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This was built on a Grind Customs Chimaera board that I've had populated for a very long time. I had the Sriracha idea for a while too and one day it dawned on me that a "Roostaur" would be funny. So, here it is!

The chrome graphics were done by thermally bonding embossing foil onto an acetate sheet that I had laser printed the graphic onto. I used UV curing resin and a UV LED to bond the acetate down to the surface of the pedal. Then I used regular ET to cover the top. The Sriracha cap knobs came from BLMS. The enclosure is a red starlight powder coat from PPP. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture the depth of color and sparkle that the pedal displays in real life. It's a pretty deep candy clear with lots of sparkle. It looks really good. This also has a 3D printed board bracket, wire guides, and jack mounting bracket. That lets the power jack mount to the bracket instead of the enclosure which insets it nicely. The clear wire insulation is just 1/16" clear heat shrink tube over prebonded 24ga wire that I stripped the insulation off. It didn't end up looking as cool as I was hoping but I still like it. I guess it pretty much looks like speaker wire.

Thanks for looking! I hope you enjoy it.

I've had a particular toggle switch stored in a "project" on Arrow Electronics for months. I got an email with a 15% code and notice they are doing free overnight shipping, so I ordered the switch yesterday. The price shipped, after tax, was cheaper than the normal pre-tax price for the part and I now have the part!

It was a single locking lever mini DPDT switch but it was double ESD bagged and then shipped in a box that could have held hundreds of them. Then there were three additional ESD baggies-- one for the nuts, and one each for the washers. It's like I broke into someone's house and said, "Give me all your money" and they said "Here you go, but don't leave without taking a fresh baked cookie. And here's the keys to the car. There's a coupon for a free wash and wax in the glove box."

I just got the mailer today. Not a bad little deal. Spend $25 and get an Arduino Uno and free shipping. I have at least one project in mind that I could use that for.

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/a000066/arduino-corporation?utm_source=eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_term=products&utm_content=arrow_free_arduino_sale&utm_campaign=arrow_na_en_spend25-free-arduino-promo-control-a_jun2018

I've been working for about a year now on a really challenging build for a friend of a friend. the pedal is coming along but I'm waiting on some machining work that's taking longer than expected and I hated keeping this very patient guy waiting so I offered to build him something cool on my dime.

This is Stomptown's layout of the Harmonic Percolator. I've had the circuit built but not boxed for a very long time. I thought it would make a cool circuit for the purpose. It's such a fantastic sounding fuzz.












I've really gotten into 3D printing and I have a whole internal structure modeled and printed for the fancy pedal I'm working on. I realized that this pedal would benefit from the same type of thing on a smaller scale. I was able to create a 3D printed mounting piece to allow me to top mount signal and power jacks on a 1590B. It works great and it spaces the Lumberg jacks into the enclosure so they're not so sticky-outy. It's bugged me that I couldn't find any star washers to fit these jacks. This holds them in place and gives them the perfect inset. The power jack mounts directly to the printed part and just protrudes through a hole in the enclosure. No need to mount it to the case. I also created a bracket to mount the PCB to that's held in place by the stomp switch. Of course I also 3D printed drilling templates to make sure everything lines up precisely. This is such a fun way to work!

If anyone has a 3D printer and wants to try out the top mount setup just PM me and I'll send you STLs of the bracket and drilling template. If you want to design your own, Hammond and Lumberg offer STEP files of their jacks and enclosures. I was able to drop them right into Fusion 360 and model around them.

I thought the point of Focusrite's Clarett line was zero latency via thunderbolt. This looks like a re-badged Scarlett with a fancier GUI and a new DSP algorithm to emulate the ISA1. There's no latency advantage here. You still need to do direct monitoring from what I can see. Focusrite is really getting more and more into the smoke and mirrors game.

I'm still using a Saffire unit that works perfectly.

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/focusrite-announces-clarett-usb-interfaces/?utm_content=article1-button&utm_source=insync&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180113

Take a look at what Lawrence is carrying these days.

https://lovemyswitches.com/taiway-3pdt-on-on-switch-solder-lug-short-shaft/

A few years ago I had put in a request for Taiway or similar quality toggles in a 3pdt short bat configuration. He was only carrying the cheapies at the time and I didn't feel confident about using them in customer builds. I honestly forgot about it and figured my suggestion was white noise even though he said he appreciated the feedback.

Fast forward to October and he sends me an email referencing my request and says that he's now carrying the Taiway brand! I was super impressed that he tracked the communication and followed up. At that time he still didn't have the 3PDTs but he does now!

He really has some fantastic prices and does a great job of being honest about which parts are really nice quality and which need to be treated gingerly. I really like that. I'm planning to buys some of the toggles and I want to give one of those DeMont super premium stomp switches a try when he gets them back in stock.

I'm working on a custom build for a guy who wants to have Russian labeling for controls. He has been studying Russian but isn't fluent enough to be confident he would get the names right and I'm not sure google translate would work either. The circuit is a CE-2, so I'm looking for the Russian words for: chorus, vibrato, rate, level, and depth in the guitar effect sense of the words.

I'm not sure if it's possible to put cyrillic script here on the forum. If not, I can give my email address to whoever can help me out. Thanks!

Merry Christmas friends! It's 26F and white outside. That's pretty rare for where I live.

I decided to splurge and get a decent guitar stand for once in my life, having always used the $10 tripods. I was a little stuck between the Hercules or the K&M. I love K&M mic stands so I figured the quality would be good. I wasn't wrong. This thing is tight and solid and will hold anything very securely. At $44 it is more than worth it. The only thing that makes me nervous is what it might do to a nitro finish, but from what I've learned, don't trust any rubber or foam on nitro for any length of time. Should be fine for when my guitar is on stage though.

We have reserve seating already purchased for opening night thanks to my kid. I'm not as pumped for this as I feel like I should be. I feel like TFA is still holding up well for me. I hope this can live up.

https://youtu.be/GgBH_UoTu_U

Hey.

I just wanted to drop a line in to say hi to my MB buds since it's been forever. There's no real reason for not being active around here other than just other stuff in life that's had my attention. Then it starts to feel like it's going to be a bunch of work to get caught back up with all the posts I've missed.

I got the photobucket shakedown email the other day and that was enough to make me want to hop on and see if others were seeing the same thing. Well, thanks photobucket. I needed the kick in the pants to get back here and see what my friends are up to. Sorry I won't be sending you 400 bucks. Or any bucks.

I'm slowly churning through some builds but I don't have anything to show yet. It could be a while too. Hopefully this fall I'll have something worth posting.

Bought me a 3D printer kit. (Anet A8) It's on its way from China. I'm looking forward to playing with that. I'm sure it will be frustrating and fun.

The only other thing I've been geeking out over lately is buying plants and trees for my place. I guess I'm doing landscaping but that's kind of a strong word for it. I love it though.

My wife and I were out in Stomptown's neck of the woods this past week so they invited us over for a BBQ and I got to see what he's been working on. I won't spill the beans, but Jon has not been idle. I hope he posts soon.

peace out

Better late than never

Curious if those of you who already own 3D printers think this machine would be a practical, useful tool. This video suggests that it is. I kind of want one

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=ispolAHB4jA

This is a fascinating watch if you have the time. I'm surprised at how much of this he just eyeballs. There must have been a mountainous learning curve with a crazy amount of trial and error. And the equipment investment looks huge.

This started life as an EHX Hot Tubes nano that was on the fritz. It was owned by a kid at my church who was wondering if I could fix it for him. I wasn't able to troubleshoot it, and it was all SMD anyway, so I asked him if he would want me to put an overdrive circuit in there instead.

I didn't tell him that I was going to customize the exterior too. Anyway, it was more of a pain than I expected trying to get everything to fit right.

The fish and TH logo is a reference to the band he's in, called Tuna Head. They fancy themselves to be a punk band, so I tried to give it that kind of feel a little bit.

Not super proud of the wiring, but it's serviceable. The only thing that I didn't get done was grounding the enclosure. That's owing to the cliff jacks and me kind of forgetting. I figure if he runs into RF, he can crank the gain and go with it. It's punk after all.

Got me an EHX 720 looper!

I used to have a Jamman solo and never could bond with it. I thought it killed my tone and it had too many features for a 1 stomp pedal. I thought the solution would be a TC Ditto, but then the Ditto X2 came out and I thought having a dedicated stop switch would be nice. Thought I would wind up with one of those until I found this one. It's the perfect mix of simplicity and features for my purposes. Very much in the honeymoon with this one, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a keeper.

[TO FINISH:]

2016 has not been super productive for me in the "projects completed" column, but I've been stewing on a lot of fun ideas and I've made progress on some fronts. I'm hoping 2017 will be the year I have time (& money) to execute on some plans.

Here are my 2017 guitar geekery resolutions:


TO FINISH:
- the 1590G project I've been chipping away at
- a gate/maximizer dual pedal for my board
- a 4-effect multi that's been partly done for at least a couple years
- an OD circuit I've been fiddling with

TO START (and hopefully finish):
- I have a chimaera board that's been rocked forever. I want to make a steampunk pedal out of it
- a harmonic percolator project with some fun surprises
- something with nixie tubes
- a rat (with a creepy twist)
- a couple aesthetic ideas I've really been wanting to try
- I have a cool old radio cabinet that I want to convert to an amp & effects rig. I think it will be 5F2A based
- hopefully a Timelapse!!

When you go to fire up your iron and you realize it's been on since Friday afternoon? Yeah, I just had that feeling.

I know it's only a holiday for some of us, but I just wanted to express my thankfulness. Too much to list! (even with all the weirdness of late in this country)

I think this is pretty cool.

It definitely sounds different than what you get with a short delay. Not so phase-crippled sounding to me. On some settings in stereo I can't localize the guitar, but I kind of like that. I think this could help make a massive lead tone, and I wonder if it would make for some nice crunch rhythm.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MimiQ?adpos=1t1&creative=149966563605&device=c&matchtype=b&network=g&gclid=CJq4meP94s8CFYqifgodVJgPMg