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I have been focusing on modular synth stuff for so long that I have neglected my guitars.. so what better way to remedy that than buying a new one. I have always (thought) I wanted a baritone but after talking to David (Storyboardist) for a bit, I came to the conclusion it was a Bass VI that I was really after. Like a good friend, David found one on Reverb that was perfect and it came with a case. I had no idea Squire had a matching headstock, square inlays Bass VI in shell pink. I jumped on it.

Squire Classic Vibe Bass VI:


I have had it a few nights now and I have really been enjoying this thing. The 30" neck feels like a bass length with a guitar width. Really nice in the hand. I was worried about the potential problem with the low E being floppy or a buzzing nightmare but it really was not an issue in standard tuning. Since I wanted to do some drop tuning with this thing (make it DOOM) I picked up a bone nut replacement and ordered a Staytrem bridge with better saddles. Parts should be here in a week or so. Overall the build quality is pretty nice for such an affordable guitar. I think I will take some steel-wool to the neck to soften up the lacquer a bit. Since I was a Couch strap whore in the past, I ordered one that I think will go well with the pink shell (thats important lol).

Anyone have one of these? Anyone have a legit Fender Bass VI? Mod ideas are welcome!

I have a feeling I should have listened more in math class. I'm lost on this and the reading I have done makes my head hurt.

I have a Mean Well RQ-125B switching power supply that according to the datasheet it needs 2A load on the 5V for it to operate correctly. It goes into a protection mode if there is no load on the 5V and will keep the power supply from turning on. Unfortunately, I do not need the 5V rail currently and need to put a dummy load on it to use the +12 and -12 portion for the PSU. It was suggested by someone to put a "Chassis Mount 10watts 2.5ohms Wirewound Resistor" on the 5V and COM GND to achieve the dummy load.

I have used a few other Mean Well PSUs and none of them needed such a high load on the 5V so this is a first for me.

I hooked up the wirewound resistor and the PSU fires up with out issue. I busted out the DMM and all the terminals are outputting the proper voltage but... the wirewound resistor gets VERY hot. Like beyond touch and it even smells hot. The guy that suggested this resistor said it was normal for these to get extremely hot but I have no experience with these and would like some feedback from others. I currently have no fan inside the case that houses the PCU but its very spacious and has air holes. I attached the wirewound resistor to the top of the PSU to make the case of the PSU act as a large heat sink.

PSU datasheet:
https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/260/RQ-125-SPEC-1291758.pdf

Wirewound Resistor I used:
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/71-RE65G2R50

Am I using the right resistor? Is the heat really an issue? Will my case catch fire while I'm making music and becoming a spectacle that people will not soon forget?

-Cody

[Cheese Source - Horace - Alanp PCB]

Have you ever had a night that everything just clicks and you feel like a skilled electronics ninja master?

Now my long story:

So I have been in a huge lul with building pedals.. I have been building more synth stuff lately.. but thats neither hear nor there..

I went to my bench and opened my box of "To be finished" and pulled out all my Lovetone builds that needed something or another to finish them up. None of these were tested since they needed a few parts to finish them up for testing.

First up the Cheese Source - Horace - Alanp PCB.. needed some pots mounted and took it to the amp for a test and it fired right up.. played with it for 10-15 mins and called it good.

Then I grabbed the Wobulator - Tremopanation - Alanp PCB. Needed LDRs installed... I remember I sourced all these LDRs for numerous projects months back. Mounted them and took it to the amp to test and it also fired right up... I was amazed, 2 in a row.. Im on a roll

Ran back to the bench and grabbed the Meatball - Rissole 1.4 - Alanp PCB and it also needed LDRs. Minutes later I was at the amp and testing.. Another score.. fired right up. I really love this thing by the way.. spent 45 minutes messing with it.

There is no way in hell I can keep this up, right?

I then went to the PCB I have avoided this whole night because I KNEW it would not work and I would need to troubleshoot it. The Flange with No Name - Nameless - Alanp. This thing was a pretty daunting build. This one needed a few more parts but I had them all on hand. an hour later a scotch on the rocks I was ready to face my failure. Went to the amp and I was floored.. it worked, needs to be biased but It was flanging.

The good news: They all worked..
Bad news: I need to make some enclosures. lol

-Cody

I work in IT for a huge retirement company here in California. At most of our location on the west coast we have performance/arts centers with a stage and equipment. At one of our LA locations they were remodeling and tore out all the equipment. Most of the other techs know I am into music and what not and offer me stuff they find all the time. Most of the time its commercial audio equipment that is no really suitable for home use. Last week I got a call from one of the techs saying he had a Mackie mixer that they pulled from a small theater and wanted to know if I wanted it. Not asking to many questions I told him yes... I figured I could use it no matter what model it was.

This got here yesterday:


Its a Mackie SR32.4 VLZ Pro. I was blown away. I figured it was going to be a 8 or 12 channel mixer.. not 32 channels.

Now I need to figure out if its something I can physically use in my situation or if I need to flip it and buy something that would work better/smaller foot print. I am currently using a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro and it seems to be working out fine.. so I guess I have no idea what to do with this.. haha.

Doing some clean up on it and removing all the stickers and gummy residue from past stickers. Also a few of the faders are bent.. easy fix.

Cody

I waiting 4 weeks for these and finally got some time to get them installed. I am super excited to get my JP Jazzmaster dialed in and back to shredding. Over the last 3 years this has been my primary player and I have had nothing but issues with the setup. Timbo even did an amazing setup on it but it soon fell out of place.. It all comes down to using the vibrato and everything goes to hell. I am no Kevin Shields or Thurston Moore but I love to use my vibrato from time to time. The more people I talked to on OffsetForums and Reddit, they all seem to steer me towards the Mastery setup.. so here I am. All I need to do is put some flatwound 12s and I will be happy again.

Before:


After:


Cody

Haven't built anything, let alone posted a build report in ages.. Hope to change that soon and dedicate more time to building. This is a SS/BS Mini work a like on a layout made by effectslayouts. I have wanted one of these for awhile but never pulled the trigger so when David put up a layout for it I jumped on it. It can go from sounds of a nice tube like OD to a failing tube OD to straight up fuzz. The Bias knob can help get it to tight sounding to a velcro/spuddering sound.

Layout: http://effectslayouts.blogspot.com/2016/07/smallsoundbigsound-mini.html

I did a reverse etch from some stock art and added some noise to the etch mast to give it a bit of a grungy look to match the sound of the pedal. lol

I'm not a 100% happy with the knobs and might change them out in the future but for now this is on my board and rocking.



and guts: This angle makes the LED look funny.. Its not "that" bent. haha



Cody

Got myself a Loomer today. I have been scouting Reverb and eBay for a week and one finally came up on Reverb.



I have played with it for about 45 minutes and I am really excited with the results. There has been some reviews/criticism about the "reverse" setting not able to get the same sound as the Yamaha SPX 90 or the Alesis Midiverb II, both used by Kevin Shields at some point. I have also heard people complaining about the Fuzz, saying  "Kevin never used a Big Muff" (I have yet opened up the Loomer to see what the fuzz circuit truly is, but I am thinking its a BMP) and I am 100% ok with that. Its a great sounding fuzz and took my Jazzmaster like a champ.

All this madness aside, I really like the pedal for what it is. It has a great modulated reverb and a really good reverse reverb. I like it better than the EHX Cathedral. The fuzz is very usable also. The 2 circuits pair up ver nice and can get that "wall of sound" pretty easily. Add a reverb after it or even before it and you get some magic. Also, I played my 8 knob fuzz factory into it and the reverse modulated reverb sounded GREAT!

Looks like its here to stay for now. I may grow out of it and stick with rack effects for this type of sound.. but for now, the Loomer gets a spot on my board.

Will you instantly sound like Kevin Shields? NOPE but you will get some great shoegaze and dreampop tones for sure.

Cody

Have not watched it all since my battery on my phone was dying but so far its pretty good.

Reverb just ran this article, it is an interesting read.

On a side note, I love Reverb.com's web developers. Everything is always so clean and modern looking.

https://reverb.com/news/vertex-effects-after-the-axis-wah-scandal-a-conversation-with-mason-marangella

I got this PCB from Jason (Jubal81) in a trade. He had it populated with 4 MN3008's and was not very happy with it. He's not a delay user and just could not meld with it. I don't normally use populated PCBs by other people but Jason did a great job building it and him and I have some of the same parts we use. I removed the daughter board and mounted it in the enclosure. I went with the standard wiring diagram.

I got some of the Xive MN3005 in the Cabintech group buy when these things were hard to get and I am glad I did. They sound great in this thing. I am really happy with it and can not wait to run it through its paces over the next few months. My hopes are that this will keep my vintage DMM off my board so I do not have to travel with it.

I did a reverse etch with some artwork from John Dyer Baizley (Kvelertak cover). Always loved his artwork. Im not 100% happy with the knobs and may swap them out. I tried a few and these are the only ones I had on hand that did not look "terrible". I am up for suggestions or comments on the current ones.



Gut shot:


Cody

I have been following the github messages on the little patch editor that Strymon made for their flagship pedals. Today they announced their new software called Nixie. Its a full blown editor and librarian for patches. I know there is some users of strymon pedals here, me bing one (Big Sky & Timeline) and I am super excited about this.

You can download the beta here:
http://www.strymon.net/support/nixie/


I just installed it and getting my MIDI interface all configured to give it a run.

I would love to see an easy way to swap presets with people without having to do a full dump of all presets. Like a right click/export kind of thing.

Cody

It's been awhile since I built anything as the heat here in Fresno is killing me in the garage. I figured boxing up an effect that I had populated already would be a good way to get back up and going again. This is a Gristleizer on a MusicPCB board. I populated it about 4 months ago and unfortunately just never did anything with it. I really liked the effect but did not have a real "need" to get it boxed. I recently ran across a few YouTube videos on it and got excited about it once again...to the bench to box it up. I am so glad I boxed this up as much fun was had with my Juno-60 and this thing!

Since this circuit was made popular by the band Throbbing Gristle ( Genesis P-Orridge), but I decided to go with artwork from Psychic TV era. I did a reverse etch of the artwork pulled from Google Images and meshed them together in Photoshop. I'm a little bummed that I burned the paint a bit when wet sanding on the bottom left hand corner... oh well.



I used a Grind Customs FX Lumen optical switch for bypass and tried to keep it as clean as possible.



Cody

Anyone else notice Tayda is selling axial caps?

http://www.taydaelectronics.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=AXIAL+CYCLOIDAL
Manufacturer: JB Capacitors
Manufacturer Part No: JFGA 0.1uF 100V +/-5% Bulk RoHS
Datasheet: http://www.taydaelectronics.com/datasheets/JFGA-Capacitor.pdf

call me interested..

Cody

Sweetwater box showed up to my work today and I could not wait to get home to play with its contents.

I picked up a Arturia Beatstep Pro to control my growing outboard gear VIA MIDI and CV. Anyone else have one and want to share their thoughts?

Obligatory item on green shag photo:


Cody

Question, I am trying to sort a bunch of LDRs I have collected over time and pair them up. I Do have some that are already bagged up and I wrote on the bags who I go tthem from (Tayda, SmallBear, MKlec ect.) and what models they are. As I was testing the loose LDRs I found that I was not getting consistent readings from my DMM. I would hookup the leads to alligator clips and the clips to the LDR legs, set the DMM to resistance and auto-ranging all the way up to 40M. I would then use a light source/mag light to shine on the LDR and take the reading then wrap my hand around the LDR and take a reading. On the light end of things they would bounce around quite a bit from 1k - 1M even in direct light. I thought it might be a bad batch of loose china made LDRs so I started checking the bagged ones I had labeled. I was still showing my Smallbrear 8001's were 100k-150k out of spec in light.

So my questions are:
Am I testing these properly?
Are LDR's really inconsistent from the datasheets?
Do I need another beer?

Side note: I never had an issue with my Fluke DMM with checking resistance on other parts and I even used the wall wart instead of batteries just to make sure.

I have also collected most of the datasheets for the CdS LDRs I am using.. or think I am using... no making on LDRs (that I can see) are driving me nuts.

I also seen this older thread but it did not really answer my questions
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=8934.0

Cody

All, I know a few of you have built the PLL clone on the PCB by toecutter and I have a cry for help. I am so confused on the bypass switching. I have been looking at the schematic for 45 minutes now and it just does not make sense to me. Can someone help?

Info: I am using the last PCB 1.3 that has all the fixes from the previous boards. I have no subbed parts (Not that it matters since i am just trying to figure out the offboard madness). I am getting +12 & -12 on my test lugs.

Schematic I am using:


Here is my PCB:


This is how I understand it:
DR1 & DRG = External drone expansion
C-OUT = Clean Output
IN & Input = Inputs
O/P = Output
FS1 & FS2 & FSG = External Footswitch

It looks like the S1 3PDT on the schematic is wired just like a standard pedal bypass, right?
I see a LED G pad that I am guessing is the ground pad for switching, right?

I am sure I am overthinking this whole thing, but its got me stumped. Ultimately I would like to wire up the "External Footswitch" internally along with the bypass. Can anyone point out how dumb I am and help?

Edit: I was looking at this pic trying to figure out the external footswitch wiring... head exploded.


Thanks
Cody

FINALLY, I have been sitting on this populated board and etched enclosure for moths and I finally had a block of time to get it all squared away. I actually used this PCB tons on my test rig and never seemed to find the time to box it up. I went simple with this etch for 2 reasons, I had a hell of a time trying to think of artwork for it and there is just not much room after all the controls are placed in a 1590BB. I went with a simple Twin Peaks logo and shot it with some red metallic paint. I am really happy with the results.

The top knobs are Eagle Plastics and the bottom knob is a random one I had laying around. Not sure where I got it from.

The lighting in my room made my shag carpet look "sickly" in the first shot. lol sorry.


Gut:


Cody

In a nut shell I really wanted to get rid of my free standing keyboard rack. I hated the fact that the legs make it have to be so far way from a wall due to leg span and it takes up so much room. Since my keyboards do not leave the house, I decided to wall mount them. I looked online for the best/cost effective way to do it. I came up with some brackets from String Swing and some slatwall "like" paneling from Lowes call Gladiator.

Here is the panel on the wall:


Here is my Juno-60 mounted:


Gladiator Paneling:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_182183-46-GAWC041PZY_0__?productId=4196257#img

String Swing Wall Bracket:
https://www.stringswing.com/category/products/wall-display-fixtures2/keyboards-mixers

could not ask for anything better at this point. This was exactly what I envisioned. One more tier for one more synth and I will call this wall complete.  Another cool thing about the Gladiator product from Lowes is that they sell shelves, mount & hooks. I am going to have to put some cable holders and a nice hook for headphones.

UPDATE: 2nd tier added with my Yamaha DX7 in all of its brown glory.


Cody

My knobs finally came in so I can now post this thing. This is the Madbean Gravity Wave from the Etchers Paradise  Project. It's a great sounding chorus pedal with all kinds of fun wrapped in it. I wanted to use a font that was close to the original Sea Machine and I threw a bunch of tentacles on it and reversed etched it. I painted it with a real deep purple but all pictures come out black. lol trust me, it's purple.



Guts!


Thanks Brian for the fun etchable projects.

Note:
I verified this project but was unaware that the dimension control was not supposed to go into feedback. I could not find a demo at the time that would use the dimension knob over noon. When other said this was not supposed to be this way there were some "back and forth" in the support forums on fixes. I ended up doing the C9 to 30nF & R9 to 10k swaps and everything sounds great. No more feedback when the dimension control is dimmed and it gives a nice slapback sound...Thanks for everyone that helped point this in the right direction and sorry I jumped the gun on the verify. lol

Cody

This is a THAT2181C based noise gate that shall not be named. I have had this PCB kicking around for some time and  finally got some artwork I liked for the box.

I did the reverse etch and stuck a giant knob that I had in my stash. I really fell in love with this build and I am reworking my board a bit to get it in there after all my dirt/stortion/fuzz.

Sorry guys, no gut shot.

This PCB was a gift and I do not have access to them or sell them in any way. Please don't ask.

Cody