Liquid Eternity chorus

[mjg]

This is a Liquid Eternity chorus from https://www.nucleonfx.com/, based on the Arion SCH-1 from the 80s. It's a nice sounding chorus, and works well with guitar and bass from my testing.

This PCB came as a prize from the Build of the Year competition in 2017, so thanks go to Rutger at Nucleon from providing the prize (along with a few more PCBs I'm still working on!)

There are a lot of components on this board, and it was very tightly packed. Good soldering practice.  I added a momentary switch in place of R13, to allow for a momentary removal of the dry signal - it gives a really swirly vibe type sound when pressed.

Only 'issue' I had with the build was that I wanted to use a clear blue LED, but it didn't seem to play nicely with the optical bypass system on the board. I'll revisit that at a later date (or, most likely, just put up with the red defuse LED).

I also need to get a source of metal washers. The white plastic ones don't look fantastic with the rest of this build.  (Anyone know where to buy the right size metal washers, in Australia, let me know.  I've tried the hardware store but the M12 washers seem slightly too small.)

The guts:



For the enclosure, something new for me.  My partner got bought me a voucher for a metal engraving course for my recent birthday (where she finds these ideas I don't know), so I took this enclosure along to the 2nd day of the course.  Turns out I was the only person at the course, so I had two days of one on one instruction, and we got to work on whatever I wanted.  My efforts are pretty amateur, the stuff that the instructor does is amazing. 

A few photos from the engraving course:





The text is done with a tiny chisel by hand, rocking the chisel side to side as I wrote the letters. The other cuts have been done by a hand held, air powered chisel, to cut the pattern into the aluminium. Then used an air powered stipple thing to put tiny little dots into the pattern.

I finished it off with 400 grit sand paper.  That's taken off some of the pattern, so I needed to carve deeper in some spots obviously.  I'll be looking into getting some of the chisels to use on future builds.  The whole air powered setup costs thousands apparently, so won't be getting that any time soon.   

[cooder]

That is very very cool and beautiful, well done and great effort on first time engraving I'm sure!
You must be stoked!
Great inside too, lovely pedal one of a kind!
Love those swirly decorations in corners!

[m-Kresol]

awesome! cool to see some new finishing techniques

[mjg]

Thanks, 

Yeah I was amazed that I could even cut a line in some metal with a tiny little jack hammer.  So being able to produce that on the 2nd day was very cool. 

I have to say, aluminium was a bit harder to work with - started out on brass, and that cut very nicely.  I'll be the first to buy a brass enclosure if Tayda start selling them. 

Which reminds me - I tried a Tayda brand power jack on this build, to see what the quality is like.  It's functional, but it seems to me that it isn't quite right.  It take a lot of force to plug in or remove the power.  It also seems to cut out if you turn the plug a bit.  So I don't think I'll be getting more of those. 

[Rockhorst]

Great looking build man! Glad you like it. The engraving looks nice as well. Etching might be faster but I can see how this could develop into a 'thing'

About the blue LED thing: The opto switchers, whether H11F1 or TLP222 need some minimal current to switch on. Using a relatively large current limiting resistor (it's in the name) to reduce the brightness of the LEDs does not play nice with this scheme. I'll have to make a note in the build docs. Good thing you breadboarded first.

My trick for the blue LED: I got a 1000 diffused 3mm blue LEDs from eBay, use a 3k3 CLR and have it shine through a 5mm Fresnel lens. Very good visibility without going blind. You can also dim the LED a bit by pulling it a bit further back into the enclosure.

[matmosphere]

Very nice! Always cool to see new techniques!!

I have a rocktek chorus and I'm pretty sure it's the same thing just different branding. Great sound chorus but super cheap build quality. Yours won't break if you stomp on it with shoes on 

[stringsthings]

I also need to get a source of metal washers. The white plastic ones don't look fantastic with the rest of this build.  (Anyone know where to buy the right size metal washers, in Australia, let me know.

Great build!  BLMS/Love My Switches has them.

[mjg]

Thanks!

I did check LMS, but for the $1 of washers it was going to cost something like $20 postage.  Ouch.  Not the fault of LMS, that just seems to be what it costs to send packages down this way. 

[Turnip-Tone]

Great build. Fantastic effort on the engraving. Future efforts will only get more awesome
I fully understand what you mean on postage down here. Can be a third of your build cost or more sometimes. Sheesh!

[drog_trog]

A very contemporary look. good build all round. got a demo?

[mjg]

I'll try do a demo, but it would be my kid playing, and he only ever uses pedals with all the knobs turned to 11.    

[stringsthings]

I'll try do a demo, but it would be my kid playing, and he only ever uses pedals with all the knobs turned to 11.   

Hilarious!   

[Rockhorst]

I'll try do a demo, but it would be my kid playing, and he only ever uses pedals with all the knobs turned to 11.   

The hallmark of good parenting and education

[ahiddentableau]

Engraving.  What a great idea.  Congrats on a pretty pedal.

[nzCdog]

Woah... That etch is hot!