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OK so it's not a guitar but it's related.

Spent 5.5 hours this weekend building the StewMac "Ghost Drive" which is a clone of the famous Klon overdrive pedal.

Original Klons are currently going on Reverb for $7,500....

The kit is excellent in all respects and a joy and a lot of fun to complete. It was a good time and last weekend I built the StewMac Tube Screamer clone and that was a good time too. Both pedals worked perfectly the first time.

Tone wise the Ghost Drive is the most refined overdrive pedal I have used. Its midrange tones are very strong and it does not change the tone of the guitar like most overdrive pedals do. Compared to the Tube Screamers (I have an Ibanez one too) there is less noise and more tone and it's super warm too.

I'm impressed and this pedal lives up to it's reputation although I would never pay $7,500 for one this Ghost Drive should do me fine....

A word about these StewMac kits. I'm semi retired now working mornings only these days. So I repair maybe 10 - 15 guitars a week now and have lots of time on my hands. And you can only play guitar so much so these kits have been a very good time for me and along the way I am discovering that with the amps and pedals the tone and value I receive can't be had any other way at a reasonable cost.... Or in other words these are the best sounding amps and pedals I own and that surprises me.

StewMac did a great job with these offerings and I would highly recommend them.

My only regret is that I'm done and don't have anything to do again... So I'll be ordering the Two Kings pedal to keep me busy a while longer

Hey Hesh…

As might be expected, I assembled a Ghost Drive as soon as they first became available. Being a huge Klone fan (I use several), I just couldn’t resist. Well I'm pleased to say this is the absolute best one I have tried so far.

Let me suggest a candidate for your next project : SM's take on the Clapton mid-boost.

I just love the db boost I get at zero boost. Not using any more boost than simply having it it the path brings my single coil guitars up to humbuckers level, so it pushes the little 18-water Marshall into the crunch zone very nicely. Cleans are beautiful and gutsy. I built the original circuit into my last Strat project and I love it, so I got the SM kit and intend on assembling it for use whenever I plug a single coil guitar in. Might not be as useful as having the control at your fingertips in the guitar itself, but then your get to try the effect on any guitar so you can decide what type of pickups might benefit from adding the board in the guitar itself.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

+1 and +2. I built one last year and it's the best OD I have used to date and I've used quite a few. I thought I had finally settled on an 80's TS-9 which I still really like but since there is only so much room on my gigging board I replaced it with the Ghost Drive. I only made one small mistake making it and contacted SM. They had me take pics of the circuit board and got back to me within a couple hours with the fix, I put one of the components in backwards.

Hesh is a pedal maniac now.

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Yeah. I’m actually learning a bunch from these. Including a bunch of terms that impress my 16 yr old rocker. I know zero about electric guitars, pedals, and whatnot. He takes his electrics to the neighbors for setup. It’s kinda sad.


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IMO tube screamers are POS's by themselves...bought one back around 1980 and hated it...then I read a Guitar Player article with the guitarist from 38 Special and he said he used it as a "pre-amp" with his Marshall...yeah...use a tube screamer before a tube distortion and it makes the tubes sing!

just my 2 pence....

I feel you ok this:) my 19 yr old son plays electric guitar. I kept up for a while until he got 7 and 8 string instruments haha… I get called into his room multiple times a week w “DAD! Listen to this TONE “ haha
I always listen and pretend to be quite impressed


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That's a good Dad!

Ts-9 sucks? Blasphemy!

Just for giggles I looked over on Reverb only to find my 80's TS-9 is going for an average of about $400 bones. That doesn't suck for sure

Even though I use the Klon Klone now I still can't part with it. Well, maybe for $600

I've built a bunch of pedals and have done mods on several too. The mods made some regular Boss pedals into really nice sounding pedals. The Boss compressor in particular was unusable to me. I let it sit on my Island of Misfit Pedals for like ten years till I found this mod. The mod cleaned up the noise and made a very usable and transparent compressor.

I made some filter effects and OD's and so on but the only two good enough to use is the Ghost Drive and a Big Muff that I built from General Guitar Gadgets kit.

actually it's a TS-808 and worth a lot more than $400...I've got 2 of them actually...the first got fried when I used a power adapter and it had the wrong polarity (I got it repaired using a non-period chip so I guess it's worth squat)..when I moved to Texas I found a really beat to hell one for $30 in a pawn shop (it's actually older than my first) and used that for years before I got the other fixed.

either way, I guess for someone into the blues or something it might be the bee's knees, but I prefer full saturated distortion and find when I use it before a "real" distortion things get real busy like in a very good way.

JF if you know a good therapist please let me know I just ordered Two Kings and the FuzzFace clone pedal from StewMac and picked up some Krylon rattle cans. I am hopelessly hooked..... One of the things I like the most about pedal building is it's not a month long slog. The Klon clone took me 5.5 hours on one weekend now I'm rockin.