Messages

Using a 1-Spot power supply so amperage shouldn't be an issue.

I had mentioned in a post in the Shelter In Place sub forum that I am working on a Rustbucket.  I can essentially confirm that there's no effect signal making it out of the circuit as I can turn the blend knob counterclockwise and hear clean signal, then clockwise and hear nothing.  I would also mention that all ICs, transistors, and electro caps were acquired from either Mouser or Smallbear so at the moment I'm going to assume my parts are good.

Using my audio probe, I can confirm that I am getting signal out of pins 7 and 8 of the MN3007. 

I can also confirm that I'm getting signal through the portion of the schematic marked A  However, the signal gets very faint on the Q7 side of R50. 

I traced the audio signal down to D5.  On the anode side I hear signal.  However, no signal on the cathode.

Now for the voltages.  I'm only going to list the voltages of the things that are off as the voltages for everything else looks pretty much in line for the moment.

IC7
-
10.51
.34
0
2.18
0
4.115
0
0
0
0
0
.293
12.48
12.53

IC8
-
.436
.433
12.35
12.35
10.49
4.114
0
0
12.34
12.35
0
.350
0
12.53

IC9
-
12.36
12.36
12.33
-14.36
0
.013
-.473
14.10

IC10
-
0
12.36
10.02
0
12.43
12.43
2.18
12.54

Q3
-
12.50
1.27
4.4

Q4
-
4.14
4.92
4.14

Q5
-
0
-.474
-14.41

I noticed that IC7 was getting warm too which sure isn't good.  The voltages look to be a mess there honestly and I may try re-flowing all of the IC sockets and transistors that don't look right.  But rather than just re-flowing a bunch of parts, is there a particular place I should start looking in terms of the signal path?

Great looking build.  And the circuit looks pretty interesting.  The Systech Harmonic Energizer was the 2nd Madbeans build I ever did and this sounds like an interesting take on that.

Nice build- looks like a neat reverb and I dig the graphic, it's super cool looking with/without the super cool show (this is the first I've heard of Season 4!)

P.S. Great use for an ash tray! I've got some fancy ones that I haven't been able to get rid of even though I quit the smokes, maybe I'll dig them out of their boxes to class-up my various component trimmings and assorted lengths of wire as you've done here.

I've had that since I was like 11. When I bought it I didn't even know it was an ash tray, but it makes a fantastic  storage area for trimmed leads and wires.

Excellent! All great and the addition of second footswitch is a cool idea.

Talking about disc golf... my son lives in Columbia / Missouri (born in Germany, grew up in New Zealand) and is a disc golf fanatic playing in pro league. Maybe you know each other, wouldn't that be funny... he's quite miffed that the disc golf season will be a fizzer this year...

Columbia is home to Harmony Bends, one of the top rated courses in the world!

I'll definitely participate in this. I finished my first quarantine build this afternoon and am working on artwork for the 2nd now.

I bought one of these last January and agree that it makes a world of difference. I find that it does amazing at helping desolder as well.

Enjoy; it's a good purchase for someone that realizes pedal building is a hobby they'll be doing for the foreseeable future.

I'm a lefty so my handwriting is a disaster. It's Corona #1.

As far as the mod, you need to break the trace between C23 and C25, then reconnect it via the foot switch.

The middle of March is when I began preparing for the disc golf season in Kansas City.  My guitar playing (and pedal building) normally take a back seat to the social aspect of disc golf through leagues and tournaments.  However, it's pretty obvious that 2020 is not going to be a normal year.  As an extrovert that lives alone, I've decided to finish up some half finished builds from the winter that I was going to slowly tackle over the summer because I'm going to need something to keep my hands and my mind busy.  First up is Diablochris's Tesseract Reverb.  If you're familiar with this build, you'll notice that I used a 3PDT switch and have an extra pair of wires connecting to the third lug.  There's a design quirk on this build that never lets the dry signal get totally dry when the effect is bypassed.  Chris worked with me to understand it and offered a suggestion on how to still allow the tails functionality while letting it eventually fade into a dry signal once the effect is disengaged.  The effect itself is pretty cool.  While it never gets totally wild, I do like how I can use it for shoegaze style sounds when you turn things up a bit.   I've normally used delays instead of reverbs but can see this being something that gets some serious time on my board.

Artwork was inspired when Stranger Things announced season 4.  Some of the etch didn't transfer completely (The B in Reverb) and I may try my hand at trying to hand cut that out with an X-Acto blade sometime soon.  I'll definitely have the time to mess around with it . 

Up next is Madbean's Rustbucket.  I'm working on artwork now.

Fantastic work.  And a fantastic sounding pedal to boot.

Nice work!  Glad to hear you got your build finished.  On mine, I ended up using some foam tape to apply slight pressure to the boards to hold them together, similar to your approach.  Are your graphics a reverse etch or a decal? Sort of looks like it could be either from the pics.

It's an etch.  I've started using Acid Magic on all my etches and I feel my reverse etches are much shallower while still being really clean when it comes to the lines.  Since this one has a PCB style background, the really light etches didn't totally sand down, making the textures blend into the etch that did completely sand down.

I was having problems initially with the boards separating from their pins so I put a little yellow component wrap inside and it fits like a glove now.

Do you mean that the male and female pin headers were losing connection? It's a shame that the mounting holes on the two PCBs don't match, so you could screw them together. (I try to add those these days for sandwich projects like this.)

Yeah, I know your Lovetone flanger had screw holes that allowed you to put the two boards together.  So does the DeadEndFX Mutron BiPhase board I'm working on. 

I remembered that old Boss pedals have some sort of foam padding on the back where the PCB rests so I went with that using some old pink bubble wrap I got from some supplier.  Two layers of it did the trick if anyone else has the problem; it's thin enough to easily screw on the bottom but thick enough that it touches the PCB.

After 3 months of testing and debugging,  my Blueshift is finally boxed and on my board.  I do think one of my delay chips sounded a bit off during the initial build but once I replaced both of them (and their clocks) it really sounds fantastic.  My 3207's were from 2 different runs (the CoolAudio graphics looked a little different on each) and I think there may have been slight differences in the runs.  Gordo's description of a "slight modulation that never really goes anywhere" is perfect way to put the feel of this effect.  The chorus is expansive and unlike anything I have played with.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my troubleshooting thread.  One of the awesome thing about this community is it's desire to help each other when someone has a problem or doesn't understand something.  You learn a lot more when things don't go as planned .  Also, Kevin at Aion did a fantastic job with the layout.  How he managed to cram this many thru hole components into a box this size is really a work of art.

The paint is a slight homage to the original.  It was my first time working with sparkle paint and I love the way it turned out.  The name and graphics also date back to the 80s with a nod to TRON.  I was having problems initially with the boards separating from their pins so I put a little yellow component wrap inside and it fits like a glove now.

Thanks to everyone who's commented so far.  I bought a proper oscilloscope (A Rigol1054Z that I unlocked with all the options + 100 mHz bandwidth).  On a side note, if you are becoming serious about building (and at this point, I would define myself as a serious hobbyist), make the investment in a Scope.  It answers so many questions you may have.
Now onto my particular investigation.  Using the scope (which generates a function signal itself), I was able to shape the waveforms coming out of TP1 and TP2 per the instructions.  So good so far.  I wanted to then put both TPs on the scope at the same time.  However, I was unable to do this using standard edge triggering.  One of the signals would remain stable while the other would never trigger.  I spoke with an electrical engineering friend who thought the frequency of the signal was changing.  And what do you know, I think he was right.

* The frequency on TP1 and TP2 both oscillate (from 7.95mHz to 8.06mHz)
* The voltage on TP1 and TP2 both oscillate (from 2.65V to 2.85V)

So looking through the scope triggering options, I found a method called delay triggering, which triggers if the 1st and 2nd signal are within some proximity of one and other in terms of shape.  I chose to trigger for anything less than 1us.  I then alternated between triggering the directions in opposite directions (out of phase) and the same direction (in phase).  Both would trigger, then jump around, then trigger, then jump around.  To me, this picture describes what I was seeing:



There's something Gordo posted in his initial build where he mentioned that the pedal has a "vague modulation that doesn't really seem to start or stop."  This sort of describes that.  I still think my effect has a little more movement than the sound samples Gordo posted, but at this point I think the overall way my effect is working seems correct and I'm going to box it and call it good.  However, if that voltage/frequency oscillation seems wrong, let me know because I'll have to rethink my hypothesis.

Nice work!  I actually screwed up a build of this earlier in the year.  I'm going to attempt to build another one (I etched the enclosure already), but since you just finished, I have a question for you:  When effect is powered on and in Envelope mode, which of the LEDs is on, and which of the LEDs is off?