Centric

Stompboxes

A picture of the inside of a handbuilt guitar pedal by Centric Engineering, showing the input jacks, resisistors, capacitors, original 60s Mullard transistors and circuit boards.

My specialty, when it comes to building stompboxes is starting with a truly vintage basis. Components that are like hen's teeth to find nowadays... I have my ways. Class-A topology, all discrete audio path, no electrolytic caps in audio path - all concepts taken from 5-figure mastering gear.
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I strive for nailing the exact sound, or piece of equipment you have in your head. A Selmer Treble n Bass, but made from two Tone-Benders in parallel? A Marshall tone stack, driven by a flat-response version of the Dallas Rangemaster? A Violet Ram's Head Big Muff, and V1 RAT, in switchable position series, with analogue octave up and down afterwards?
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One thing a keen eye will notice from the photos is that I do not use vintage resistors, and capacitors in the way other builders may. I believe the accuracy and longevity of the top-of-the-line parts you can get today is far beyond that of anything from the past. This makes my pedals more consistent, maintain their characteristics for longer, and in most cases the result is more exciting than 100% NOS/VOS components, because the colouration of the active components is carried more cleanly to the output of the circuit.

At the Heart

Original Mullard germanium transistors, and the authenticity of the sound they provide in the right circuit, is what got me into building my own pedals in the first place.
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The canveat is, they're very hard to come by. Yet in the search for these lgendary components, I found a way to sustain my supply of them well enough to make someone a pedal in my free time once or twice a year.
a small circuit board with three original Mullard transistors, resistors and capacitors.
A picture of one of my pedals with the backplate remved, showing it's half-completed internals.

Gallery

A metallic gold stompbox with two silver knobs and two footswitches. An accompanying photo is shown, showing off the inside of the pedal, and all of it's circuits.
Based on a Zonk Machine, with adjusted input filters to accomodate the player's baritone instrument, without affecting the fuzz's percieved voicing. An added Dan Armstrong Green Ringer on the backend extends this pedal's sonic palette with an analogue octave-up circuit, loaded with Soviet germanium D9K diodes.
A purple stompbox with five silver knobs, two small toggle switches, a single large toggle switch and two footswitches. An accompanying photo is shown, showing off the inside of the pedal, and all of it's circuits.
Based on a MkII Tone Bender, with the same Green Ringer octave-up as seen above. The Tone Bender has a dual position high-pass filter at it's input. The default position sets the filter's corner frequency to that of the original circuit, tightening the bass response for a more controlled sound. The second position opens this filter all the way down to 20Hz, for use with the full range of instruments you may desire - and its pretty fun to hear a super bassy Tone Bender on guitar too! Bolted onto the output of the tone bender, is a switchable 3-band active EQ, driven by yet another Mullard germanium transistor in Class-A configuration, and just slightly over-biased to get a little bit of asymetrical clipping - because why not?
A bare metal stompbox six black knobs, two toggle switches and three footswitches. An accompanying photo is shown, showing off the inside of the pedal, and all of it's circuits.
Aptly named by the recipient, "The Bomb" after their first time playing through it, this pedal can really spit fire... without even needing to plug anything in! I opted to use printed circuit board contstruction for this pedal, becuase I wanted to keep the form-factor as small as possible - something hand-building from scratch isn't particularly accomodating for. However, build-quality is not compromised at all, with every component in the pedal being specifically selected by myself, for its accuracy, sonic & electrical performance and longevity. The main parts of this pedal are the modded Violet Ram's Head Big Muff, and modded v1 RAT. In what order? They're switchable! But the first things in the signal chain are the analogue octave-up, and octave-down circuits wired to one footswitch, and switchable with a kick-switch at the side of the pedal. All in all, this pedal is the grunge/punk-rock/metal players DREAM.