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More tremolo than you throw some jelly at...
Two tremolos in one box, because why not, I need some wobble in my life.









First is a straight forward trem based off Double Flush schematic, sounds and works nice and a great standard clean tremolo.
Then it goes into Drolo's most excellent harmonic tremolo. This is the first version of the Twin Peaks and I had it lying around far too long.
Good things take time though and I put it all together two months ago and got great sound BUT the tap tempo didn't work .... sigh... after lots of double checking and poking I contacted David who was very quick and super kind to help with trouble shooting, much appreciated, legend!


(That photo was taken before I put in the TAPLFO version 3 chip as the new chip doesn't need the two 22 pF caps and crystal, those are chopped off now).

We could only point it down to maybe a faulty TAPLFO chip, a guess of course as I didn't have another one here to test.
So after a while of thumb twiddling (well actually not really, there's always something else cookin' meanwhile...) I got another TAPLFO chip with an order from Smallbear and that really solved it straight away.
So glad it fixed it and I now have a super tweak able hours of fun double trouble tremolo box.
I especially love the Brown face mode and the Treble only trem mode on the Twin Peaks. Very nice and gooey!
And the other side, the Double Flush Tremolo is great for fairly uncolored but warm wobbles.

Relay bypass courtesy of Josh's / 1776 fx excellent finish line, dig those.

Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe here on Brenja's fantastic board.
Sounds flippin' awesome and could be my desert island pedal. I just love vibe style pedals and this does so much, the tremolo also sounds soooo good and the wave options and tweakability. Flat out great to have.
So glad I finally got around putting this together.

I didn't do myself favours by being stuborn with my pot placement and I did all pot off board wired and I included the three position cap selector for the Univibe voicing. A very useful mod too and worth the effort.
Because of all the wiring and how I placed the controls in my stubborness it was a VERY tight fit to get it in. Bottle ship type stuff.
I count myself lucky that it did in the end.
Also wired the expression pedal for the fine control of speed and that is such good fun to have too. Leslie type sounds and throbbing tremolo are just delicious when you can control the speed while noodling. Fun fun fun...







Acrylic faceplate held by 3mm stainless Allen head screws.

Guts:





Those big red caps are WIMA film caps 3.3uF/16V which I used in place of the 2.2uF electrolytic ones that schematic calls for. I just had those kicking around and they do the job just fine of course if not better. They are fairly big and I had to mount some of them somewhat tilted to make it fit (swearing and mumbling going on...).

Zendrive here with added clipping option and relay bypass.









I dig those Larry Carlton and Robben Ford tones, the Zendrive does a good impersonation of it (not that I could play anywhere near that stuff... as usual...).
Robben Ford has just been down here and a Zendrive was on his board since he's not lugging his Dumble down here for some reason. And he didn't need to, he was awesome anyway.

The clipping switch is downwards stock (BAT 41 and Mosfet), middle none, up is two LEDs which doesn't quite make it Marshall but gives it more edge and with tone and voice cranked comes a bit closer.
So the labelling gives a bit of the drift.

Even had a AD712 opamp kicking around, which as the legend of goop goes is the original opamp that Hermida used in the early runs.
Since Lovepedal pumps them out now it's the NE5532. I tried the comparison briefly, can't say i heard much difference, would need to listen more to that swapping around.
Acrylic faceplate with screws on corners.

Three boxes with FV-1 chips, boards and chips / eeproms from pedalpcb.com.











Escher's Steps is the D3lay project, Taniwha is the Octagon multi effect and Spring Reverb is the first (now discontinued and superseded version) of Radium Springs.
Taniwha means by the way: "In Māori mythology, taniwha (Māori pronunciation: [ˈtanifa])[1] are beings that live in deep pools in rivers, dark caves, or in the sea, especially in places with dangerous currents or deceptive breakers (giant waves). They may be considered highly respected kaitiaki (protective guardians) of people and places, or in some traditions as dangerous, predatory beings, which for example would kidnap women to have as wives." (Thanks Wikipedia...)
Knob labeling on taniwha is tahi / rua / toru meaning one / two / three for the different controls that do different things depending on which effect is selected with mode switch.

Sorry about light reflections on acrylic face plates, light was tricky when I took photos. Guess i need a light tent or so...
Nice sounding effects in there, very versatile delays and lotsa stuff to discover especially on the Taniwha (Octagon) multi effect. Also really like the atmospheric sounds on the Escher's Steps / D3lay.

Very very OCD... let's have a game of Bingo then.



Here's my version of tweaked OCDness. Built on board designed by me, OSHparked, a few extras thrown in:
- switchable chargepump circuit, from 9V to 18V (Lo B+ / Hi B+) switch
- clipping switch between stock (OCD version 4 clipping), no clipping middle and the 'Bingo' clipping arrangement.
- three position peak switch (like in Aions Titan project).
- relay bypass switching (1776 bypass).









Many moons ago I got me those somewhat retro looking number click switches that look like from a 70ties reel to reel or a russian submarine or so, scored those on evilbay, thinking one day I'll do something with it.
The day has come, finally...
So there's the number 0 to 9 and on the connection side one common and 4 contacts. How's that making sense, I hear myself ask, quick check with DMM and here's the deal:



So on position 0 no connection,
position 1 connects to 1, position 6 connects second and third lug etc.
On the last and middle switch I chose red LED/1N4148/1N4001/1N60 and on first (left most digit) I replaced 1N60 with a bit of fairy dust Russian D9E just because why not. Diodes are mainly chosen for difference in forward voltage as that determines the biggest difference in sound.

The Russian diode looks a bit like... I mean.... you know... shall we call it Unicorn...?







Did a few random measurements with component tester just for the fun of it.

two red LEDs:

red LED and 1N4001 on 'North' side/ red LED, 1N4148 and 1N4001 on 'South' side (the component tester doesn't get parallel diodes, ity just sees them as one diode, but measures the resulting forward voltage)


and more clicking fun...



So there's a ton of clipping options, with many different sounding ones (more than you can poke a stick at...), a good number of similar sounding ones and a handful of identical ones (100 is the same as 010 and 001; one red LED nothing else).
All in all more possibilities than you can poke a stick at and after 047 onwards a bit of ear fatigue sets in...
Fun messing around with and with the toggle switch I can always go back to none or stock as a comparison in a jiffy.

Pics from building:



cutout and faceplate (acrylic)

Fusie.... means apparently "Merger" in Dutch. Made this for a friend who plays mainly acoustic stuff.

He wanted a pedal where he can blend two acoustic pickups (one under saddle  piezo and one magnetic soundhole pickup) together via separate pre amps (rullywow 'chuggapre' aka TC electronics pre amp) with treble bass into a mixer to blend into mono signal.
Inputs can be just one mono cable run into input A (if he doesn't want to use two pickups) in this case input B is grounded via jack A. In that case only preamp A is active obviously.
Input A can also take a stereo cable if both pick up signals come through stereo cable. Both preamps are active and can be blended.
Or two mono inputs, obviously both preamps active.

After that option of effectsloop to splice in other effects.

At the end a buffer/splitter to send signal to two seperate amps/PA or so, the outputs are footswitchable for both on / A or B on only.

Works all peachy, he's happy.

Got me one of those smd practise boards from evilbay and they are a good way to mess around and brush up the skillz on tiny stuff.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SMT-SMD-Component-Welding-Practice-Board-Soldering-Practice-DIY-Kit-Best/401103352190?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
It's basically a non working circuit, the resistors are just in series so you can test if resistance adds up along the rows and check out where there's a bad joint.  I would recommend it to for this for a dollar before frying up a real circuit.
First thing I learnt is how easy it is to drop half of the components on the floor for vacuuming next time... and that the 0603 stuff is as tiny as fly shit.

I scored two Xvive MN3005s in a trade, what recommendations would you guys have to build with that?
Cheers!

Nice walk through a distortion circuit here...
https://prentisseffects.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/thermionic-distortion-friedman-be-od.html
one little mistake in description seems to be the LED clipping at end of circuit is not to ground as said but too Vref.
But I'm by no means fully enlightened to be making big statements. Good read and analysis anyway i think.

I was surfing around stumbling onto that whole Arduino thing after having it ignored for a long time.
Just wondering if there are any of you ninjas out there doing stuff with it like switching or looping duties, switching relays for effects or so.
I don't have any real idea about it, so just wondering if there's any use for pedal building in it.
This chip seems particularly nifty:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/meet-arduino-killer-esp8266/

Enlighten me pleeeease....

Disclaimer: I have no interest, shares or whatever in the company making this nor is my brother from another mother's cousin the CEO or anything like that. I didn't get one of those for free to plaster positive reviews anywhere, I just bought mine after getting interested.

So I stumbled on youtube on reviews of this ordering iron and coudln't resist getting it since my old iron got tired.
I also just got a chaep Chinese Hakko soldering station before which turned out ok even though the temperature display ain't accurate. It is ok and a good enough backup, that Hakko knock off, but this new one leaves it in the dust.

I bought mine on evilbay here:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/TS100-65W-Digital-OLED-Programmable-Soldering-Iron-Anti-static-Structure-Repair/112750155917?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

The TS100 is a smart iron that is programmable and performs really well in my opinion. I did a bit of smd practice soldering as well as normal through hole and also heavier stuff on modding a tube amp, soldering 18 gauge wire onto turrets etc.
As it has a boost button (if you install open source firmware, see below) which brings up temp to a pre determind higher temp for heavy connections it performed super on amp too.
I upgraded the firmware it came with to the open source one you can find here and that works even better and smarter:
https://github.com/Ralim/ts100

Iron looks and feels like a surgical instrument, sits well in the hand, performance and practicality is 11 out of 10 I think. It looks and feels well built, not at all like a toy.

The iron heats up in record time (about 30 sec to operating 320 degrees), you can adjust operating temp easily on handle in 10 degree steps up to 450 (with the updated firmware), display show actual tip temperature.
That is so exact that when the iron is off and fully cooled down it displays the room temperature!
Which you can also use to calibrate the settings! It displays the input voltage, shows the tip cooling down temperature after switching off, it shows sleep mode and when you move it it starts up again and displays the very swift rising tip temp. All super clever and practical.
You can change and adjust pretty much all the settings, for example the time it takes to go into sleep mode (set at present to 1 min), so when iron put down in stand it will cool down to sleep temp that you can pre determine and goes up as you move it. You can set the sensitivity of motion sensor too!  So that saves the tip from burning out unnecessarily, power too and fire risk. And it has auto switch off, so no more accidentally leaving on over night.

Performance is great, I did some practise smd soldering with tiny as stuff and I also worked on heavy stuff as I put in tube effetctsloop on Humphrey amp. As it has a boost button which brings up temp to a pre determind higher temp for heavy connections it performed super on amp too. Love it!

Only downside I can see is that it's so small (like a sharpie) that you could easily misplace it...
Other point to know is: it doesn't come with a power supply. Bummer. But wait, most old laptop supplies putting out around 18V or so will work great, so I git one from the local recycling centre, puts out 19.8 V 120W which is plenty and that works fine. The iron can also be powered by battery, for example quite suitably with a cordless drill 18V or so Li Ion battery. That can come in handy at times too me guesses.

So I'm a fan now.

There's a bunch of youtube reviews around, here's just a bunch.

alternative firmware, although the latest version is already more fancy than this:

Here's a double box which is a take on Jon Pattons Hamlet delay on a board I designed myself and made by Oshpark, left side is Robert Henry's aka Dead Astronauts 'Chasm Reverb".

Both are buffered bypass, so the delay has the tails spilling over and it can get into self oscillation for some spacey sounds on higher settings.
The 'feel' knob goes from a slightly dirtier analog feel fully ccw to a more pristine digitalish feel on cw setting.

The Chasm reverb is also very spacey sounding (it's designed by an astronaut after all... pun alert...) and I put the oscillation switch of the original version onto a momentary footswitch in middle ('freeze' switch) which on higher dwell and damp settings let's it go off into oscillation as well as long as I hold the footswitch.

Also buffered bypass on this too so reverb tails spill on which makes a lot of sense on this pedal as it's strength are in the full blown cavernous delay and reverb going off the hook.

There you have it. All in a 1790 box.







delay board



reverb board

Howdy, long time no see. I know.
I've been for a bunch of reasons, nice good ones and not so easy ones (which I still will figure what they were good for...) been off from stompbox building and absent from forum.

However the drive ain't dead and the urge is strong, so itching fingers and a bunch of unfinished tempting projects and pcbs floating around in my man cave brought me back.
One of those bare pcbs lying around for too long was Kugills excellent implementation of the Mutron II phaser, the 'Krypton Phasor'. I first built it as single pedal straight forward box and loved the sound and it came together nicely.
Fantastic optical phaser, awesome compact pcb!!
That made me itch even more and the idea of the Mutron Bi Phase gave me the inspiration to think of my own version of what i would want out of a box that has two phasers built in.
So by all means this is obviously not any workalike of the Bi Phase, it's just my custom idea to tailor it from the idea.

Here's my wish list of what I wanted out of it:
- two phaser independent from each other blendable
- independently bypassable, either both on or one off for a certain amount of clean signal set by blend knob or both of via main bypass.
- expression pedal jack to allow the blend mixer via footpedal.
- univibe cap mod switch on both of them for different voicings.
- relay bypass switching on all (thanks to the excellent 'finish line' bypass from Josh /1776 effects).

The result is the "Phase Melter" and it turned out well, I'm really pleased with it and it took a bit of advanced swearing combined with shoehorning to coax it in the box.
Great sounds in this and I love the flexibility of more subtle to wilder sounds, blending via expression pedal really works well and switch one of the phaser sides in bypass takes it to mild, both on is wild.







Pics from beginning:


with univibe cap mods selector. Can select three different cap sets, middle is stock Mutron, left is UniVibe, right is Voodoo Vibe. On second phaser I didUniVibe / Mutron / Resly RT 18 caps sets.





swearing, shoehorning etc... in the middle is the mixer board.



while I had the faceplate and knobs on I stuck a second enclosure with painters tape on top to protect faceplate of the crudiness of my work bench. Thought that was a clever idea, I'm sure someone else thought about that before me. Worked well.



enclosure with label on. I made then a 1.5 mm polycarbonate faceplate to protect the label.

A bit of shoehorning goin' on here...
So on my pedalboard I like to have the sonic stomp and a booster at the end and since I stumbled across Aion's excellent pcbs/great documentation.
So I couldn't resist upgrading this last in my chain always on pedal to his projects.
First the Aion Lumin / Sonic Stomp with extra tweakability compared to original BBE Sonic stomp.
Second the pre-amp section of Korg SDD3000 (one of 'the secret' sauces of the Edge of U2 they say on Aion Eclipse board).

And in an 125B enclosure, all controls on side (you'll see why), that means 6 pots, 4 toggles, 2 LEDs in side of 125B.
Gimme the shoe horn... or the hammer, whichever is more handy...

Finished pedal:





Guts finished:



How it sits in context of pedalboard:





Pics of process:

drilled box aka 'Swiss cheese':





putting in SDD3000. I mounted some of electrolytics sideways to allow for jacks etc.



mild swearing going on by now... 



... by now thinking it might actually all go in without using a hammer...

... never received grand prize day!
Yay!

So without much further ado let me show you what I have received from Jacob as the Grand Prize of the fall competition:



Yes, that's right. There's an empty hand. Nothing.

Meanwhile the fall contest threads have dissappeared into the depth of the archives.
And, funny that, the threads can't be commented on any more. For that reason I'm putting this here and not in the fall contest threads where it would probably belong...

So just that you don't have to wade through the archives depth or strain your memory too much here's a quick rehash of timeline and communication I had with Jacob:

Competition deadline was 30 Nov 2014

intended judging first week of Dec 2014

intended winners anounncements second week of Dec 2014.

As most of us know winners announcement has been delayed until 17. Feb 2015.


17 Feb: Jacob sent me a PM to let me know that I have won the grand prize in fall competition, I replied same day and gave him my shipping address.
Heard nothing back, no shipping notification, no tracking number.

12 March : contacted Jacob, let him know that nothing has turned up yet and asked him for a tracking number.
He replied:"It's not in the mail yet, but it will be tomorrow!"
Heard nothing back, no shipping notification, no tracking number.


13 April, another month later, I let him know again that nothing has turned up yet and asked him for a tracking number.
He replied:
"Hey Cooder,

I wish I had tracking for you friend. I'll take a look through my receipts, but likely all we have is a customs number.

I am not surprised it's taking this long. Going from me to you, it's typical for packages to take longer than expected. Please keep me posted about when it comes in, but I wouldn't be surprised if it comes either later this week or perhaps the next.

Canada to NZ is often very slow. I'm sorry for that.

Jacob"

I've just PM'd Jacob to let him know that nothing has turned up here as yet of 01 May.
That's 72 days after letting Jacob know my shipping address. 151 days after competition deadline.

In my humble opinion it has been way too long and not acceptable, by any yardstick of comparison I can find.

Communication about this with Jacob wasn't exactly fruitful and has not changed anything of the facts that nothing has turned up here.
And I'm interestested to hear what this community, what you guys think.

Cheers
Stephan

PS:
I did by the way an order with much taunted Tayda on 26. April, that has turned up today.
All the way to New Zealand in 5 days, woohoo. And yes, Tayda sent a shipping notification and tracking number the day after I ordered.

I'm actually not a chorus guy.

Yeah right.

Still had to build recently first Stomptowns/Jon's super Pennyroyal Chorus (EHX Small Clone) and that's very nice.
And of course to satisfy the curious cat I had to go for the other classic, Madbean's excellent Pork Barrel (Boss CE-2).

Very very nice, I'm happy to conceed...

Built both mainly in the first place to have a nice chorus for acoustic guitar, even though the sound great on electric too.
So at present I'm comparing both those choruses for acoustic guitar into Fioshman Loudbox amp, and both sound great.
The Pork Barrel seems to have a slight edge for acoustic in my ears, so that's at the moment more on my acoustic board.
Both Pennyroyal and Pork Barrel beat the inbuilt chorus on Fishman amp by lightyears IMO.
Nice touch with the rate LED on Pork Barrel, like that! I did an orange 3mm for rate and red 5mm for bypass.

Thanks Brian for such a great project!

Switching is done again with 1776 effects 'finish line' relay board, sweet!







and guts:

Here's two of Jubal81 / Jason excellent and superbly designed pcbs, first up on the left the "Orange Goblin", had that populated for awhile now, high time to give it a well deserved box and a good run on the pedalboard!
Nice growly Orange tones, sounds tight and gives it attitude and grit of the well known amplifiers!
Dig it, let's rawk!
Very useful tonestack too. I went with smd jfets (except Q1 BS 170 TH).

On the right side it's the faawnkeee "Mirrorball"  envelope filter, very cool sounding! Highly recommended, good fun to play with for sure!
Really reacts well to playing style and working the vol pot and tone pot to get different attack. Nice one!
I omitted the BS250S voltage protection circuit since I didn't have the tranny handy. Replaced R1 with a 1N4001 for the old school simple voltage protection instead.

Thanks Jason for those super projects and boards!

Switching on both with 1776 effects excellent "Finish Line" relay bypass board. Love those!



Close up of Orange Goblin:





and guts:



Close up of Mirrorball:





and guts:

Hi guys, my son is planning to get married to a lovely girl from Missouri, that means there is a roadtrip on the cards with some wedding cake thrown in.
This is at this stage schedule for Oct,  wedding tentative date 17 Oct (in Missouri).
My partner and I would like to make it into a holiday 3 week or so roadtrip covering some interesting ground in the States.
Nothing booked yet, we're starting to think which ways to go, what to check out, so please burst out with some ideas. What you'd recommend some folks from sleepy dreamy New Zealand?
We would like to see some things a bit off the beaten track, grabbing some cool music vibes on the way would be great.
One basic idea was to start in New Orleans, go north through Missouri, check out Chicago... (ah, yeah, I'm into Blues btw...).
Or maybe start in San Francisco, cross Rockies to Missouri, up Chicago leaving from there? Or down south, leaving from New Orleans?
What cool things and places, even clubs etc would you guys recommend?
What music stores to check out (I saw a video from Chicago Music Exchange... drool....)
What do's and don'ts?
What way to travel? Hire a car, I spose...? Or how about an RV or the much loved campervan as we call it down here?
Where to stay reasonably priced?

Cheers guys!

Another case of let's put two circuits in one box and select between the classic grind and splatter:
the top circuit (top row of controls) is a classic Jordan Bosstone on a Rullywow board which Ben kindly chucked in with a larger order as a freebie; many thanks man! Here it is finally alive and kickin' and I like it!
A tad noisy, maybe I try a few other trannies too, but then again it's a circuit that's meant to fuzz and grind away, and I do like it's character for sure.
The lower circuit (lower three knobs and switch) is 1776 effects excellent Buzzsaw Roland Beebaa fuzz, another super classic item with character to boot!
So a lot of different fuzz characters on tap with this box...
A bit messy with the wiring inside as there's a lot going back and forth and all the pots are offboard wired, but hey, it works.
THcustom Ueberswitch relay just fits in to do the bypass honours.

Let's build another dirtbox, and to make it count let's put two circuits in to save space or so and for the fun of it....
So here's another 2in1 125B, this time with a Black Cat OD-1 on top (controls are Vol and Gain), the toggle selects between this circuit or in down position the big box ToneBender built to Juansolo's specs that he recently uncovered in an old unit.
Made me curious and yes it sound great!
I added another pot that is the input resistor the can be dialed from 100K to 0 ohm (I jumpered R1 on this to have the full range). On Juansolos tracing it was 39 K, on 1776 Suckerpunch it's listed as 33 K. This makes it adjustable and on full bore and high fuzz settings it starts to get a bit crazy in a good way.
I like things to be tweakable, so good for me!

TH Custom Ueberswitch relay board. Dig those!

In case if anyone wants a spare board I have one left each, shipped for $ 10 each anywhere on the planet.