Double Z or The Emperor of Tone?

[Chuck]

When I noticed that Barry had the new Zenith Mini on sale I grabbed one.  While waiting on that one I pulled my original out of the pile, put it back on the board and immediately remembered why I liked it so much – which made me wonder what the heck I was going to do with the new one.  Digging through my pile-o-stuff I found the older Zenith Mini (tried the Timmy mod on it and didn’t bond with it) and the gears started to turn. Based on recent success with a pair of Blues Breakers in a KoT format from another vendor – very nice with presence and clipping controls outside, I decided to explore similar set ups – why not a pair of Zeniths feeding/boosting each other?    This afternoon I boxed up a pair of Zenith Minis in a 1590BB.  The older edition, pretty much standard by the BOM, is in the #1 position and the new edition, with a 2272 and a pair of BAT41s, is in the #2 slot.  By cranking the volume up and gain down on #1 I can boost #2 and have a lot of leeway with the tone and voice controls on both Zeniths.  ICs, 2N7000s and LEDs are socketed in both builds but I’ve socketed the clipping diodes in #2 so I can play around some more.

Here’s the new box:

And the guts:

And just for grins here is my original Zenith from 2013:

I’ve played around with the ICs in this one and it currently sound pretty amazing with an AD712 in it.

Chuck

[Billy]

Great looking builds Chuck

I’ve got a few lying around I may try out your ideas I love the versatility of this circuit and how you can go from crunch to a nice jangley tone

I remember Wilkie did a Marshall jubilee mod with the zenith pro board so there’s plenty of possibilities for unique tone

 

[Barry]

Awesome Chuck I love doing pedals in Tandem. I mean it is like my thing.

If you want to try some fun tandem ideas place different pedals or circuits in the Paramix loop and try using them in tandem without one affecting the other for a whole different experience.

[Author]

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