One essential part of my signal chain is the noise gate. Up until now, I only had a cheap Neewer (Amazon) noise gate which for the most part; did the job. I wasn't yet able to afford one of the now-discontinued Fortin Zuul noise gates which are unique -they are placed in the effects loop, but have the option to be "keyed' by the guitar input. Usually, the user must also split the signal going into it, because it doesn't have a thru output.
Enter the Pedal PCB "Muzzle" Classic, which came with a equivalent of the THAT 4031 dynamics processor which was unfortuantely EOL (end of life'd) so getting my hands on these parts was a high priority for me.
This is pedal #2 of the Elden Ring inspired builds and the artwork is a mashup of elements taken from the game, namely the "Fog gate" which obscures the player from leaving the boss area.
Lots of layers in this artwork, taking the shape of the gate from a reference photo and changing the pattern of the stones and creating a central circular element in the top for the around the knob. I also added a few easter egg symbols in the stones and the great eye of madness in the center. Like the Moon Chorus and Phase Runner, this pedal is laser etched. This one took quite a while to draw, and longer than the others to etch, but it managed to come out really nice, even for a single pass of the laser.
Some random build notes: oddities - this didn't work on the first try. I needed to ground the key input and thru jacks, which didn't work when it was housed. The PCB has grounding holes for the key input, but that's only for when there's no thru output incorporated. Fortunately this was a pretty quick fix to connect the jack grounds only.
Also the key input has a 1.5k Ohm resistor, which wasn't in my random collection, nor was it in a kit I hastily purchased to avoid waiting weeks (maybe a month?) for another Tayda order. Seems that a 1k Ohm resistor did the trick AFAIK. I would've put a 1k + 510 in it's place, but ran out of room for the TRS switching jack. I'm guessing that it couples with the pin 3 of the threshold knob, using a 22k ohm for the effects loop input (line level) and 1.5k for the (instrument level) guitar signal?
I have to say, this gate works VERY well. Since it lives in the effects loop of the amp (tested using my BFG200G), it shuts off all the hum from the pre-amp signals, as well as any overdrive pedals going in the front of the amp. Since it uses the key input signal from the guitar, it responds better to the end of the transients better (sooner) because they aren't being sustained by compression that affects distorted guitar signals. So yes... it does "djent".