Topics

1

General Questions / 70s Morley Power Wah

« on: May 19, 2018, 11:40:40 AM »

I just bought a not working unit on Reverb for a good price. I for some reason cannot come across a schematic for the thing. Anybody have one laying around? It is just the Wah, not fuzz, or volume. Board revision RW1-B. I know it has to be out there someplace, my google-fu is just failing. Thanks fellas.

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Build Reports / My Finished Pedal

« on: February 03, 2018, 02:14:37 PM »

Hi guys, things have been crazy lately, so its been a while since I've posted, or even done anything. But, I made a deal with myself, that I'd have a finished product to try to get into the local music stores by this summer. I've had the board designed and built, etc for a long time. So I freshened up the artwork, added a logo, and had some enclosures professionally done, since I can't seem to get a good etch to save my life. Anyway, here it is. There are a couple of small things to tidy up, like the final color of the LED, I can't decide between white and red. Also the knobs, I think I like these best, but want them to be slightly larger. It is going to the owner of a local store on Monday to test for a week or so, and he's going to let me know whether he'll carry them for me. Here's hoping.

3

Build Reports / New Octavia build

« on: January 25, 2017, 11:06:59 PM »

I finally finished the new board, and an etch I did. The only thing I used that I didn't put together was the 3pdt board (thanks Ben from rullywow).

Boy has this been a learning experience. I originally had this measured out for a 1590b but forgot to measure it vertically. So I had to do a 125b. It's slightly too big. I might pick up a few of Peter from vfe's new Hammond size as that would be perfect.

The etch still needs work, and I need to find some bitchin knobs. But I'm pleased otherwise. Fired up first try. I got a bag of 1k pn3565 on ebay, so I have those in with some 2n3565s to see the difference. I can't hear any. The hfes match as close as I can and the sound is indistinguishable to my ears, which is nice because now I don't have to spend $3 each!

 

4

How Do I? Beginner's Paradise. / First try at etch

« on: December 21, 2016, 08:02:42 PM »

What did I do wrong? The print didn't fully transfer. I left the iron on for about five or six minutes. More time? I soaked it in water afterwards. What do you guys think before I use up another sheet of paper.

5

Build Reports / Acapulco gold clone

« on: November 24, 2016, 08:27:54 PM »

Well I've spent a lot of time with this circuit now, and ive decided I just don't like it very much. I can't tame the noise like I want. It sounds cool at lower gain, but squeals at higher. It seems it either wants to be too gated, or squeal. Oh well. This was more of an exercise in playing with a circuit and designing and building my own board for it. I had the boards made at elecrow, and they are nice boards.







His cigarette gets brighter with another of the sound 2 light boards I got. The envirotex pour didn't come out well because the decal lifted underneath and made it wavey. Oh well, I'm gonna try my hand at etching. Decals are just too finnicky for me.

6

Build Reports / My Octavia Project

« on: August 15, 2016, 12:46:18 PM »

Alright, so I liked the retrograde so much I thought I'd use that as the project to learn Eagle, and try to make it my own in the process. I made a few tweaks to the circuit, though nothing major, and I haven't settled on which values I'm going to actually end with. I gave it a couple of switches to swap between different diodes in the octave section, and different transistors. I found some GE NPNs that I'm going to try in it. I haven't seen any of these with GEs, but who knows, maybe there's a reason for that. I'm missing 2 switches that haven't arrived yet, but should tonight, so I'll be able to test it with the GEs in it.  Dminner made the enclosure, and it is super awesome. With the space theme I thought it would be cool to put some glow in the dark paper underneath the envirotex, so we'll see how well that works. It lit up real nice with my UV LEDs on the breadboard. I also made a little "planet" to hide the LEDs.



Here it is with envirotex and all the holes for LEDs. I plan to put 4 LEDs on the left to act as stars, and then when the octave is engaged, I have a sound2light board (I'm sorry I can't remember which of you made it. chromesphere maybe?) to run the UV leds to make the glow in the dark paper hopefully sparkle. We'll see.



The board is bigger than it needs to be, but its my first one, and I'm still learning how to lay these out.



I've since populated the rest of it, but its got all kinds of wires going every which way and it looked ugly, so here it is in the flesh.



Its been quite the time consuming project with making the PCB and all, but its been fun, and boy oh boy did I learn a lot. I'll update with finished pics as soon as I'm done with it.

7

How Do I? Beginner's Paradise. / Eagle help - movement

« on: June 27, 2016, 11:54:16 AM »

I've been playing around with eagle this morning, trying to lay out a board. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to make smaller movements to individual pieces on the board layout section. The board I'm setting up is 18x18mm, so fairly small. The parts just jump the entire way across the board. Is there a way to move them in smaller increments?

8

How Do I? Beginner's Paradise. / PSA: Make electronics 2nd edition $1 (PDF)

« on: June 21, 2016, 05:15:02 PM »

Humble Bundle has a ton of electronics books right now, and Make electronics is one of the ones you can get for $1. Quite a few more, but you have to pay upwards of $15 for them. It is in .PDF but considering that it goes for $30 on smallbear, its a pretty good deal.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/make-electronics-book-bundle

9

How Do I? Beginner's Paradise. / Carbon comp tolerance

« on: June 13, 2016, 02:50:17 PM »

I bought a huge bag of carbon comp resistors off of ebay. Some of them read dead on with my multimeter, but some of them, which are 5% are reading double, to triple that. The worst offenders are a stack of 6.8ohm that read anywhere from 7.4-7.9. I'm thinking they're just really poor quality, but even so, that surprises me. Is this just carbon comp? I'm not super worried about using them, just surprised at the difference between the seemingly same value resistors.

10

General Questions / Black Light reactive sticker/paper

« on: February 13, 2016, 06:57:17 PM »

So I had an idea for a finish when I found some blacklight leds on amazon. So I want to do kind of a star background so when you kick the pedal, it all glows. What havs you guys used paper or sticker wise for that? I'm not exactly sure what would react to blacklight like I want.

11

General Questions / PCB Droid

« on: February 08, 2016, 02:17:27 PM »

Has anybody used this app yet? Seems really cool from what I've used so far. It'll be nice to have something I can tinker with on my phone when I'm not at my computer.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theophrast.droidpcb&hl=en

12

Build Reports / My 2015 builds

« on: February 07, 2016, 04:55:10 PM »

I forgot to post a new thread with my 2015 builds. Nothing special, I started building around the beginning of the year, so these are all definitely noob builds.

Here is an Acapulco Gold clone. I liked the build, it was my first vero build, and the circuit is great. I need to build another, as I bought enough for 2, and hopefully I can dial out some of the things I don't like about it. This has an added gain pot, too. I've since bought some with connected rows, as I'm wondering if some of the problem is I'm missing a connection someplace since I only had pad per hole. I'm almost positive that's my problem, actually. I put the art together with clipart I found in inkscape. I ended up having to change the knobs for slimmer ones because the "gain" label was covered up by the one I had on there. Measure better next time.











Next up is a Retrograde and a Fuzz Face from Pickdropper (he makes awesome boards, btw.) This one was very unintentionally messy. I didn't plan it out properly and the wires ended up everywhere. It all works, and sounds great. I've since bought 5 or 6 different types of PNP's for it, and have the fuzz face dialed in really nicely. I also moved the bias knob off board, as the circuit has a trimpot spot for it.









At that point I wasn't brave enough to try for any sort of finish, so bleh.

Last up, or first I should say as this was my first official build, is a weener wah.







That's everything from last year! Here's to more, and thanks to all you guys for all the help.

13

Build Reports / Pot Matrix build - Finally Finished

« on: February 07, 2016, 01:33:34 PM »

This took me an insane amount of time. I had to redo the enclosure once, repaint it probably 4 times, and I kept ordering wrong, or forgetting things. Needless to say I learned a lot. I had enough room on the bottom to move my test rig into, so now its kind of an all-in-one rig tester.












My envirotex pour came out really nicely I thought:



I have each row with individual breadboard jumpers so that I can have as many as 5 pots at a time. I'll never need that many, nor will each row necessarily line up to what I need, but that is okay. The wires are messy, and I have some ideas on how to clean them up, but for now the book is closed on this one. All in all a really fun build, and thanks to Leevibe for sharing his OSHpark boards for this.

I painted it too dark the last time around. I was in a hurry to get it done, and it started snowing on me, and I just was too heavy with the trigger finger. Here is how I intended it to come out; much more visible than what I ended up with:


(That was my first attempt before I figured out my envirotex pour was too soft.)