Messages

Ooooh thats fantastic! Really lovely looking build.
Seriously gutted this is no longer in production, I'd be all over it.

Love the artwork on this, and I agree with Dawson on respecting the commitment to having it as an always-on box.

Pics for the click-lazy

Great to see one of the older, weirder circuits get built up. Hardly saw any of these even when they were available to buy
Was always tempted but missed out on them.
Looks great, congratulations!

Wow, nice. 2 transformers. How's it sound?

It's does choppy square trem through to nasty atonal ring mod goodness. If you can get the parts without much hassle it's worth a build if you like your bass/ guitar to sound super nasty.

Nice build. I like Deadend's boards but I find that I always prefer to tweak the control layouts to my liking.  While not driven by distrust of board mounting, it still creates some extra steps and coordination, which I can appreciate in your build.

Thank you, I do like to customise the looks of my builds a bit, and not doing proper art on them leaves me little option but to mess with the layouts!

The final part of my ring mod trilogy, I finished this up today.





I've added a fine tune pot to the frequency tuning because the range is ridiculous for one control, but other than that and the layout it's totally stock.
I really didn't like the knob layout on the PCB, and there was no sensible way to secure it, so I had to make a mounting plate out of an old scratchplate and bolt it to the case. Maybe a little overengineered but it works. I really wish all PCBs had mounting holes, it seems a pretty basic requirement to me but maybe I'm old fashioned.

Here she is with my other recent builds. I'm close to having enough ring mods now I feel



I still haven't actually used any of these much as my studio is in a transitory period right now, but if you're trying to pick one of the three to build I'd sumise them by saying-

Ring Stinger- Complicated in build and use, lots of control, lots of fuzz
Wurmloch- Easy to build, lots of crazy noise but more limited in use, perfect if you want a simplified noise fuzz with ring mod sounds
Hapalochlaena- Easy to build, the only "clean" ring mod of the three, great for a studio effect if you want to experiment with running vocals etc through it.

I can't stress enough that I barely know what I'm talking about here, but those are my initial impressions.

My continuing mission, to build all the ring modulators....

This is a Wurmloch, PCB from Deadend. Based on the Death By Audio Space Ring with an added blend and "Wormhole" control, it's pretty bonkers but a lot of fun. Far less versatile and powerful than the String Ringer I recently completed, it covers a few of the sounds well and is a great solution for someone looking for bonkers noise but not something as complex as that.





There are a few wierd parts that you'll probably not have laying around but it's a pretty simple build once you get them. The layout is nice and clean and you can make it more compact than I have if you don't share my distrust of board mounted switches.

My first build of 2022 is my first build since 2018, using a board etched in 2015ish.
Spent a month or so slowly building this up, triple checking every component, placement, wire and solder joint. Really didn't want to end up trouble shooting this monster and in the end it fired up first try thankfully. Only slight issues were replacing one wire with shielded cable and moving another away from the transformer board to reduce background noise, and now I think its done!
I realise that not many will build this version now the deadend fx PCB is available, but huge shoutout to Haberdasher for the board. It is truly a work of art and as high quality as anything out there.









As you can see I went with toggle switches over stomp switches as this seems a better desktop unit than anything else, and in the unlikely event it ends up on a pedalboard it will just have to go in a loop.

I spent so long staring at builds of this when I was starting out building pedals and I'm super glad to finally have it under my belt. Feels like a good confidence boost having not built anything in so long.

Really love the artwork on this, looks fantastic! Been tempted by this effect for a while now, thanks for taking the time to make the demo.

After this sat dead on a shelf for a couple of months, I started feeling really guilty about avoiding troubleshooting this beast. So I spent the last few hours going through it and finally found a single, unsoldered pad.
Sigh.
Even ignoring today, this is probably the most time i've invested in a build, but I'm really happy with the result. It's as compact as I feel comfortable making something with this much wire in it, and unlike most builds I've seen (especially the original) you can actually hit the bastard footswitch!
Paint job is old school DIY (ie. garbage), but that's never been my strong point.





Under the board is as neat as I could make it



The board then just folds over the pots. I built a very technical rig for the wiring process as you can see

As an effect, it's fairly bonkers, and I haven't messed with it much but I'm pretty sure everything works as it should. I've played a lot of crazy effects but this has it's own thing going on, worth building in my opinion, especially if you've recently given up drugs and are looking for a substitute.
I think with this working I'll finish my vero ADA flanger and then only build fabbed PCBs with board mounted pots for the rest of my life!

Gloriously insane. It's cool to see someone go to town on the DS1 circuit!
Also digging the tiger stripe paint job, a nice nod to the original.

I trace and measure the board the draw it up on to graph paper. Works fine but reading other replies makes me wonder about using a computer....

Very clean aesthetic, the knobs on this look perfect with the unpainted enclosure.
Makes me excited to build one myself.

Dang. Would LOVE to make something like this. Any idea where the joysticks came from? Also interested in the pot throw question.

If you eBay "2 axis potentiometer joystick" you'll find a bunch. Can't answer the throw question, but I can't see why they'd make one which didn't give the full range of the pot...

Super awesome, looks utterly insane! Any info on the joystick?

Love them both! I don't understand why pedals need to be as tiny as possible, these look great as they are.