The Club 76 distortion

With this year being my 20th anniversary in business I will be making some special and limited edition stuff to celebrate. This is the first cab off the rank.

Last year I got to make a VERY limited edition, VERY special pedal for the 40th anniversary of The Saints releasing the seminal 7" (I'm) Stranded. The (Tym) Stranded was reverse engineered from Ed Kueppers original MXR Distortion + that he used in the early days of the Saints and still owns today.

It varied slightly from my germanium version Tymexar but the main difference was the 1N276 germanium diodes as used in the very early versions of this great little distortion pedal. 
I'm a HUGE fan of this circuit and make a few different versions including the Bob Mould signature version, the Tym Beauty & Ruin and another very special limited edition one last year for the release of Bob's new album, Patch the Sky. The crazy thing is it was Bob who who actually got me into these when I first started playing live in bands.

When developing the (Tym) Stranded I ended up having to buy a huge bag of NOS (new old stock) diodes from someone in the US as he wouldn't break up the bag. I only needed 80, as there's 2 in each pedal but ended up having to buy 500.

 

This circuit uses different caps and a slightly different version of the classic 741 Op Amp as well, but these are easily accessible from any good electronics supplier. It was those special diodes that gave this version a mix of germanium and silicon breakup. 
The Ge version has slightly less output and is a bit "fuzzier" around the edges. The Si version is louder, and crisp. These diodes give a really nice ...... somewhere in between.

So, with 420 "spare" diodes I thought of a special idea for one of my anniversary pedals.

 

I emailed Ed to check he was OK with the idea. Ed said "you have my blessing. It's a great idea" so it was just up to Tone to come up with some artwork.

 

The Club 76 is exactly the same circuit as the (Tym) Stranded, named after the Saints original venue that was run by the band in Spring Hill as a place to put on bands, mainly the Saints. It's a very Brisbane thing and fits in with using this circuit, and Tones idea for artwork borrows heavily from his original artwork for the (Tym) Stranded but this one is housed in my smaller enclosure, with my 20th anniversary logo, and is NOT limited to 40 pedals.

 

It is however limited to approx 210 pedals which may, or may not (probably not) be all built this year for the anniversary, but will be built, like all my current production pedals, by me as long as there is demand until I run out of important components. 

These will be available in late Feb 2017 and made in batches when I have time. 

These are all hand made here in Brisbane by me,  in my hand made custom stainless steel enclosures and this pedal, like all my pedals is hand assembled on my custom designed and made Tym PCB's especially for each pedal.
If you missed out on, or couldn't afford a (Tym) Stranded here's your chance to grab a piece of Brisbane musical history made especially for my 20th anniversary. 

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