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A (going) postal report from Sweden...

* Since I started selling PCB's, little over two years ago, the cost for international letters has raised from 12,50 SEK to 21 SEK. Almost double the cost! The domestic postage has also been raised alot which has made people seeing red...

* At the same time the quality of the post service has gone from good to very bad. Delays/increased shipping times, a much higher % of lost packages, non-working online services, notifications of recieved packages not being sent out, damaged packages and so on.

* Lately I've been getting more and more returns without any obvious reason. Adresses, customs declaration, sufficient postage ect, all checks out.

* Any kind of traceable shipping method has become so expensive so I haven't even bothered adding it as an option in my shop.

* It's actually often much cheaper (the shipping cost) for me to order stuff from other EU countries, than if I order stuff from within Sweden...

* The swedish post (Postnord) has now decided to add a 120 SEK (around 15 USD) cost (a "handling fee") to ALL shipments coming from asia, no matter how small. Every single package will also be charged with 25% import tax. This will force me to raise the cost of the PCB's and it will make shopping from tayda/ebay ect. not longer worth it.

Even though this will have a negative effect on me personally I still think it's a good thing though as it will keep people from buying cheap crap from Wish/Alibaba. Sweden has around 150 000 packages arriving from China every day and I'm sure that kind of shopping is unsustainable for our planet... It's also probably a major contributing factor why the post service has become so poor.

* The swedish people are so unhappy with Postnord that threats and assaults against their employees has become common and someone even made an mobile app called Postmord (post-murder) which is a game where you throw packages until they break (it's pretty funny actually).

* Sweden doesn't have post offices... Since Postnord became a privatly owned company (in 1994, before that it was owned by the state) all packages are picked up/sent out at grochery stores and handled by the grochery store employees.

* I live around 20 minutes by car from the nearest supermarket/post. It's a very small town so their opening hours are very limited. All other shipping curiers are too far away so I have no choice but to use Postnord.

Sorry for the long rant...

Freppo, I reckon I saw both those videos back when they were first done.  Someone posted them to the overclockers.com.au forums, I think..

Haha, cool. It's a small world.

Thanks guys. 

What are the SMD opamps?

They are OPA1642. Great op amps.

Here's my newest build.

It's a four channel "high end" headphone amp for the studio.
Built from scratch, so it was a very time consuming.


I got sick of my very noisy and bad sounding Behringer headphone amp..
This one is based on the headphone amp inside my Soundtracs mixer, but I added a few improvements.


This one can be configured as four separate mono inputs, or two sets of stereo inputs.
Wanted it this way so I can do headphone mixes with my Soundtracs mixer which has four aux outputs.
So four people can all have their own mono mix, or two different stereo mixes when recording vocals ect.


I built the PSU on veroboard. It's adjustable and puts out +/- 17v for the amps.
It's doesn't have any fuses, but there's a couple of "saftey resistors" that will burn if it draws too much current.
At first powerup one of the resistors started to smoke... Works fine now after I changed it and the LM317 voltage regulator.
Building PSU's that runs on mains voltage is always a bit scary.



Fun build. I really enjoyed building this one and it works great, plays loud and clear.

Now onto pedal stuff again!...

More dog petting is always a good thing

2016 was a shit year for me. 2017 was much better. I had alot of freelance work and I got married in december.
But it was also a struggle.. I was constantly feeling stressed out when I didn't have enough time or energy to do everything I wanted.

My personal expectations and goals for 2018
* Learn to chill out and take better care of myself (I need better sleeping habits)
* Play more music! My new band just got our own rehearsal space.
* More long walks in the forest with the dogs
* More gaming (boardgames) with friends and family

Parasit Studio goals for 2018
* Record more bands!
* Keep on building pedals and releasing new DIY projects
? Expand the new DIY projects to studiogear aswell - preamps, eq, komps ect.
* Improve the build documents

This is epic!  Great job putting these together Freppo!

Thanks 
It was fun making them, but a huga PITA to draw the lightsaber effects (frame by frame).

Regarding fight style and choreography, the original triology was mainly western swordplay influenced.
Then kung fu in the prequels. Ray Park (the actor playing Darth Maul) is a wushu practicioner (not much of an actor).

I think they have hit a good balance between different styles of martial arts in TLJ. Good choreography, but noting too over the top.
I also loved the Vader scene in R1.. But I loved the whole movie. I think Rogue One is better than both TFA and TLJ.

I really enjoyed TLJ. Watched it twice already

IMO a better movie than the Force Awakens, which was too much of a rehash of A New Hope (which I didn't mind that much being the first movie to reboot the franchise and all, but a new death star? come on...).

TLJ has many similarities to The Empire Strikes Back aswell, but at least it's much more subtle, and the storyline is somewhat original. It could have been better. I didn't like the whole casino-world scene(s) and some of the comic relief didn't work for me, but overall I think it's a good movie.

I loved the lightsaber fights. Great choreography without being over the top.

*NERD ALERT!* Me and a couple of friends made a couple of fan films many years ago for the annual theforce.net lightsaber choreography contest. I was behind the camera. We ended up first place in 2007 and second place in 2005 (out of 10-15 groups of contestants from all over the world) 

Adorabe! 

I have two dogs aswell. Couldn't live without them..

Very cool build.  Nice work!
I love the Arcade button. 

This mic preamp should fit the bill
http://www.parasitstudio.se/uploads/2/4/4/9/2449159/ina217_preamp.gif
It works well with +/- 9volts aswell, so you can use a simple voltage inverter (7660, 1054 ect.) for the negative voltage. If you don't need the balanced outputs you can omit everything in the 5 bottom rows and take the output from C4 (cathode).

It's a variation of the "5$ mic preamp" and follows the INA217 datasheet with only a few minor changes

Wow, very cool!

Here are the Arcade buttons that I used:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/30mm-push-button-replacement-for-arcade-obsf-30-buttons-WF/122546963829?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=422975177801&
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DIYmall-30mm-Snap-in-Push-Button-For-Arcade-Joystick-Stick-Clear-6-Colors/282320092559?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=581418995383&

Bill of Material:
http://www.parasitstudio.se/uploads/2/4/4/9/2449159/super_arcadiator_bom.bom (opens in notepad)

Drilling template:
http://www.parasitstudio.se/uploads/2/4/4/9/2449159/superarcadiatordrill.png (PNG file @ 300 DPI)

I still have a couple of prototype boards left, in case anyone is interested (PM me)
I will not sell any PCB's of this once these prototype boards are gone.

/ Fredrik

Those arcade buttons are sweet! Any chance of a gut shot?

Thanks! There's a gut shot in the end of the video.

You win teh internetz for today.

Needs a coin slot, but the arcade buttons are very awesome!

Might have gone with "1UP" instead of "OCTUP", but still, this build makes me smile.  Great job!

Thanks! That's a great idea. I'll change it to 1UP on the production run

I'd be interested in a board.  Do you have a link (& wiring guide). To the arcade buttons used?  What would the pcb cost (I'm in the US)

Thanks,
Jon

12€ including worldwide shipping. Just PM me and we'll sort it out.
Later I'll upload the BOM (wiring is very straight forward), the drilling template I used and link to the Arcade buttons

cool stuff, Fredrik. I dig the arcade switches. Also, perfect guts!

since you mentioned the switches are momentary, is there some logic chip now processing the switch signal?

Thanks!
Yes, there's logic for the momentary switches. I had to add 3 more CMOS chips for that.
I'll post a schematic of the logic switching section when I have time.

Today I boxed up the first prototype for the "Super Arcadiator!"   



I'm going to put this into production as soon as I have fixed a couple of minor issues. 
This will only be avaliable as a fully assembled pedal (sorry guys!).

It's basically very similar to the original Arcadiator, but all the switches has been replaced with arcade buttons.
Two of the arcade buttons actually works like 3-way switches, so all functionality remains.
It even has a new feature of having both octaves at the same time, and an expression jack for the LFO rate.

First time I have dared to talk (mumble) in a video lol.. (from about 2 minutes in)
I hate the sound of my voice and english is not my language, so I struggle to find the words...
My better half actually convinced me to talk about the pedal.

Got me thinking about doing a video blog, talking about my own projects and pedal building in general..

I got 5 prototype boards left that I thought I might offer for madbean forum members, in case any is interested?

Cool. Thanks for sharing Brian.
Fun channel, but I can't stand that overly excited acting 

Anyone else has some tips for other nerdy electronic channels?
I'm a fan of the EEV blog and the Ben Heck show.

I believe that you can improve on your design a bit and remove one transistor (Q4) if you exchange Q2 to a NPN (2N3904), emitter to ground, R2 to collector. Then you can drive the relay switching directly from Q2 collector (going negative side of the coil, positive side to vcc, just as Q4 is set up now). That way you can remove R7 and R8 aswell.

I also suggest using 12V DC relays insted (and skipping the 5v regular). Most work perfectly with 9 volts aswell, since the switch threshold is usually around 6v (half of 12).