Artemis MkII Preamp Drive kit

This is a clone of the Catalinbread SFT, their foundation pedal modelled after Ampeg SVT amps. I initially aimed at building PedalPCBs SOFTii but it was out of stock. This Aion FX version has the same circuit.

This was my first Aion FX build and I must say their PCBs are a real joy to work with. The PCBs are beautiful and the docs are clear and very detailed. I mounted this into a dark-blue 125B enclosure with 15mm aluminum knobs, a green LED, and top-mounted jacks.

I cant compare with the SFT except for online demos, but this sounds great. The range of sounds you can get is fantastic. The two modes are each interesting in their own right. Like the real SFT, the stones mode cleans up nicely with guitar volume, whereas stoner stays distorted and can get into fuzz territory. I wish I could toggle between stones and stoner sounds with my foot (eg using a boost pedal), but theyre really two different voicings. But stones mode with a higher gain setting allows to toggle between low-gain and mid-gain very well using guitar volume. Noise was fine, except at highest gain settings in stoner mode -- you might want a noise gate there.

If youre interested in this pedal for QOTSA sounds as I was, Ive settled for now on either stones mode with gain at 3 oclock or stoner mode with gain at 9, bass at 9 and treble at 3 (ymmv). Put a tight mid boost in front at around 800-1000Hz and youre pretty much there!

I purchased higher-rating electrolytic caps so that the pedal can handle 18V as mentioned in the Aion FX docs. (The provided 22uF caps were rated at 16V which was not enough.)

As for the kit itself, it contained all the necessary components... except the PCB itself! It was a mistake and Klaus sent it right away by mail. Im not removing a star because I really want this to rate as 5 stars.

Florimond M., 23.04.2024