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Probably not, but I thought I'd check with "the world" first. 

This is the sort of utility board that I would get some mileage out of for testing/breadboarding.  And it could be a good product for someone (hint, hint) to offer.

Okay, so it's the "bottom of the barrel" tape delay, and the one I got has got a few issues that need to be sorted out, but I finally got a real, no-joke tape delay.

I was browsing Reverb.com last week, when I saw a listing for a Univox EC-80A...for $100.  :shock: I naturally assumed it was all busted up and non-working, but upon reading the listing, it was indeed in working shape. The issue was that the repeats are "warbly" and "just don't sound right". So I offered $90, and the seller accepted! I messaged the guy a few times and he was really helpful in explaining the issues and what all maintenance he'd already done. And it turns out he grew up very near here (but not lives in WV). Neato!

Turns out the guy thought it was the tape, so he sent the cartridge off to somewhere in Europe to have it re-loaded with new tape, but that didn't fix the sound issues. He also cleaned/lubed the rollers, capstans, and also cleaned the heads. No dice.

I plugged it in earlier, and I definitely here what he was talking about. But it definitely sounds like the tape to me. So I popped the cartridge out, and sure enough I see some crinkle in the tape (all along one edge). So either the tape repacking service ripped this guy off, or there is an alignment issue that is causing the tape to get crinkled in the machine. Guess I'll be schooling myself on how to align tape heads.

Anyway, I have the schematic and looked up some mods/improvements for it. There are a couple obvious / no brainer things to change, such as the outlandishly low-value 4k7 input loading resistor  :shock:  and the pot for delay time can be increased in value to extend the max time (although the stock time ain't too shabby).

I'll update this thread as I make mods and whatnot. The initial sounds I'm getting are promising, though. It's on the lower-fi side of things, but the tape is only 1/8" and I can't bitch too much for a $90 tape delay. 

The cartridges are "2-track" format very similar to a pre-recorded cartridge called PlayTape that briefly hit the market in the late 60s, and it is a distant cousin to the much more famous 8-track. Apparently, you can buy a PlayTape off ebay and make a few minor mods to the case and use in the Univox units. I may give that a try as well.

And lucky for me, the biggest stockpile of new old-stock tape heads is located about 15 miles from here. So I may just head over there with the delay and see if I can pick the brain of the guy who owns the business. Who knows what kind of cool stuff that guys has. Here's the site if you're interested: http://www.jrfmagnetics.com/

Side note: This thing is a lot smaller than I thought it would be.   







Here's the back with the cartridge poking out. Looks like Atari!   










Guts!

We've got movies covered in its own thread, and I find myself spending my viewing time on TV series rather than movies these days. It's the golden area of great serial programming, in my opinion.

What I'm currently watching (or waiting to come back with a new season):

Game of Thrones
Vikings
Sons of Anarchy
Falling Skies
Breaking Bad (just about to finish this one, so no spoilers!!)
The Walking Dead (also not to the current episode yet)


Things I plan to watch:
The Red Road (on Sundace, starring "Khal Drogo" from GOT)
Shameless
House of Cards

Been jonesing for one of these for years. Saw one on Reverb the other day for a stupid-low price and just had to have it. GAS got me. 






So I'm testing this thing earlier and I'm thinking that the new Chinese BBDs they put in there (I assumed Belling BL3208) are sounding especially amazing. I pop the hood to see what's going on, when I see a row of four MN3008s.    Then it makes sense to me why it came with a special-tipped 24V DC wall wart.   






I don't see any op amps, so I'm going to assume they are all on the bottom side (SMD).


Anyway, I'm digging the tones. I don't much care for the Vibrato modulation, but the Chorus set with low depth is, for me, the classic modulated delay sound. Max delay time is just over half a second. Maxed out it's a little noisy, but totally well within the acceptable range. Considering the low price I got, I'm chuffed all around with this purchase. 

I was curious if there are members here that live in Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, etc?

I'm on the hunt for some Cold War-era CCCP stuff, and all of it comes from the above countries, it seems. I was hoping to work out some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement to help me track down some good stuff without getting hosed by ebay sellers.

So if you live in the above countries (or nearby), please let me know.

Я с нетерпением ожидаю услышать от вас.    (hope that makes sense)

Ancient Astronaught over at the I Love Fuzz forum liked the sound clip of my last DuoVibe build, but wanted a very conservative look with no markings on it. Easy!  :lol:

I'll let him decide on which knobs.

I futzed around a LOT with the Rate control to get it as un-bunched as possible. I'll be posting my notes elsewhere on the forum to lay out the results. I'm also finding that a water-clear red LED is giving the most phasery sounding tones.











And the obligatory gut shot:

Thought this was interesting:
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?p=17015361#post17015361

That links straight to a post from the guy at Rocket Pedals, which apparently had some involvement.

First reported (in English) on FreeStompBoxes. I didn't see it post here yet, so if I missed the thread, I apologize for the dupes.
http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=23706

So yeah, it's 3x PT2399 with a gang of passives, a logic gate (or whatever it is), and an op amp. All surface mount.

Not sure if this is the final/verified schematic, but this is pretty close:

SO. MUCH. METAL. 

I got this as an "upgrade" to my Diavlo RD5 (5-watt with 1 6v6), as it it is 20 watts with 2x 6v6 and has separate clean channel. I figured the dirty side of the preamp would be pretty similar in both amps, but my god was I wrong. The RD5 gets pretty damn cranked up, but the RD20 can really bring the br00tz. I can't believe how much bass this thing can put out. The *chugga-chugga* is substantial.    This is the first amp I've ever played in which I ended up turing the gain down a bit because max is ... I can't believe I'm about to say this ... a little too much.    Even with gain maxed, full chords still maintain a lot of clarity and note separation.

The clean channel is sparkly clean and is a great platform for pedals. To go along with that, the effects loop is instrument level to play nice with pedals. And I will be using the XLR emulated speaker out for recording (via iRig Pro). 

I kinda wish it had independent EQ for each channel, but it's really not much of a hassle. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the sound and fit/finish.

...which, if you're not familiar, consists of going out for Chinese food and watching a couple movies in the theater.

Who's with me for next year?

This is a very long build log, so if you are in a hurry, scroll down to the TL;DR just above the photos. 

Chris B sent me a gutted Danelectro Cool Cat enclosure (some kind of drive pedal, but not the Timmy ripoff one) a long time ago. Maybe it was PIFmas 2011. I don't exactly remember.

Anyway, I figured it would be a cool vehicle for a simple dirt circuit, and the Inline 8 board fit the available space (and the control labels are nearly identical). So in April of 2012, I set about figuring out how to make it work. I know that's the date because I checked my Smallbear order history to see when I ordered the little 12mm solder lug pots that were necessary to make it fit. It didn't take long to figure out that everything would fit, but I had a big problem: I'm lazy.

My laziness hit a real snag with the Danelectro-supplied 3PDT switch assembly and the input/output/9v jack board. They are very low-profile and clever, but the routing of everything wasn't marked. So I was faced with trying to figure out how they'd wired everything originally. I couldn't just replace their switch with a typical blue stomper, as they are way too big (see comparison photo below). I also had to keep the I/O board since the 9v jack was square and there wasn't enough room to drill it out and go round.

Then I had the bright idea to just desolder the tiny footswitch and wire it the way I normally would any switch. This was before I had my Hakko 808 gun, so I ended up wrecking the switch. I even tried to replace the guts that I pulled from another 3PDT, but the pieces were too big. So I emailed Danelectro to see if I could buy a replacement, and they were nice enough to send me one for free. Instead of desoldering again (now with my handy gun), I decided to just figure it out. I looked at a diagram of the most common 3PDT wiring methods and quickly figured out which one they used. BAM, now we're in business...well, several months later when I got around to it.   

Anyway, I decided that tonight was the night this sucker was going together. The 12mm pots were the clutch pieces of the puzzle, as nothing else will really fit (9mm would fit, but solder lugs are easier to work with). To keep it neat, I used 3-gang ribbon wire for the pots. The Dano daughterboards also help keep the wiring to a minimum. The big challenge was the battery compartment. It juts into the enclosure right where the circuit PCB needs to sit, so I pulled the compartment out, cut the door flush, and glued it on.  :mrgreen:

TL;DR: I jammed an Inline 8 PCB (Gun'nor with a single tone control) into a Dano Cool Cat enclosure.


Here is a regular 3PDT vs the Dano tiny version (wish we could buy these for our projects):






12mm pots in the box:






Board in place:






All buttoned up:







Exterior:







Glued-up battery door:

I'm getting one:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/566

I liked the first one so much, I thought I'd build a smaller one. 

This one has a switch in place of the previous Waveshape pot. So it's down to two pots, two switches. Overall footprint is a LOT smaller as well.

I've populated four boards for this circuit on two different PCBs and they all sound damn-near identical, regardless of LED type or LDR type. I've got A100K in there now for Speed, but it's too bunched up. I think C100K would be a lot better, but still it's quite usable.

If you want a board, they will be offered as part of the almost-totally-ready fundraiser sale for Function f(x). Should just be another week or so. Look for an announcement here on the forum.

I went with yet another alcohol ink look, and added some metal corners to give it a Victorian sort of steampunk-ish look. I also glued on some metal decorative gears to cover the glory holes. She's a mess inside, as I did some pretty heinous mis-drilling.

I had some cash burning a virtual hole in my PayPal account when this guy popped up on TGP at just the right time.     Got a really good deal on it (sans tubes). I've been stalking this amp (or any of the Daisycutter models that have been made over the past few years) for a while but never saw one at the right price or the right time.

A lot of Phaez amps are sold without a cabinet, and this one was no exception. But it has a nice faceplate. This one is from 2009, back when Randy Fay built everything 100% true point-to-point. Looks like a mess, but it's very quiet (especially considering just how much gain this thing has). He uses a generic preamp PCB these days for many of the builds. This particular build also has a tube-buffered effects loop.










I knew that Randy used to gut Valve Jr heads and combos, save the chassis and PT, and build his designs in the shell. So I had a hunch that this one would probably fit in VJ head cab. I have one I'm saving for some imaginary project ( ), and wouldn't you know it fits like a glove! But, the amp chassis is vertically opposite from the VJ (tubes point up rather than hang down. So I had to flip the cab over and swap the feet/handle around. I took off the Epiphone badge, but that left some holes, so I glued on some spare pseudo-rune decorative stone things I got at Michaels a few years ago.

This was basically years of hoarding random shit finally working out for a project.   

Way back in the day, I was pretty active with the SETI@home project. Basically, you volunteer CPU time on your computer(s) to process data take from SETI telescopes. So you're helping search for aliens, essentially.  

Anyway, there are teams who pool their "credits". I created a team called DIY Effects Pedals Community in case anybody who is already running SETI@home could join up, or if you're not running it but would be interested in check it out.

It used to be a standalone application, but the SETI app was bundled with a larger project called BOINC. All the projects under that umbrella use volunteered CPU for research. I also participate in rosetta@home which is dedicated to finding cures for things like cancer.

The cool thing about the software is that if you have a multi-core processor (which most everyone does these days), you can simultaneously contribute to multiple projects or work on multiple "tasks" from the same project. And of course, you can dictate how much CPU time the application gets, make it only turn on when the computer is idle, etc.

So check out BOINC and the SETI@home project and join the team if you're inclined.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Man this thing RIPS!!!!   

This is my slight tweak on the classic Tonebender MKII. I switched to NPN silicon trannies (with smoothing caps to make it softer like germanium) for negative ground operation, and I added two trimmers (Q2 and Q3) to really get a hold of the bias.

This might just be my favorite fuzz/distortion build ever. And that's a bold statement coming from me.

Finish is my third try at alcohol inks + Mod Podge. I tried some new stuff this time around. Came out pretty neat. I didn't even bother finishing the sides or the back, because let's face it: nobody gives a shit about the sides.   

The drilling is quite atrocious. I used one larger knob to offset to visual appearance of the pot shafts not be properly centered. But not even the fun finish takes your eye away from how far off the LED/bezel hole is.   

I don't normally do the jacks on top, but I figured what the hell.

I worked up this circuit as a possible commercial product. Still not sure what the fate of it will be, but at least I got this one cool pedal out of it, if nothing else. I'll post the schematic eventually.

Started working on the design back in February but just now got around to testing the proto boards. Everything works as is and it is dead quiet (no ticking whatsoever).

The downside is that the physical layout of the hardware was pretty bad on my part. So I had to manually wire some stuff that should have been board mounted. And of course, one of the pots was wired backward.  :lol: I do that every damn time.  

I've already revamped the layout to  make it a lot smaller, fix the layout issues, and I ditched one of the pots in favor of a switch (it makes a lot more sense that way).

Okay, so it's a two-stage vibe-phaser thing using LDRs as the variable resistance element. You may recall that I've played around with this general concept quite a bit. So far, this one is my favorite, as it hits the perfect mix between complexity and functionality.

There is a phase mode and a vibe mode. The phase mode sound like the vibe mode with with no pitch shift at all (just filter-like oscillations) and a bit sharper vowel sound. It actually sounds good both slow and fast. Backing off the depth a bit smooths out the triangle LFO into more like a sine wave, which helps on slow speeds.  The pot I ditched in the new design is a wave shape control, but you can really only hear the differences at the extremes. Slow square wave sounds weird, but it sounds great at higher speeds (and passable if the depth is backed off at slow speeds). It doesn't do sea-sick pitch bends, but you can definitely hear it in the vibe mode.

I'll get a demo clip posted in the next couple days. Finish is alcohol inks sealed up with Mod Podge, which also adds a nice texture.

DEMO ADDED:
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/effdub/duovibe-demo[/soundcloud]
It's a little quiet, so you may want to turn up your speakers a bit. Goofed up on the recording level setting.

One of my fellow Eagle enthusiasts did up a layout of the STM with three board-mounted pots (and one trimmer), spacing for a vactrol, and it's got a black solder mask.

The name on it says "BJP@2012".

I've been wracking my brain for the past week trying to recall who made it. Checked my PMs from the last 12 months, did some searching. Nothing.

So I give up. Who made this?  

This is actually my first complete regular pedal build since October (2012). Breakin' the dry spell!!  :lol:

Okay, so this was sort of an oddball idea I had some time ago, and I figured it was time to box it up. I'm not ready to release a schematic yet, as I still have some tweaking to do, but it's getting close. Anyway, it's a basic Crybaby-type wah circuit with "Q" adjustable on a trimmer and a toggle for one of the tone caps. I added to that an LFO that modulates the Wah pot value (in parallel). The resulting effect is part tremolo, part wah filter, part phaser (in some settings). I have another idea that might actually work better, so I'll be trying that next, but as is it sounds pretty neat. There is also a toggle to pull the LFO out so the pedal can function as a simple "stuck" wah.

Like I said, it needs some value tweaking, but I'm happy with the way it turned.

I had a BLAST doing the enclosure. I finally tried out alcohol inks, and they are just fantastic to work with. Getting cool patterns is brainless, and you really can't do anything wrong. The only tricky part is protecting the cool patterns from wear. So I did two thin coats of Mod Podge (brushed on) and then two light coats of acrylic sealer. Turned out stellar I think. I did the knobs too, and the flat metal parts of all the hardware as well. This stuff is addictive. I've already inked several other things around the house as well.  :lol:

Then I did some stamping around the wah pot hole.

I love Rats, especially the real ones with the nice steel enclosures. But the new-stock Chinese Rats are built kinda shitty and the parts selection is abysmal. I've done half a dozen total rebuilds in which I remove basically all the parts from the board and replace them with good stuff. So I figured why not make a PCB that just drops right in a standard modern Rat enclosure, and include some of the more popular/useful mods right on the board.

The boards arrived yesterday, and I got the first one populated and installed. I got a beat-to-hell Rat2, and  a previous owner went all Keely and drilled the shit out of it and added four toggle switches all over the place. But it was a total abortion when I got the pedal. I filled all glory holes with some 8-32 "decorative" (I use the term loosely) hardware and popped a brand new board in there. Now it's awesome.  :mrgreen:

The PCB uses 9mm vertical PCB-mount pots (available from Mammoth or Smallbear). The mods are toggled via a 3-gang DIP switch. The mods are pretty simple: three clipping diode options (LED, silicon, germanium) and the old Ruetz mod as an on/off. The LEDs are always in the circuit, but since the other diode options have a lower forward voltage drop, once they are in the circuit, the LEDs are effectively shorted. So basically you can get Rat, Turbo Rat, and You Dirty Rat tones, as well as the lower-gain of the Ruetz mod, all on one board with no drilling. The board also has strain relief holes for the wires at the top of the board, and it is setup to fit the LED perfectly to light up the center of the "RAT" logo (as per stock).