mike? Nice set of pedal however! Great seeing you and Sue
yesterday.
 

MikeR

Guitar Challenged
Staff member
do buy kits, or just parts and find manuals ?

The Lil' Reverb was a kit I did about a year ago. The others either use a PCB, layout and parts list from https://www.pedalpcb.com or a tagboard with layout from https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/. Most of the parts are sourced from taydaelectronics.com. They're all expensive pedals if you buy the real ones, but none of the clones cost more than about $30 in parts, with many of them under $20.
 

PapaBear

Guit Fiddlier
Another good source for PCB's guitarpcb.com and also madbeanpedals.com they all provide the parts list and build documents, if you can solder you can do it, noticed also now Tayda stocks painted predrilled enclosures for the PedalPcb projects in a variety of colors, the tagboard projects might be at tad challenging for a beginner, but not too bad
 

PapaBear

Guit Fiddlier
Nice! How did you paint and apply the graphics to them?
Can't speak for Mike, but I buy painted enclosures and use water slide decals I print on a laser printer and then clear coat once they dry on the enclosure, you can buy painted and already drilled enclosures at Tayda for PedalPcb projects, I drill my own mainly because I bought a ton of painted enclosures ultra cheap when a pedal parts site sold and the new owners purged a bunch of stock on clearance
 

MikeR

Guitar Challenged
Staff member
Can't speak for Mike, but I buy painted enclosures and use water slide decals I print on a laser printer and then clear coat once they dry on the enclosure, you can buy painted and already drilled enclosures at Tayda for PedalPcb projects,

What Barry said. :D I bought most of mine before Tayda started offering the predrilled ones, so I drilled all the ones you see above. I did paint the Parthenon one (regular spray paint), but the others all came painted.
 

PapaBear

Guit Fiddlier
@MikeR , what program are using to do your labeling? I was using Publisher and just switched to Adobe Illustrator, after a small learning curve It is much easier and faster and though I'm still keeping it pretty basic for now, I can see really doing some awesome stuff down the road with it.
 

MikeR

Guitar Challenged
Staff member
@MikeR , what program are using to do your labeling? I was using Publisher and just switched to Adobe Illustrator, after a small learning curve It is much easier and faster and though I'm still keeping it pretty basic for now, I can see really doing some awesome stuff down the road with it.

I'm nowhere near that sophisticated. Just using Microsoft Word. Wouldn't mind doing some better graphics, but I don't know how many more I'l make. Doing a compressor next with a predrilled enclosure, but don't really have any plans after that.
 

PapaBear

Guit Fiddlier
I'm nowhere near that sophisticated. Just using Microsoft Word. Wouldn't mind doing some better graphics, but I don't know how many more I'l make. Doing a compressor next with a predrilled enclosure, but don't really have any plans after that.
I probably have a hundred projects waiting, some with boards already populated and my biggest road block has been the hassle of doing graphics I'm happy with, especially with publisher, I really dig creating unique stuff so I'm looking forward to diving deeper into Ilustrator
 

PapaBear

Guit Fiddlier
Inkskape is a marvelous free alternative to Illustrator. It sounds like you already bought Illustrator, which is great, I have it with the CS4 ultimate on my old Mac, but Inkskape is what I currently use on both my newer Mac and PC.

It is free and open source, which I kind of trend towards https://inkscape.org
I'll check it out
 

MikeR

Guitar Challenged
Staff member
I am IMPRESSED by your work Mike! What do you think of your Okko Diablo + clone? I have the real deal and LOVE it. It is a cornerstone pedal on my little board.

Your reports on the Okko are what made me give the clone a try. I'm still trying all the different combinations, but it (like the Wampler Pantheon clone) has so many sound tailoring options it's a lot of fun. Has a great sound! I probably won't have it and the Pantheon clone on the board at the same time as there are a lot of similarities. How do you like the EQD pedals? I can build clones of both of those. I'm working on a clone of an EQD The Warden compressor right now, but was thinking about others.
 

Rancid Rumpboogie

Blues Mangler
Your reports on the Okko are what made me give the clone a try. I'm still trying all the different combinations, but it (like the Wampler Pantheon clone) has so many sound tailoring options it's a lot of fun. Has a great sound! I probably won't have it and the Pantheon clone on the board at the same time as there are a lot of similarities. How do you like the EQD pedals? I can build clones of both of those. I'm working on a clone of an EQD The Warden compressor right now, but was thinking about others.
The Earthquaker Devices Dunes pedal is hands down the best "808" pedal I have ever found. And I have tried a truck load of them. There is so much magic in this pedal that I have to question whether or not it is possible to build an equal to it at home. But, I thought the same of the Okko.

There are four different OD pedals on my board ... five if you count the grit knob on the compressor. I seldom run just one because I find the real magic is in stacking two or more in various combinations.

The Earthquaker Devices Depths "rotovibe" is the best of five different "vibe" pedals that I tried that would fit into that space on my board. When building this compact board, the word "compact" was every bit as important to me as the pedals on it. I chose the board first for it's size, then went about populating it with the best sounding pedals I could stuff onto it. I was not willing to compromise far enough to do away with my Okko. If you notice that is the only pedal in the front row that has its I/O jacks hogging space on the sides. From that pedal on, for that front row, every pedal there had to be a pedal with TOP mounted I/O jacks which made finding really great sounding pedals significantly more difficult.
 
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