Anybody else in a slump right now?

[thesameage]

I started working for a guitar builder and that has taken over a bit...though I would love to get into onboard bass preamp building.

[Muadzin]

I sometimes wonder what the average lifespan is of a pedal builder.

I think if you are just a pedal builder (not a circuit designer), that after a few years at this stuff, you have probably built most of what you wanted and things can start to get redundant.

I'd say that depends, at first I just wanted some rare out of production pedals and this seemed like the way to do it. And then stuff kept finding my fancy that seemed interesting enough to build as well. I'd say if you stick to kits and production pcb's you will probably have a shorter building career then if you branch out into vero as well. New interesting things kept getting added on tagboard that had me salivating for years. Still would have if I hadn't gotten my Axe-FX.

That said, most of you guys branch out to other stuff and that keeps things interesting.

Maybe that is what makes people stop building pedals. They branch out to other things, develop new hobbies. As somebody once said, the only way to get rid of an idea is to replace it with a new one. That and real life intrusions. New job, kids, relationships, they all eat into quality me time.

My pet peeve with LEDs (and vactrols, for that matter) is the positive marking. Positive? Diodes have an anode, and a cathode. Depending on the application, either one may connect to the higher potential.

Too technical for my taste. Everytime I see people use those words I have to look them up again. Just use + or - 

[selfdestroyer]

Curse lifted!

Time to trim and drill... then populate.

[m-Kresol]

After moving earlier this month and starting a new job last week, I haven't really found the motivation to start building again, although I should really continue testing my HiFi amp. juansolos pcb package from the BOTY contest is more than awesome and I feel my fingers itching already.

[juansolo]

I've got about 3 pedals I need to get built. Loads in the box of PCBs but I'm not really feeling motivated to hit those yet as I'm currently being distracted by old computers.

Got an Atari ST given. Mint, complete in box. Looks brand new... Sadly the PSU hasn't fared so well, so I'm re-capping that and see if that fixes it. Also got another 512KB (remember when that was massive?!) of memory coming to solder in. Hopefully I can get that up and running again. Then hopefully I've got an even older Commodore 64 landing...

Then I'm building a IN-18 burner... We've tested it out and it works. Basically IN-18 Nixies are prone to cathode poisoning. These tubes were built in the 70's in Russia and I suspect by large Russian women with fags hanging out of the corner of their mouths and no sort of gloves on to stop contaminants getting on the elements. That's what I hope anyhow... As such, over time parts of the numbers start to dim or even fail to light up.

This was all well and good in the 70's when the tubes cost bugger all, you just swapped them out until you got a set that weren't assembled by someone with bare sweaty hands. As it is, now they cost around £50+ each due to rarity and I've got 5 of them with cathode poisoning on multiple numbers.

One way to fix this is to give them a bit of a burn. Essentially letting them draw more current and a bit more voltage to burn the contaminants off. I've tested this theory with a jerry rigged setup below:



This first pass shows the problem. At this point however we had too big of a current limiting resistor in there, indeed this is when we worked out that it's actually handy to have the CLR on a pot. As it is, I'm feeding the tube too much voltage here to get it to light up (limits on the tube are 170V and 4mA).



This is when we sorted that and dropped the CLR to something more sensible. We burned the 5 for two hours and it's fully restored the digit. I've got a few more to address on that tube as it's by far the worst. But It proved the system, so I'm gonna make a dedicated nixie restorer with display and everything. That's the other job for this week anyhow.

[Muadzin]

Curse lifted!

Time to trim and drill... then populate.

Etched boards? You're a brave man, those would send my even deeper into my slump. Soldering to etched boards has been a friggin' nightmare on all of them. For some strange I can't get the solder to stick properly to them.

[Leevibe]

Then I'm building a IN-18 burner... We've tested it out and it works. Basically IN-18 Nixies are prone to cathode poisoning. These tubes were built in the 70's in Russia and I suspect by large Russian women with fags hanging out of the corner of their mouths and no sort of gloves on to stop contaminants getting on the elements. That's what I hope anyhow... As such, over time parts of the numbers start to dim or even fail to light up.

This was all well and good in the 70's when the tubes cost bugger all, you just swapped them out until you got a set that weren't assembled by someone with bare sweaty hands. As it is, now they cost around £50+ each due to rarity and I've got 5 of them with cathode poisoning on multiple numbers.

Awesome info. I hadn't heard about cathode poisoning but this totally makes sense. It's cool that the fix works.

I have a question for you. I have a couple projects in mind that I'm hoping to use nixies in. I'd like to use them by directly powering the desired cathodes via a rotary switch pole. My thought was to completely bypass any need for a driver chip. Will this work? Some of what I've read suggests that I will have to clamp the unused pins to some lower voltage like 50v or I will get phantom glowing.

Also, I remember the Commodore 64. It seems like all my friends had either that or the Vic 20 with huge floppy drives and a massive phone modem. I saved up and bought a TI 994A and used a cassette recorder for storage. 16k memory.

[juansolo]

Yeah they're dead easy. You've got an common anode pin and you've got the number pins. Stick a CLR (my clock uses 10k. I'm gonna have 100R on the burner and a 2k pot in line so I can adjust it) on the power line, and give it around 160V DC and you're golden. It should light up. You don't need to connect the other pins when not in use. Mine will just be on a cheapy Chinese single pole 10 pos rotary.

Problems with other numbers lighting up tends to come from how people drive them. Some matrix them and you can get a bit of bleed on those. If they're not connected, they won't light up. You can get a bit of glow from proximity, but they all do that sir. There are all sorts of idiosyncrasies with both the ways people drive them and the tubes themselves.

If the C64 turns out ok, I'll be getting this for it: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/C64c-Style-SD2IEC-Commodore-1541-Disk-Drive-Emulator-SD-Card-Reader-C64-C128-VIC-/330917399751?hash=item4d0c36ccc7:g:-~AAAOSw6btXR5dM

[Leevibe]

Yeah they're dead easy. You've got an common anode pin and you've got the number pins. Stick a CLR (my clock uses 10k. I'm gonna have 100R on the burner and a 2k pot in line so I can adjust it) on the power line, and give it around 160V DC and you're golden. It should light up. You don't need to connect the other pins when not in use. Mine will just be on a cheapy Chinese single pole 10 pos rotary.

Problems with other numbers lighting up tends to come from how people drive them. Some matrix them and you can get a bit of bleed on those. There are all sorts of idiosyncrasies with both the ways people drive them and the tubes themselves.

That's what I was hoping. I don't plan to mess with multiplexing. I don't see a point for my application. Thanks for the good info. I'll be curious to see if you can get all of your poisoned cathodes fully lit again.

edit: I didn't notice the link. That emulator looks cool. How fun. I bet the keyboard on the C64 feels awesome. It's been years since I've even seen one much less typed on one.

[juansolo]

I have no doubt. The one number I burned (170V and 1K CLR getting me just over 1mA of current draw) for a couple of hours is totally restored now in the clock. It's been running for days now and looks like new. I just need to to all the other poisoned chars.

This is a bit of an issue with IN-18s sadly, and it's all down to contamination when they were built. My Telefunken's don't do it at all and look utterly stunning. But I do get other numbers glowing a bit in that one and I'm convinced it's because it's multiplexed and not direct drive.

[Leevibe]

I have no doubt. The one number I burned (170V and 1K CLR getting me just over 1mA of current draw) for a couple of hours is totally restored now in the clock. It's been running for days now and looks like new. I just need to to all the other poisoned chars.

This is a bit of an issue with IN-18s sadly, and it's all down to contamination when they were built. My Telefunken's don't do it at all and look utterly stunning.

I notice you have a proper "5" and not an upside down "2." I think they both look cool but I'm partial to have the 5 look like a 5. Where are you sourcing them?

[juansolo]

Ukraine and Russia for the IN-18 (and other old USSR nixies). eBay usually.

[m-Kresol]

I notice you have a proper "5" and not an upside down "2." I think they both look cool but I'm partial to have the 5 look like a 5. Where are you sourcing them?

didn't you post the video about the young czech guy handmaking nixie tubes nowadays?

One way to fix this is to give them a bit of a burn. Essentially letting them draw more current and a bit more voltage to burn the contaminants off.

This should work in theory, but if they are too contaminated it won't help. Tubes usually have a "getter" material in one way or the other (eg the metallisation on the top of regular 12ax7 etc) that are designed to react with contaminants that adsorb to other parts of the tube which will desorb when heated. Once the getter is saturated, there's not much you can do, the contaminants will just adsorb at another non-heated surface and screw with your vacuum or gas filling. But as long as the "large russian women" did not drool all over it, it should be ok.

The czech guy mentioned above had problems though with not enough heat-treated parts that did gas out and he was wearing gloves, though.
hope everything works out. nixie clocks are awesome. I might build one someday

[Leevibe]

didn't you post the video about the young czech guy handmaking nixie tubes nowadays?

Yeah. I find nixie tubes completely fascinating and that is a fantastic video.

[thesameage]

First thing I've built in a while. It's a 4:1 comp into a Fatpants. First time making a waterslide decal. Not perfect but came out better than I thought it would. Next time, I'll definitely make the decal the full size of the enclosure so that I don't have lines.

Boards are mostly populated, but I forgot to order about 15 small parts! Will need to make another order to finish it up. Never order after a few beers!