The Perfect Medium Enclosure Guitar Pedal Design

Hot on the heels of my Perfect Compact and Mini pedal prototypes here follows the Medium size enclosure version. I have based this on an extrapolation from the classic Strymon medium enclosure - taking those same box dimensions and extrapolating my Compact pedal prototype to fit the larger form factor. Note that I’ve tried to scale the above visual to the same relative size as the previous Compact and Mini pedal visuals - which means no space for additional diagrammatic legends - as I use on my other visuals.

Much of the inspiration of this pedal comes from my ownership and use of the Strymon Sunset Dual Drive and Chase Bliss Audio Brothers pedals - each has their own pros and cons, and I’ve tried to accommodate the best of both in my own iteration. One of the issues I still have with the Brothers pedal is that the left-hand channel is significantly louder / higher output than the left. Yes there are internal trim-pots, but using those is a fiddly and time-consuming process - and even after prolonged tweaking and copious ’back and forthing’ you may still not have the 2 Channels perfectly equalized. So like the Strymon Sunset, I would recommend both Channels had independent level controls. Also the Strymon has its stacking - serial and parallel options on the back of the enclosure, while the Chase Bliss has a top-mounted toggle - as I use on my version here - A>B | B>A | PL - i.e. Serial in both directions and ParalleL.

Otherwise, much like with my Mini X Pedal this is just adapting the main principles of my Perfect Compact pedal - meaning 8 x individual parameter Control Dials, 5 x 3-way toggle voicing switches, including the Stacking option one, and 8 preset options.

A significant advantage of the Medium Size Enclosure is that you can fit all the connections (full stereo) along the top edge. This is why I prefer this format to the more Empress-style medium-size enclosure which is slightly wider, but less tall - meaning that you could not accommodate all the connections along its top face.

This is slightly different to the Compact format - as this is very much an A|B Dual Channel pedal - where both switches and Channels therefore can be active simultaneously. And where the number of controls is split in half - of course you still have the ALT button to activate alternative / secondary functions on each of those dials as well as the footswitches.

As before we have BPM tempo sync port, clear display of power requirement, and output potential in Decibels.

In short this is an evolved ’best-of-both-worlds’ accumulation of Strymon Sunset and Chase Bliss Brothers, which a couple of extra bells and whistles on top - and Presets in particular - which I feel are missing from many useful pedals out there...