BB Preamp versions

Tracing Journal: Xotic BB Preamp (five variants)

Some companies like to keep their product line as small as possible so customers don’t get choice paralysis. Xotic is not one of those companies. Think you might want a BB Preamp? Well, a few minutes of research …

Intersound IVP Preamp releasing today

Another big one today! It hasn’t even been a month since we released the Lovetone projects—but they sold out in four days, so you can imagine that provided a bit of motivation to follow up with something equally …

New projects: Hypercube, Epsilon, and Gaia Mk. I

A few new circuits dropping today going into the USA Memorial Day weekend. Hypercube: BOSS FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz First up: the BOSS® FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz. This is a beast of a circuit, definitely the highest part count of …

Tracing Journal: Catalinbread® CB30

The Catalinbread CB30 was first released in the summer of 2011 as their Foundation-series take on the Vox AC30. The tireless heroes at Freestompboxes traced it within a few weeks of release, with extensive photos detailing the process. …

Tracing Journal: Catalinbread Karma Suture (Germanium & Silicon)

The Karma Suture is Catalinbread’s take on the Interfax Harmonic Percolator, a unique and extremely rare fuzz/drive from the early 1970s. As with most of their pedals, they don’t settle for straight clones, instead using classic circuits as …

Tracing Journal: Dinosaural OPA-101 Overdriven Preamp

We’ve got a trilogy! The very first tracing journal we ever did was the Dinosaural OTC-201 Opticompressor back in August of 2019. A few months ago, we took apart the Tube Bender. And today, we tackle the last …

Tracing Journal: Crowther Hot Cake

Here’s an interesting one. The Crowther Hot Cake is one of the original boutique distortion pedals, dating all the way back to 1976. They’ve been hand-built by Paul Crowther in New Zealand for the past 44 years. And …

Aion FX on the Guitar Knobs podcast!

I got to hang out (virtually) with Todd, Jared and Tony at The Guitar Knobs for an episode of the podcast that dropped today. Check it out: A few of the topics we covered— Fender’s new reissue CuNiFe …

New website launching today

Just over a year ago, I was able to quit my day job to do Aion FX full time. This followed a career as a web developer, something I’d been doing my whole professional life. (Or longer, really—I …

Tracing Journal: Cornish CC-1

Cornish says the CC-1 is an all-original design, but how accurate is that? Have a look underneath the goop.

Tracing Journal: Cornish ST-2

We tear open a Cornish ST-2 to answer the question once and for all: is it an Overdriver?