Messages

I think the Distortion+ is a good choice.  Maybe it's a sentimental fav for me because it was the first pedal I built, but it's flexible, sounds good, is simple to build and easy to mod (I think Brian Wampler's mods are all over the place and he does a good job of laying things out).  One reservation, though: make sure it has enough gain for you.  I think a lot of people would consider it more an OD than a distortion.  I don't have a strong opinion.  With the gain maxxed it's got a fair bit of gain, but it's never over the top.  It also functions well as a cleanish boost and OD.  But if you're thinking you want heavy metal levels of distortion you're going to be disappointed.

I think it would be a mistake to just discount LM386 based designs out of hand.  There are a lot of designs out there and they can sound quite different from one another.  Purple plexi?  Smash drive?  They also tend to be compact, which is going be awfully important for you if you're dead set on stripboarding into a A-size enclosure!

The boost tone favor with a big Klon flavor...it's not the chip, it's my burr-brown saver. I gots more treble than a lime green saber. Just tube that screamer with a dope fresh neighbor.

This made my morning.

Another amazing build.  I bow down to you and the helpful Oompa-Loompa you hire to use his tiny little hands to finish the wiring!

Nice!

I built a 335 guitar kit from the same place.  I reshaped the neck to make it narrower, did a complete fret level and crown, cut a new bone nut, and then completely replaced the pickups (with a duncan Alnico Pro II in the neck and the slash signature APII in the bridge--they were the most vintage style I could find relatively cheap used on eBay at the time and wow, they're great...the slash pickup in particular is the cat's ass), all the electronics and all the hardware.  Finished with keda dye and truoil, it really turned out great. 

Does it have the imitation rosewood fingerboard on yours?  (I just clicked in the link and it appears so?)  That's really the only part of the kit that I'm unhappy with.  Mine is already flaking off--the little strips of fibre are peeling off of the surface of the board resulting in pitting.  I'm considering putting a finish on the fingerboard.  How's the board on yours?  Did your bro finish it, or leave it raw?  How's it working for you?

I just saw this and figured it was getting notice here.  While the feature set is spartan, the main idea and the layout is a straight rip off.  Kind of sad.  On the other hand, it's a great idea and now it'll reach a more mainstream audience.  I guess that's a bit of a silver lining.

EHX should make a donation to Peter's teaching charity/teaching endeavor, if that's still going on.  Not going to hold my breath on that, though.

I second the idea of thinking about enclosures as well as boards.  PedalPCB's having standard designs and then getting Tayda to sell predrilled enclosures is shockingly great.  You can do 'em up fancy if you like, but in general taking away one of the two most tedious parts of a build has made me want to build more than normal.  Doing faceplates is another great idea.

It's important to me because an intermittent solder joint is probably the single worst thing to troubleshoot in our hobby.  If good solder technique can keep me from going there, then I'm a fan.

I was wondering how often you guys change the tip on your irons.  Because I've been using the same one for a long time now--counting age in years--and it's still going strong.  Leaded solder on a good quality station (I have a Hakko but it's the older one with the dial for temperature control), and I'm a hobbiest so it's not like I'm using it for hours every day.  But it's surely got hundreds of hours on it.  I bought a new tip a few months ago out of a sense of obligation, but I haven't installed it yet.

If there's no voltage at all on pin 8 when you pull the IC then I totally agree with you: replacing the CA3080s with known genuine units is the next logical step.

I have some personal experience with fakes like you describe.  I got a few off ebay from China a few years ago and they were branded intersil and they were fake.  Really, really fake.

Small Bear just got a new shipment of 3080s in so sourcing real ones is easy enough.  Let us know how it works out.

First thing that jumped out at me was that Pin 8 on one of your 3080s (IC11) has full positive voltage.  According to the schematic and normal use of those chips, that should be no contact.  So that's the first thing I'd look at.  Solder bridge?  Something amiss in that area?

Welcome, and congrats on your build!

I wouldn't worry about the wiring.  If somebody strated a thread asking members to post the wiring jobs on their first few builds, you'd stop being so hard on yourself.

The LaSiDo guitars--Seagull, Norman, Art & Luthrie, Simon and Patrick--may be a decent fit based on your requirements.  I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played them in a while, but years ago I had a Norman B20, and it's pretty much what you said you wanted.  1-11/16" nut width, satin finish, classic/understated looks (the rosette was the only thing on the instrument anybody could even think about calling blingy), andit had a substantial C shaped neck with fat shoulders.  At the time, all the Seagulls and Normans and A&L guitars I tried were similar from guitar to guitar, too.  And they sound good.  Big, bold, meat and potatoes kind of sound--I thought they recorded well.  Worth considering.

In the end, I changed over to Guilds for the same reason you cited: I wanted a neck that was more like my favourite electric.  For me, that electric was a 90s Deluxe Strat Plus, so kind of the exact opposite of your preferences.  Thin.  A lot of Guild acoustics from the Rhode Island era forward have slender necks, but there's a fair bit of variety.  I've got a jumbo with a neck like my 90s strat that I love, but I also have an F-30 and its neck is considerably fatter.  Most of the Chinese Guilds I've played have thin necks, however, so be careful if you want to go in that direction or you may be disappointed.

Aion just released a G2 PCB project and the documentation (if memory serves) has some mod info with respect to bass response.  Worth checking out.

https://aionelectronics.com/project/cygnus-distortion-sustainer-cornish-g-2/

https://www.dropbox.com/s/miogjh7i0t42j30/cygnus_documentation.pdf?dl=1

I saw this referenced in the most recent edition of TapeOp and thought it might interest some folks around here.  It's a different take on the whole "third hand"/"helping hands" deal using silicone.

http://www.thecheese.biz/

Looks pretty cool, particularly if you are doing much in the way of guitar/amp/studio tech work.

... I really don't like the artwork. Looks a bit Black & Decker.

That's classic!  And unfortunately true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tf1wzg4rdE