The Pedal I Didn’t Think I Would Like – Warning: Minimal GPCB Content

[Chuck]

Trying to keep myself occupied and somewhat out of trouble I’ve been cruising through my bin of un-started, not completed and/or failed builds.  Last month I pulled out this partially populated board and, after recalling past projects with different vendors’ different interpretations of this pedal and a particularly disappointing build using another of this same board, I decided to give this one a second shot. What is it?  It is a Grind Customs FX Chimaera BFD which is similar in origan to Barry’s very fine MKC without the modifications – Reg sold them as a straight up clone of the originals.  The first one of these I built using the much talked about and, at the time, revered ‘Silver Pony’ mods.  Given that my guitars at the time were all single coils I really was not impressed – it didn’t help that I didn’t have much of a clue as to how to use one of these things – so I tossed the second board in the misfits bin where it has been for almost 6 years. Seeing that Barry is selling D9Ks and mentions use in the MKC the wheels started to turn slowly.  In the BOM for the MKC Barry mentions to possibility of using a pair of gain pots in place of the dual pot – I though I might try that with the Chimaera.  So here it is:

Guts

I have built fairly complex 1590A pedals that were way cleaner and easier than this 125B!  The toggle between the knobs is attached to one of Barry’s DPDT boards with a pair of resistors, replacing R15, for the Ultra Drive mod – not like this thing needs a swift kick in the butt to make it scream but it does just that.  This pedal loves my Epiphone Les Paul Special with Duncan Fat Cats and tolerates my Strat with Duncan SSL4s and SSL5 pretty well.  Using it as a somewhat clean boost it makes other drive pedals scream for mercy.

Sadly these boards, with their unique feature of having the In and Out pads on the wrong side of the board, are no longer available.  But, Barry still have the very nice MKC boards available!

Thanks for looking,

Chuck

[Billy]

I thought you were gonna say it’s in a 1590A for a minute

Looks pretty tidy to me Chuck very nice indeed

[Author]

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