A one-off special edition made for Local Singles for the 2021 CJSW Funding Drive.
My roommate Sami Parker, host of Local Singles on CJSW, asked me to create a pedal for their entry into the 2021 Funding Drive. I had one extra PCB from the Bitten Hand Painted set, so I accepted their offer.
I decided to change the circuit a bit since I wanted a pedal that was more versatile, so I decided to make an overdrive instead. First, I swapped the 1 mega-ohm potentiometer that was used in the hand painted set with a 100 kilo-ohm pot as well as halving the resistance to the resistor within the feedback loop of the op-amp. Next, for the clipping section, I swapped the 1N4007 rectifier diodes for 1N34A germaniums. This had the affect of a warmer, smoother tone as opposed to the searing, metallic sound of the rectifiers. The last modification I made to the circuit was to lessen the boost, which due to the design of the original circuit was achieved by simply swapping a single resistor.
I took a leap of faith with the mods, as I never got the chance to breadboard the circuit! I would have to hear it for the first time once it was all completed.
At the time, CJSW hadn’t announced the design language for the event, so Sami and I had to make a guess as to which colour to choose. We ended up deciding on the limited edition purple GORVA C65, as Sami had seen the poster once and knew it was going to be some shade of purple. The three coloured aluminium knobs fit with the “Radio in Colour” theme of the event.
When the design was released, I got to work stenciling the logo onto the front of the pedal as well as our own logo on the bottom, and Sami tightened up the paint with POSCA pens.
I wasn’t 100% happy with the way the Bitten pedals looked on the inside, and so I focused quite a bit on keeping it nice and clean. I used a hybrid PCB and point-to-point soldering style, ribbon cables for the pots, and tied the cables that ran to the footswitch together.
Once it was all wired up, it sounded killer. It kept the same mix of bite and clarity that the original circuit had, but now with a more gentle, buttery tone.
The Funding Drive ran for a week in October. If I were selling this pedal, I would have offered it for around $150, so giving it away to one lucky donor who donated $30 or more was a steal. The Funding Drive was a huge success, and we ended up pulling in close to $1200 for Local Singles! One person even generously donated $200.
The winner ended up being a good friend of mine, Cam Siferd, who is also the host of a CJSW radio program, The Good Medicine Show.
In the end, I was sad to see this pedal go. I would have loved to keep it on my own board, but knowing it was going to go off to make some rad punk music puts a smile on my face. Maybe I’ll make one for myself some day.
Check out Local Singles live every Wednesday from 12-1 PM and The Good Medicine Show Thursdays from 12-2 PM.
