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Super stoked to have this done today. It's the first pedal I ever started building but it took me forever to finish it with figuring out what mods I want, how to implement them, figuring out how to paint it and actually doing it etc, having crazy pops due to stupid LEDs etc... Every possible thing proceeded inefficiently and had been somewhat of an obsession and a massive time sink.

Mad props to David and Tom the Electric Druid for answering all my questions. Extra feature are:
Sync input jack (The one right beside the tap switch)
CV input (switchable between Rate and Depth)
Utility Output (switchable between LFO and clock, sort of like the Tapanatorator, IMO you can't have one of these LFOs in a box and only use it for one effect)

I'm planning on eventually having a whole series of modulation effects that can all talk to each other. Another little quirk is I will never sandwich 2 boards and hardwire them together. Never. I can't. The plastic washers in the back are because I couldn't fit those 2 jacks in where I drilled them so I had to drill out the holes super huge.

The coffee cup knob is made out of clay built around a little soft touch knob that I ripped all the rubber off of. It won't spill when you turn it over

Finally I decided to document the ridiculous process of doing the paint job but it's too much for this build report so I made a "tutorial".

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=23846.0

Recently I took out my old Zoom volume/expression pedal to do some swells (I went through about 7 or 8 years of not using guitar pedals). It scratched like a mother so I opened it up to clean the pot and decided to make some improvements while it was open. It has a dual pot inside. One side is for the volume function. The other is connected to the expression jack.

I never liked the setup of passive expression pedals. 1: They require a TRS cable. I could have sworn I have one around somewhere but I cant find it. 2: They require stereo expression inputs on your pedals that have voltage output wired to the ring connection. My moogerfoogers have these but Im planning on building a bunch of CV able pedals in the near future and I will NOT be bothering to wire them like this. 3: You are limited to whatever voltage your pedal puts out.

So I added a 9v jack and wired it so the expression jack simply puts out 0-9 volts except I also added a limiter knob so it can put out whatever range I want. This is great for dialing in some wow-wow formant type sounds with a high resonance phaser where the sweep of the formant is found within a very small range of the available phase shifting.

Before picture, thats the jack board at the top:



Sliced the board in half, desoldered the expression jack and wired it in with a new DC jack too:



The new limiting control and how the wires connect to the dual pot PCB:



All done:

Everything seems to work fine for the digital controls. The tremolo works, wah doesn't (but I'm not going to worry about that until later) The only problem (for now) is that the 8 pattern LEDs go completely dark when the corresponding pots are turned slightly less than half of the way clockwise. This also means that only about 25% of the pot's rotation is useful for setting tremolo volumes and it's very hard to do without just making each step full volume or silent.

I've got 5.02v on pin 16 of IC4. 3.86v coming out of it to pin 1 on the pots and coming out of pin 2 of the pots when they are fully CCW.  1.86v across the 8 LEDs when they are fully lit. At the point where the pots are turned just until the LED goes fully dark I have 3.15v on the wiper of the corresponding pot.   I have 1.8v +/- .05v across the global pattern LED and the vactrol LEDs (I have normal yellow LEDs instead of vactrols) when they are lit too. Those 3 LEDs also seem to have the appropriate resistance from their cathodes to ground.

I'm guessing my problem has something to do with only 3.86v coming out of the 4017 instead of 4.77 like it says in the build doc. I just swapped for a different one and this time I have 3.89v.

Anyone have any idea what could be going wrong?

Ok, well the first one is from Tayda and my fiancée did the building while I was the project overseer.

First up is Überkinder. It made from two boards from Tayda and based on the Zvex Super Hard On. There are two of the circuits and a master volume knob so techincally it is closer to the Zvex Super Duper 2 in 1 but this one goes beyond even that because there are independent inputs and outputs for each. Output one is normalised into Input 2 so when you only use the 2 jacks at the bottom (input 1 and output 2) it functions as a normal 2 in 1.







Finally a photo of the inspiration behind the name and the paint job:





Next is Barbe à papa. It is built from an Aion Flare board which is an 8 knob clone of the Zvex fuzz factory.







And again the inspiration for the name and paint job:





Next is Eiskompressor. It is built on an Aion Aurora board to Ross Compressor specs. I don't think it or the next one require a picture for the name and paint job inspiration.









Finally, here is Napoleon. It is an Aion Lumin board which is a "workalike" of the BBE Sonic Stomp with an added mid knob.

I am talking specifically about the short pin version with smooth shaft.

I have been getting them from Tayda and I found the knobs kind of feel weird on them and wobble as they turn. I was missing a few values for a couple projects that Tayda dindnt carry so I got some from Smallbear. I found the knob travelled around them wonderfully and the pot itself provided less resistance too. Great!

But now I am thinking of ordering some from Mammoth because they are a bit cheaper than Small Bear, they are having a 20% off sale until tomorrow and I like their 1590BBM enclosures.

Does anyone know if these are the full 6.35mm or just 6? Im assuming that thats what the difference is because tayda lists them as 6-6.35mm so I guess its a bit of a grab bag what you get when you order from them. Small bear also specifially lists a 6mm version for a few cents more. Mammoth, however doesnt list the diameter. If they are the same as the Small Bear ones thats great. If they are the same as the Tayda ones Im much better off getting them there. Anyone have experience with these? 

I'm thinking of selling my moogerfooger filter pedal (I got it a long time ago to turn my Japanese synths into a Moog, It didn't work) because it's huge, clunky, requires a backwards power adapter and I don't need an envelope filter for guitar and bass all that often. I would rather have a smaller, simpler pedal for when I need to do that.

However, I am starting to build a line of more modular guitar effects that have CV inputs (starting with the Twin Peaks Tremelo) and I really appreciate the envelope output on the moog pedal and anything I replace it with would have to have it too. It is also a bonus that the Kraken and Sharkfin have attack and decay controls for the envelope while the moog just has a sensitivity switch.

I don't really understand how the envelopes work well enough (except that that they both seem to built around rectifiers, but curiously in opposite directions) to know what kind of output to expect form it, but I understand how the linear voltage control section works on this:

http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth_new/DUALVCA/DLLVCA001.html

and I see that the shark fin and the kraken both feed the OTA in the same way and I conclude that the output of the envelope on those is at least some positive voltage that may or may not need to buffered or scaled to achieve what I want: a 0-5v output. The shark fin has the bonus of a sample hold I can tap and a negative power rail in case I need an op-amp buffer that doesn't clip close to 0v.

Has anyone done anything like this before or have any insight on whether I'm on the right track?

I was reading the Fuzzdog thread so I decided the check out their site and I see that they sell an adaptor board to use an LM13700 on a PCB that calls for a CA3080

http://shop.pedalparts.co.uk/CA3080_-_LM13700_Adapter_PCB/p847124_13121572.aspx

Has anyone tried this on a Dynacomp/Ross style compressor? If so, is it worth the hassle for any reason except that the 13700 is more readily available?

I just finished my Ross Compressor on a PCB from Aion Electronics last week and I find it a bit noisy. I did a google about compressor noise and I read that the 13700 is a more modern product with lower noise. Another source told me that the CA3080 is not inherently noisy and the noise is caused by the low signal levels  and the high gain required after. If that is the case then only a circuit designed (or at least tweaked) for the 13700 could take advantage of its lower noise capabilities.

I'm not looking to tweak the hell out of my compressor, just wondering whether a straight swap would or would not make a noticeable difference in noise.

It looks like they have paint pens and lacquer pens.

I'm assuming the paint ones are the normal wash off if you make a mistake kind that people have been talking about around here.

Anyone use the lacquer ones? I wonder if they are more durable.

Lastly, it seems a small tip is generally recommended but do you prefer fine or ultra-fine?

The DigDug sequencer output is supposed to be used to control an external optical effect, but what would happen if you plugged into a control voltage input, say on a MoogerFooger phaser?

If that wouldnt work, is it possible to make it work while still keeping the on-board tremelo and wah?

And lastly, has anyone ever added a glide/smooth/slew/lag/glissando/portamento control to theirs?