Got a bit bored with the down time waiting for the Echodrive boards to show, so I decided to visit an old Pink Jimi Photon project from 2011, the Liberal Komrade.
In a nutshell, it's a Fuzz Face variant, with a pair of MP16B's doing power plant duties, symmetrical germanium D9E diodes clipping for extra badassery, and an MPSA18 boost in the tail pipe as the afterburner. The original version didn't feature a post boost stage, and Jimi didn't like the fact that you had to run it almost flat out to get unity, so he stole the post boost stage from the Spaceman Gemini III fuzz, and tacked it to the tail end of things.
IT. IS. LOUD. AS. FUCK.
Jimi originally had the post boost section set up with a boost footswitch, but I decided to just run it full time. Anything over halfway on the pedal volume (Doom) will just kick the snot out of your amp (and ears). Past that, it just get redonkulous. Surprisingly though, roll back the guitar volume and it cleans up very nicely. Anywhere between 2 and 6 is very touch sensitive, allowing you to go from almost crystal clean to crunch, just with the picking dynamics. Roll up to 10, and it's all out mayhem. Very cool.
I made some minor cap additions and value changes, just for noise control and tonal adjustment, but it's basically the same as what Jimi published all those years ago. Using a 7660 to provide bipolar power for the PNP's and the MPSA18, and also allows for use of a daisy chain without the polarity issues. Using relay silent switching as well. With this much gain in the tank, I didn't want to have to deal with possible switch clicking, so I decided to address it from the get go. Something I always wanted to build, but kept getting side tracked. Also the first vero I've done in eons. Overall, pretty pleased.

