And now for a Thunder Knob update!

If you're following me on Instagram, you likely heard about this several days ago, but to be official, here it is again:  

In this update the big change is more headroom, but there are other minor updates as well.  I changed the switch for the Thunder to a new setup that uses simpler and more reliable switch to trigger a relay.  This setup is a little more expensive, but I was able to shave those pennies off in other areas.  The larger switch I was using before broke during shipping twice and one customer experienced failure after a month.  I can't have that bad behavior going on with my children!  The new switch is much higher quality, so its far less likely to fail.  There's a new PCB, well a couple new ones, which speed up my assembly and provide improved rigidity of the internals.  I also decided to upgrade the vacuum tube slightly.  Before was the bog standard JJ ECC83 (12AX7).  Now I'm using JJ's ECC803s, which basically is a higher quality 12AX7.  Another added expense, so I had to reduce cost somewhere else to maintain the same price for the pedal.  My thinking was the vacuum tube and the B+ are the two most important factors in the sound of the pedal.  Get those right and the rest is icing on the cake.  The new PCB design allows me to use unshielded wire exclusively, whereas before there was about 5" of super expensive shielded silver plated avionics wire.  I found further savings by replacing one low significance paper in oil capacitor with a silver mica version for about half the price.  That cap is responsible for attenuating some upper high frequencies when the Thunder switch is off. 

All in all, the new version of the Thunder Knob sounds better and is more robust, and I did it without having to increase the price of the pedal.  If you have an older version of the Thunder Knob and would like it updated to this new "Revision B," I would be happy to perform the mod for $55 plus shipping.  The mod does not include a tube swap.  If you'd like the ECC803s tube installed with your mod, the mod would cost $65 plus shipping and you'd get the old 12AX7 back too.  Please email me to setup mod work at sales@lightningboyaudio.com.