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My neighbor heard from my bragging wife that I make guitar pedals and after months of dragging my feet (and recovering from illness and surgery), I'm finally accepting his invite to demo for his high school guitar class. tomorrow

Never mind that some of those kids likely play better than me...  I'm excited and nervous.



(Amp)--------|
|---------(git)

Degenerator; Glass Hole; Fraudhacker; Pork Barrel
Runt; Mudbunny; Sardine Tin; Bumblebee

It may but be a surprise, but this is the first time I've set up a pedal board. Borrowed the physical board from a friend, along with a few pedals that I didn't have ready (Pork Barrel, Runt, and Mudbunny). I've got a good assortment, I think. about all I can fit! I wanted to put a Moodring after the Degenerator and a cupcake at the front...

Hopefully the signal chain is what it should be. I'll welcome any feedback that may come in the next 12 hours 

I recently got a v1 (not v1.1) squishy octopus PCB from a pif courtesy of Barry and was wondering if anyone had the original v1 build doc for it. The v1.1 is still up, but the BOM and board layout appear to have differences. Didn't get anywhere on the wayback machine.

I'm not familiar with GPCB's builds in general, so I don't feel like winging it. If someone knows I don't need it, I'd appreciate a sanity check/direction.


Shout out to Brian for keeping a dedicated archive of everything he's ever made in easy-to-find locations 

So I've got my Cupcake working, but in biasing I'm not able to get over 980mV.

I've got a 10k trimmer, but using MMBFJ201s instead of 5457s. Wonder if that has anything to do with it.


awkward shadows and rosin residue, not burn marks

So this came out of observing a recent troubleshooting thread, but it's made me wonder: why do components like 9mm pots have "pads" where the metal spring-lite clasps mount to to the PCB?

Why is it metalized? Can it just be a drill in the gerbers with no pad? I suppose structural strength, but then again, fiberglass or whatever resin compound it's made from isn't exactly flimsy.

Just something I've wondered about.

In other applications it could be a grounding point, but if there's no conductivity, ground included, then why?

So I'm looking at this board of the Electra Distortion 500D / Mysto Dysto /  Boston / Nadine's etc. Not sure of these diodes, but they are of Japanese make I'm guessing (based on the origin of the board used in those pedals). I know old soviet germaniums are reversed, but don't know about 1980s JDM fare. Is it safe to say the blue band is the cathode?

https://rvb-img.reverb.com/image/upload/s--rRQGl2K7--/a_0/f_auto,t_supersize/v1692070464/qvskslkl74w2but2qdfx.jpg

I'm planning on following the advice of the FSB post breaking down the Mysto Dysto, and putting in some 4148s, unless anyone has a better suggestion

Thanks

You wake up from a blackout

Your hands are tied

Your kidnappers look down

One in a fancy checkered suit addresses you directly


"You've made your last delivery kid. Sorry you got twisted up in this scene. From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is... the game was rigged from the start."


A 9mm bullet pierces your skull

Fade to black










Benny is a prime archetype of stolen valor; usurping the leader of the Mojave Boot-Riders, he gladly suckled the milk of Mr. House's 'kindness' in order to escape a life of raiding and hard survival. Little did House know his erstwhile protege would be plotting to take the throne of New Vegas for himself.


This is a modified OD-1 by way of the Clark Gainster. I started with Boss' rev 2 schematic and took what I wanted from the latter ...except that 2W resistor. Maybe someone smarted can tell me why that's in the Gainster's BOM. Added a few other alterations care of TheWinterSoldier and jwin615.


There's a bit of character from this circuit I don't get from an SD-1. In the tinkering process on the breadboard, I originally intended the single diode in the asymmetrical clipping section to be a red LED. When I finally got around do making a proper build, I thought to test the combo one more time. The LED had a strange low-frequency sizzle that I both hadn't noticed before and didn't care for, so I opted for three 1N914s in the end. I'm quite satisfied with the tone.













LINT. LINT EVERYWHERE! I live in a very dry climate, and with winter on, so too is the forced air furnace. No matter how I tried, I could not get all the lint off. The main photo was touched up ONLY so it didn't look like printing errors. I think the glossy black doesn't help. Maybe matte black is in order next time.


Speaking of errors... I opted for the enclosure masking service, and while it did leave the inside free of overspray, there was one section which got missed or inadequate powder coating. Also, it's not apparent in the photos, but there was some weird surface level scratches/scuff patch, which was very odd, but again, thankfully not blatant in the photos.


On the plus side, I can confirm that adjusting the tint percentage of the RDG_WHITE spot color in Illustrator nets a decent grayscale. As with most things, your mileage may vary.


I'm working on upping my wiring game. Still using pre-bond stranded wire from Small Bear, but maybe I'll try solid, even if it is brutally unforgiving. Who knows.


As always, thanks for looking.


https://imgur.com/a/e5l7jss

I spent a bit of time this evening searching for the 500D schematic (3-knob), and all I'm seeing are 1 or maybe 2 knob versions.

I'm wondering if this one is somewhere between the classic simple boost schematic and Beavis Audio's Trostsky drive (subbing a pot for the bright cut switch). Any thoughts?

http://beavisaudio.com/schematics/Electra-Distortion-Schematic.htm
http://beavisaudio.com/schematics/Beavis-Audio-Trotsky-Drive.htm

I swear I saw something about this not long ago, but I can't seem to find it in search *shrug*

Was that going to happen this year? 

I am ...tentatively optimistic. Much better looking in the teaser than I was expecting. Interesting they're going for the F4 style (at least with Goggin's character) and smoothest ghoul I've ever seen but it looks good and is showrun by the same guy who did Westworld. Maybe there will be other, more necrotic looking ones.

So I've gotten to the point where I need to liquidate a few of the pedals I've done over the last couple of years. I suppose that this is a touchy subject and what I'm really looking for is not a way to inside trade to compete, so to speak, but more just if anyone has had luck or any pointers for a first-timer to consign to a local music shop, or other best way.

I'd post them here or pedalpcb forum, but we're all DIYers, and I figure if there's something we want, we build it

anyhow, some suggestions would be appreciated; whether that's ad listing language do's and don't's, or whatever.

Noticed this while spec pricing my next order, but it looks like Tayda now offers printing services for all sides on 1590B, 1590N1/125B, and 1590BB enclosures (including the 'lid')

As of writing it doesn't look like the downloadable art templates reflect the additional spaces for the sides, but the dimensions are listed on the cart item for each additional side printing. Would be good to know which orientation art needs to be submitted with, but I might I email so I emailed them about that as well as to clarify if one needs to order a uv-gloss item for each side, or if it's just per job.

Pretty neat, though.

Another one of my "started sometime early last year" projects comes back to bite me.

So I've got it built for 9V operation, the lamp is illuminating controlled by the rate, and affected by the two trimmers, and the volume control works on the signal while engaged. I can "hear" the pulsation —albeit incredibly subtly— of the lamp when I bridge the end of an input lead, but no actual modulation is taking place on an audio signal—other than the volume adjustment working, it sounds otherwise completely clean.




No solder bridges I can see.

I could just start probing, but if anyone has insights as to where to start, I'd be much obliged! Thanks.

edit: the shield is taped on—I made a dum dum and soldered (and now clipped) the wire holding it in place before actually testing, so I clipped it off to make sure the lamp worked  :/

Like the title says...

Have an old Dimo Organizer 1610 maker that did BRILLIANTLY with the OG label tape that was left in it. Bought some replacement tape off Beezosville and it's just utter CRAP. The tape brand is "Weemay" which stands for "We May have made this as cheap as possible; GUESS WHAT? WE DID!". I mean, the box had several colors and several rolls of black, but ...

No or just crap adhesion, it gets caught in the channel causing letters to overlap, and you have to squeeze juuuuuust so to get it to both emboss the letter right and NOT get it stuck in the machine. Squeeze too light, NO letter. Squeeze too hard, and welp, it's stuck in there now.

thanks

Here it is, the penultimate build of laser-etched enclosures, the mighty DRAGUNN THLAYUR!

This one took far too long, and while it's quite imperfect looking, I love its sound. I built the hand-etched board Bean offered up a while back and he was generous enough to throw in some tropical fish mojo and some other goodies. I ended up going with a 2N3565 for Q2 instead of the 2N2222. I liked the meaty growl it makes.







Being me, I had to over-complicate things It was a miracle that my enclosure fit everything in it, but here it is. Made some rookie mistakes, but again, I'm spoiled by CNC precision and my hand-done stuff has suffered.

Also, you might notice I don't have a straight-on shot of it, but there's a good reason. IDK if it was this green paint (being burned away) or what, but the bare aluminum underneath didn't turn out as bright, even with the same scrub down the others got. Same primer as the others, too. It just ended up creating a weird moire effect, which actually isn't that bad to the naked eye, but the camera really amplifies the effect.



Thanks for looking.

Here's number two in the paint-laser-etch series, the first project I assembled* after coming back to DIY! The Madbean Bumblebee!



Went with some soviet era P416A germs in this one instead of tracking down OC75s. I had another set (GT108G) I didn't even try, oddly enough, mostly because the leads were so thin they didn't seat in the sockets. No idea what I'll do with those.

Overall I like the sound and it's slightly more nuanced than a good ol' two-transistor fuzz where your tone options are "just crank it" to get something usable.

Forgive the paint mishaps.







*this was originally wired over a year ago with ...whatever I had sitting around and looked like absolute trash, so like the DTTK prototype I shipped on to a friend, I went back through this one with some new wire, and thinkfully the wiring looks much better in this one. Though I wish I could have been a little less Peter Parker prom night with securing the germs in there. The main reason for the delay was that I wanted to wait until I had my ideal enclosure design, even though I went headlong into the drill phase. Even with its imperfections, it's more or less what I intended, and since it was going to be a project for myself, the fit and finish didn't need to be perfect.

Also like the DTTK prototype, I painted the enclosure with the holes were pre-drilled and somehow, the pot stem holes were actually spot on, but the LED hole I must've punched off-center, still the bee buzzes

Another tell-tale that this was my first foray in a decade is the soldered charge pump  :/  at least I've learned that much.

Thanks for looking.

Nah. It's more the exact opposite

This Death to the King was my prototype before a board shrink and drill refinement. It was with a friend for outside testing and made its way back to me. Another friend had a different version of the pedal, but in a 3D printed enclosure such was not properly RF shielded, resulting in stone noise. When this prototype came back to me, I decided whom it needed to go to.

Since it was already imperfectly (quite imperfectly...) drilled and had basically sharpie labeling, it needed at least -something-. So in a sort of swan song for my laser etching foray i made a few enclosures including this one. It's not quite as centered as I would've liked, but I'm pleased with the quality.





Sort of the mirror universe version of the white Death to the King I posted a while back:



No gutshots, because I'm embarrassed with the fit and finish off this one. On my defense, I stripped out all of the old working, because it was monstrous albeit functional. The new wiring is cleaned up in some ways, but some pads would just not come clean either with a sucker or wick, so the wires are secured on top.

Here's a look at the magic marker version:



The next couple of builds from me are going to be asking these lines: taking pre-drilled enclosures and getting them pretty close to what I was envisioning.

Thanks for looking.

Hey hey, Storyboardist!

Just a quick clarification regarding the morning glory side of the Loyalist: is there a reason to pick the LM833N over a TL072 or 4558D in this build other than that's what was in the original?

I have it socketed, ofc, but figured I'd ask all the same.

Thanks

I'm not intending this as a "which is better" ad nauseum circlejerk. I'm just curious, because there's a lot floating about out there, because I (think I) built one on the breadboard, but it doesn't line up with what I'm seeing from original schematics

Firstly, this is the one I built (yes, I saw it's modified, but I figured it was just tone control):

I ended up tweaking a few things, but let's just say this is what I built

(my new toy courtesy of a very, very generous friend)


Apparently the OG version utilized a quad op-amp, and is the foundation of the Aion Corona/Parhelion
https://aionfx.com/project/parhelion-vintage-overdrive/


Then I discovered (what I think is) the more "budget" version Boss released not long after the original



So, bottom line: wtf did I build for myself on the breadboard?    It doesn't have the quad, but doesn't have all of the other stages of the circuit the rev B model has. Is it just a derivative, op-amp series feedback clipping circuit?

So I have a friend's 2011 Cherrybomb and having never used one until recently, I'm pretty smitten. Has great tone.

And having had that finished one, I wanted to tinker, so I went to the breadboard with the 2015 build guide's schematic. Had it working perfectly on the first go, populated with some un-special film and electro caps, and topped with three mid-300s 2n3565s (as was suggested as nice alternatives to the BC series in the 2012 documentation). From super clean to wonderful overdrive sweeping the GAIN pot.

I left space to try something rather noobish: plugging in a second gain stage in series.

After doing that and absolutely hating the poopy results, I pulled everything from the second gain stage and now it has some OD buzziness even with the C1k pot full CCW and wondering if I've borked something.

I've rebuilt the first gain stage a few times, and no change. Replaced the electros. Even replaced all the transistors. the C1k pot still turns the full gamut from 4R to 9.87k.

So I'm stumped as to what's causing this. If anyone's got some pointers I'm open to trying. Thanks.

I'm just curious if anyone knows what brand this is? Just curious.



Micro Electronics?