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Hi guys, been a while!

My 13 year old son just started playing bass and I'm looking for something like a Ruby to build him so he can plug in and not be too loud. Read mixed things about Bass with the Ruby that has the bassman mods.

Anyone have a suggestion for a little project? Something not to hard cause maybe I will get the boy to build it himself.

Hey guys, it's been a longtime and I appologize that things dropped off without much explination. I started a new job and life got really busy, and that basically coencided with running out of stuff to post for auction.

I think things were a huge success. I think we ended up between 7500 and $8000 in donations raised between instagram and the Reverb stuff!!

I'm still crazy busy at work, but with the war about to hit the one year mark I wanted to put out a feeler and see if there is any interest in making another push. Several of you have contacted me at one point or the other about stuff you were working on, so I thought I'd make a post here to check interest and see if anyone finished up anything or would be interested in getting involved.

As always thoughts, questions, ideas, suggestions are very welcome.

Made this one for Pedals For Ukraine. Didn't think I would get it done on time.

It's a Dearmond Square Wave (which is basically a 250 anyway) but I used a LM308 (with a 100pf cap soldered between legs 1 and and 1n695 diodes. I also made several changes to the capacitor values to try and make it more bass friendly.  So I guess that makes it a Sub-harmonic Rat-ulator 250 right?

It sounds really gnarly and cool on guitar, but the volume has to be cranked to almost max for it to reach unity gain and I didn't have a 500kC for the gain pot so I used a 500kB so most of the control there is in the second half of the sweep. I think it still retains some of the 250's vibe though. If I had to do it again I'd make the volume be an internal trimmer and make sure I had a reverse log taper pot for the gain.

Anybody have a suggestion to increase the output volume? Might wait to post it to see if I can get that sorted. I think the diodes are clipping pretty hard and it's really throttling the volume. I tried several different sets of diodes but nothing sounded anywhere near as good. Also tried stuff with a tl071, sounded different and good as well, but I like the lm308 a little better.

The artwork on this one actually comes from a manhole cover in Kyiv that I have been wanting to put on a pedal forever. It's clearly a high voltage take on the Ukrainian Trident logo.

I want to take a single opamp circuit and get as close to a square wave as possible. Originally I was thinking about putting a 308 (cause I like Rats) in it and using germanium diodes. I've started to wonder if using a cleaner opamp, like a tl071, and let the diodes do the work would lead to a better result. What do you guys think? I'm sure they would be pretty different, but I think the 308 doing more clipping work might actually make thing less like a square wave.

Hi Guys, Thank you so much to everyone who has gotten involved! Everyone here has always been an inspiring bunch of people, but this is a whole new level! I have been spending ton of time on getting this going but hopefully now it will be more maintenance than anything else. I have seen a bunch of amazing looking stuff getting finished here and had a bunch of questions so I am going to do my best to answer them here.



If you have a pedal that you want to submit please send the following to me at pedalsforukraine@gmail.com:

- Please do the profile questionnaire, and send a couple of pictures to go along with it, some builds, your workspace, guitars, pedalboards, just whatever you want that is pedal related.
- Pictures of the finished builds along with a brief description of the pedal and a short video or audio clip (59 seconds or less) to go along with the auction post. Please try to keep the descriptions under 1000. There is a character limit on instagram post and I have a decent amount of procedural stuff that needs to be included.
- Please let me know the geographic location that you can ship to so I can include that in the listing. I figure most of you guys are in the US, but I am not sure.

Once the auction is complete I'll co-ordinate with the winner to verify the donation is made, and send the verification to you along with their address so we can get the pedal shipped.



A quick update on how things are going so far.

- There are three auctions live currently and the high bids total about $475 between them at the moment.
- I think I have about six or seven more cued up, and I think I've seen at least a few more pop up here this weekend.
- I plan on starting auctions every other day, but may move up to every day if I keep getting stuff at this rate and I can find the time to make the post.

I have temporarily take the Ukrainian Red Cross off the donation list while I look into some things that were shared with me on instagram, so there may be some changes to organizations listed as our focus, but I don't know yet.

But again, I can't thank you guys enough for getting involved, this is awesome!

Brian's fundraiser was awesome and very thoughtful, and I know storyboardist is doing one on his site as well. It's inspiring and refreshing to see people care so much, so I wanted to see if we could do something as a larger community as well.

Here is the basic idea, we come up with a name for the group, build some pedals (DIY style) with artwork inspired by Ukraine, and find a way to auction them off and donate the proceeds to charity to help refugees.

Haven't worked out details yet, but I have ideas for a decent amount of it. But, and I know war sucks, I want to keep a positive bend here. Support for those in need, not disdain for the war. This is all terrible but I want to focus this effort on doing good where we can.

- first and foremost, the pedals.

• I say anything anyone wants to do circuit wise is cool as long as they are built well enough to go out into the world and handle use by other players.
• As far as artwork I think it would be cool if we could use themes from Ukrainian culture. Their flag (as I'm sure many have seen lately) is Blue and Yellow, so if you are working in color that is a good place to start. Their national symbol is a very cool trident design that looks great as pedal artwork. The sunflower is their national flower and has taken on some significance in the war their so it could be cool to use, and if you want to get super fancy their national bird is the nightingale. Here is a link to some of their cultural symbolism. Vyshyvanka are a traditional shirt, that has fine embroidery that could look cool as artwork as well.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_symbols_of_Ukraine
• What I really want to avoid with artwork is anything like F-ck P-tin or anything with violence or negative imagery. (Caroline Guitar Co already did a pretty amazing Fck PTN pedal anyway)

-Name: If there is some interest in doing this I'd like to come up with a name we could all vote one a maybe include in the artwork for each pedal. All suggestions are welcome. Pedals for (something) , DIY Stomps Out (something) I don't know, so ideas are super welcome.

-Fundraising: I am open to suggestions on is a platform to do the auction. Somewhere with high visibility would be good. I was thinking either way of starting an instagram page for this and putting the pedals there to see if it can get some attention so we can raise more money, but then it occurred to me that maybe we could auction through there as well somehow. I have seen raffles where people provide proof of donation for entry, I wonder if we could do a silent auction on there in a similar fashion. I kind of like the idea because then the money doesn't have to change hands, it goes directly to the charity and no extra fees are involved. It seems simple, and I like simple, but I'd like to hear what others think of the idea. Once again, it is something I've seen in the past, but I don't know a ton about it or if it is the best solution, so suggestions are welcome.

I'm thinking it would be good to stagger the auctions a little, maybe start one every day or two and have them go for 4-5 days each, but it is dependent on how much interest there is in doing this.

Shipping: The easiest thing here is to have each builder ship their pedal instead of trying to get them all in one place and then shipping from there. It will save on the shipping cost and make delivery quicker. Depending on the size of this thing and the builder's needs I may offer to cover shipping, but that is something I need to sort out a bit. Again though, suggestions welcome.

-I'd like to maybe make it so each pedal auction listing (where ever they happen) has a picture of the pedal, a picture of the builder working on it (proof of DIYness), and maybe a pic of the builder holding the pedal. Audio demos would be cool and probably help boost the price, but they certainly won't be a make it or break it thing.

As far as the charities I am open to ideas as well, The World Kitchen seems to be doing a lot of good work there at the moment, Red Cross is another that may be good, but if anyone else has ideas then please let me know.

It also occurred to me that if we go with the proof of donation model where donations are directly from the winning bidder to the charity we could have a list of charities and let them select from that list.

There is probably many other details to consider, so if anyone has suggestions or ideas that I haven't thought about please let me know.

Because this is such a developing situation I'd like to get this moving, I've got one pedal built that I'll include and I'm going to try and do at least one more this week if I can find time. If there is interest then I want to start getting something up on instagram within a week or so if I can.

If you want to help and know others that might as well then feel free to share this post. Just remember let's keep it positive, I'd like to do this as a group under one name so we can maximize the possible funds we raise. I feel like if we do it in one place and have a couple things going at a time we might be able to build a little steam and raise a little more money.

Let me know what you think guys, I've never tried anything remotely like this before, so I am flying by the seat of my pants here.


At some point Brian very generously gave me a Sacred Cow board that had "DIY does it best" printed on it. He's absolutely correct  so let's see if we can do some good together.

Almost didn't post this one because.. WTF.

Second stock value green Sovtek era Muff (yeah that's what I'm calling it now, at least today) I've built recently. Sounds awesome on bass and just so-so on guitar. The first is a surprise gift fro an old friend in the states who helped me out recently and is on it's way to him now or I would post it too. Used BC549C's in both and really like the sound. I tried a bunch of different combinations of things from the coda article (linked below) but landed on those as they sounded the best to my ear. They also seemed appropriate as I bought them locally last year, the artwork is a nod to where that was.

https://www.coda-effects.com/2015/11/big-muff-mods-and-tweaks.html

I think I recently described how it sounds on bass as being the sound of a van full of punk rockers driving through the wall of your living room. So completely awesome.

I used to not like this particular flavor of Muff, but I had also not played one since they were new. And then it was with a Strat through a Fender solid state. Didn't realize until I was testing the one I made for my friend that the magic happens when it is not at all cranked. With the tone between 1 and three and the sustain between noon and two this thing just destroys on bass. If you dime the sustain it gets really thin and shrill sounding. Once I tried it on bass I knew I had to make myself one.

This one is built on Vero using the layout from Carcharias Effects (who seems like a really cool guy).

https://carchariaseffects.com/post/big-muff-pi/

The guts are okay, not my best not my worst. I could've done better but I felt like finishing this one last night.

Cheers


(p.s. has the photo posting stuff changed. I've been having a difficult time with it lately)

I love me a good Tele or Jazzmaster, but I think Danelectro makes my favorite guitars. I've already got a DC59 RI from the 90's, and the blue Hodad (also from that era) in the pictures. I'll never part ways with eiter, because they are both just great guitars. The range of tones you can get out of a good DC59 is quite surprising, let alone what the Hodad can do (phase switching, coil tapping).

But I had never had a convertible. I had thought about picking one up for a long time, but the newer Danos I've played aren't quite as nice as the early reissue ones. The older ones use a scarf joint on the neck which give a different angle to the headstock and the tension on the stings feels better to me.

This one popped up on Instagram and I couldn't resist. It's from that period, it looks pretty pristine, and the guy fixed my biggest complaint about these, the bridge. They use three little hex screws to adjust the height and just float on the body. The guy I got this from installed post in the body and modified the bridge to be height adjustable, which I'm digging so far.

Haven't had a chance to plug it in yet but it's loud acoustically. Doesn't sound bad that way either.

For whatever reason it's taken me years to get to this one.... Okay... I just wasn't looking forward to trying to line up every thing and drill all the holes.

Very cool sounding, not gonna be an always on thing though. Haven't had a ton of time to play it yet but so far. Haven't gotten great results with single note runs so far, but cool stuff starts to happen with arpeggiated chords. I think it really shines with chords ringing out. I've gotten some very cool textures from it that way. It would be perfect for adding an airy, spacey feel to a song.

It would be cool if Brian updated this one at some point. Think it would be super sweet with the Tapflo instead of the molten voltage chip so that it could work with the different waveforms.

Another 3d printed faceplate on this one. Really pleased with how it looks this time, let my four year old pick the color scheme. He chose well.

I should probably be less lazy about the guts, but I've just been wanting to play now. They don't have to look pretty inside to make the loud. 

I'll try to work up a short audio or video clip of it if I can find a sec sometime soon.

I'm building M-Kresol's Palisades board from a couple years back and I just found out I'm missing the 1n916 diodes. I have plenty of 1n914/4148's laying around. looks like it has 914's symmetrically clipping and the 916's set up asymmetrically. I don't have much experience with the palisades but am thinking about giving this one to a guy who used to have one and misses it. Will there be enough difference that I should just wait and order the 916's or should I just throw some 914's in there and not worry about it?

Wondering if anyone has a copy of the drill template for the Helium OD boards? Finally getting around to building it up.

[First person to post the name of the song get a Moar board (I'll pay Brian for it and have him ship it to you) so the toanz can rain down from their rig.]

Bought this one because I like a good Rat and the Timmy but mostly because of Brian's hilarious ad copy in the build doc

"The Moar is a friggin' killer sounding overdrive. Its gonna take yer wiggly-wahs and yer tappity-taps and make 'em sound like Eddie Van Failin' and Jimmy LePage spent a night feeding in some Weird Science sh%t into a super computer and out came the most bad-a$$ overdrive evar known...Moar. The Moar uses ideas from the Timmy and the Rat and turns them into a sort of...Rimmy. Or Trat."

Wasn't expecting to like it as much as I do. Sounds FANTASTIC and it was a super easy build.

So here's the deal, I made an impromptu short video of how good it sounds. It is of a song I just figured out the other night (tappey-taps start around the 30 second mark, beware the sock-toe). The Moar nails the sound on the record. I am not a player who ever taps, so please forgive the sloppiness. My kids were also making noise in the background.

First person to post the name of the song get a Moar board (I'll pay Brian for it and have him ship it to you) so the toanz can rain down from their rig.

It is probably a pretty obscure song, I doubt I'd know it if my old band hadn't played a couple of shows with these guys back in the day, so I will give out a couple of hints over the next couple of days until someone gets it.

Another 3d printed faceplate on this one. It looks better than the picture makes it look. I called it the Tim Rat, cause I couldn't quite bring myself to write Trat or Rimmy on there even though I really wanted to.

So I have been suffering from decision fatigue lately. Nothing major, but trying to look for a new show to watch has become tedious that I don't want to watch TV (which is okay by me). I realize a large part of the problem is that Netflix and similar places have so much content that by the time I look for something to watch for 10-15 minutes I've already lost interest in watching TV.

I have been trying to figure out ways to limit my options to make it easier so with that in mind..

I think it is very safe to say that most of us have a few more pedals than we know what to do with. So here is the idea what would you put on a board if you were limited to having ten knobs total across everything on it?


Currently I'm thinking I would do a U-235 octave, Violet Ram's Head Muff, Green Ringer, tri-vibe and a DeProfundis Delay.

I think the last time I played a green Russian muff was when they were still the ones being sold, but as I understand it they are the preferred muff of bass players.

I have a bassist friend who used to use a green Russian muff he was borrowing from a friend and really liked it so I want to build him one. Any one have any thoughts on if it is worth doing any mods for a bassist as opposed to a guitarist? I am inclined not to, because he was happy with the stock one, but I could put some caps on a switch or something if it makes a big difference. Any one experienced in the ways of Bass Big Muff?

I was going over the document after working on this one today and realized I only have 1590bb enclosures at the moment. Any chance I can squeak it into there, or is there just not enough clearance?

Popped my Tone Virus, drilled a case for it, made a faceplate, totally got stoked.... Then realized my dpdt is on-off-on not on-on-on.. D'OH

So I went through the stages of part drawer grief, I think we have all been there a few times.

- I looked through everything at least a dozen times
- I blamed my bad ordering, and promised I'd do better next time (I won't though)
- looked at every store close to me to see if I could get one fast.. nope
- played some loud, fast guitar
- I stared at a diagram and tried to figure out if I could somehow wire the on-off-on one to work
- played some fuzzy drone guitar
- I thought, well what functionality would I loose anyway
- I got bummed; played some more guitar.. this time it was bluesy
- I found another stash of parts! and there it was(!)... another on-off-on switch D'OH again
- I just accepted my fate and that it would be a while before I could get those sweet, sweet PLL tones.


Then I looked at a diagram and had an idea;

                       Could I wire two spdt on-on switches in the place of the dpdt and still have all the functionality?

I think so, but I wanted to check first.

Brian would you consider doing a board for the Grind Customs De Profundus delay? They used to have great projects over there. It's ashamed to not have them around.

Built one a long time ago and think it's the best sounding pt2399 delay I've used. 

Does anyone have a good resource for tips getting started with tracing circuits. I have a fairly complex pedal that is working and a schematic that is close but not correct. I would like to see if I can figure this one out.

Some kind of tutorial? I figure my multimeter continuity tester will probably come in handy.

Been a while since I have done one of these.

You guys who are doing one a week have inspired me to try and build more to keep up.

Last week I built up the Headtrip 2. Very cool project, my first attempt with an FV-1 and it went together like a breeze. Soundwise I like Brian's patches a lot. I really wanted the Organizer type sound, but I'm not all for straight up cloning EQD, so this was a cool compromise and it sounds great. The reverbs are all nice and I like the delays more than I thought I would. The wet and dry mix controls are very nice to have. For some reason I always hear some kind of digital artifacts with FV-1 stuff, it's almost like an aftertaste. It bugs the hell out of me, but of coarse in a band mix it completely disappears. The mix controls seem to let me dial it out and still maintain the effect.  Overall it's great stuff. I think I need to download spin cad and dive in further.

Second is a clone of the Big Cheese. Another first because I've never played any Lovetone stuff before. I used BC549c's instead of the 2n3904, but I think it is otherwise stock (to the best of my knowledge.) I haven't had a tone of time to play it yet, and only through a little Ruby with a six inch speaker, but it delivers. I've never played a Fuzz Face I particularly like, found some decent tone benders, but I think this thing has the sounds that I want out of that type fuzz.

They both have 3d printed faceplates. I am very happy with how these are turning out. I need to get around to doing a tutorial for it.

I have read that J Mascis has his Big Muff wired so that the pedal is always on, and when he steps on the switch it takes out the volume pot completely and makes things really loud. So in essence bypass is always on muff, and switched on is muff with the volume all the way up.

Pretty sure wiring up a second stomp to take out the volume pot wouldn't be difficult, but what I would rather do is put in an internal switch to go from the way Mascis uses it to the standard bypass mode.

So internal switch one way stomp would do Always on/Really loud, and the other way would just be the standard muff.

For some reason I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how to make that work, any suggestions? Do I need a 4pdt instead of a 3pdt?