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Another pcb I bought from Deadastronaut (thanks again!).

This time a high-gain distortion and man... this is a beast. Initially I wanted this one to go on my board, but as ther other guitar player from my band had his birthday coming up, I decided to give him a nice present for his pedalboard. In the rush I forgot to make a gutshot. Nevertheless, I was able to make a sample recording of how it sounds: http://crestones.net/ignition.mp3

It's been a while since my last post, haven't really spent a lot of time on building pedals anymore due to other hobby's, but I decided to give it another go. I'm in the process of creating a new pedalboard and of course I needed a delay. Having built multiple pt2399 based delays I decide to try out Electric Druid's Digital Delay

I must say it sounds really good, I have no noise issues whatsoever although I do have an issue with the high shelf control (chip seems to crash when the pot is at it's max position and I need to disconnect in order to use it again, need to investigate).

I always wanted to do a swirl paint and for a first attempt I'm quite happy with the result. I used humbrol enamel paint for the swirls. I first made a mask since I didn't want the entire pedal to have a swirl finish. After swirling I printed the labels etc on a decal and finished the enclosure with the wrong clear coat, resulting in a bit of a crackled finish on the sides (oops.... learnt something there ). Guess I got lucky that I noticed that after the first light coating.

Finally I got around to record a demo for the last build of 2017.
It was a hell of a year on which I tried to focus my free time on creating a pedal a month. Although I didn't entirely make it I'm very happy with the result.

A separate thread will display the harvest of 2017

Now, I present to you: the Tremshifter!

An impressive tremolo with a nice optional sweep filter, using a separate LFO.
The rate of both LFO's can be adjusted independently in order to create all sorts of weird effects, which you might expect from the creator of this pcb, deadastronaut. Thanks once again Rob for creating such an awesome sounding effect.

I added a toggle switch to change between capacitors in order to slow down the filter LFO.

This time, the graphics were entirely designed by kleine kunstjes. Thanks Máire, for this outstanding art deco design and for helping me out whenever I get stuck.

Thanks all of you for commenting on my builds so far and helping me out. I love this community.

Time for the demo!

Kind regards,
Crestones

Presenting the November build: Another phaser, by deadastronaut

A wonderful phaser, capable of creating nice swirley wooshy sounds. Comes with a switch to have it go real slow or really fast. I replaced the CLR's with trimpots as I like to dial in on the right amount of intensity.

Had a hard time getting the jewel led bezel attached to the enclosure. Apparently it needs a nut nobody sells around these parts but I managed to get it done.

Enjoy the movie

September ended so if someone could wake up Mr. Armstrong that would be superb.
With that I also finished up a shredmaster clone for this month, the Iron Lung by tinnitus industries.

Lo and behold:

I added a stompswitch with led indicator for symmetric/asymmetric clipping, bit of a volume change but I guess that can be useful.

4 layers of primer, 3 layers of paint and 4 layers of clear coat will hopefully protect the artwork and enclosure a bit better than my previous builds.

Here are some images:

Hi guys,

Sorry if this has posted before but I couldn't find it. I spray paint most of my enclosures and apply a couple of layers of clear coat before I finish everything up. On my pedalboard I use velcro that sticks pretty well. Unfortunately, when ripping off (very gently) the velcro from the pedals, I tend to rip off some paint from the enclosure as well.

Is it just a matter of applying more layers of clear coat? Any other ideas?

Presenting the August build: Liquid Mercury by David Rolo

A great sounding tap tempo phaser based on the TAPLFO chip by Electric Druid. It uses a subset of 4 different LFO's instead of all 8. I really like the random LFO. Unfortunately I didn't make a demo of that, but it really gives some nice effects.

This is by far the most difficult build I've done. I spent most of the time getting the jacks to fit.I had to mangle the external jack for the tap tempo, allowing me to synchronize multiple pedals using the TAPLFO chip, so it could fit. I didn't have much room because of the 2 pcb's stacked on top of each other

As usual, I put a video online to demonstrate this awesome sounding pedal:

Presenting the July build: Chasm Reverb by dead astrounaut.

So I spent a few weeks on finishing up the Chasm Reverb by deadastronaut. I had it done for quite some time but never had the time to create a nice design.
Truly a very nice reverb! Hate to see this one go .

As usual, I'll let the images and video do the rest of the talking.

Presenting the May build: another Deathklaw

I built this one for a couple of friends of mine who helped me over the years with recording and mastering several projects, as well as helping me build my guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyfNuHA5jRc. If you are based anywhere near Zeeland, The Netherlands, and you're looking for a studio to record your band/project, I can really recommend these guys.

I chose the Deathklaw as this is one of the pedals we embedded in my guitar.

Apart from the Deathklaw I also added some circuitry so I could add an tempo indicator led. Since the deathklaw is a double pt2399 delay, the indicator goes actually twice as fast as the delayed signal. Also, due to the specs of my camera phone, the led appears to be glitching. This is not the case in real life . The led indicator gave me the idea for the artwork.
I've added a momentary switch to get infinite feedback. The volume of the feedback can be controlled by an internal trimpot as it will probably be set and forget anyway.

Thanks to Jeroen and Wouter of re-Amp Studios! (http://www.re-ampstudios.nl/)
Without further ado, here is the demo video:

Music: Safe Haven performed by Down the Alley

Hi all,

Just finished soldering the Molecular Compactor by David Rolo. I connected it to my Pickit 2 and I'm able to flash the ROM chip on it. I'm looking for an example hex file which I can use to flash the chip. So far I've only found assembly files and I haven't found a program yet to convert it to a hex file. Will get to that later.

Right now I'm looking for an example program so I can check whether everything is working as it should. Hopefully someone is willing to send me one?

Presenting my april build, the bipolar bear (david rolo). Loving this pedal so far!

My latest built for a pedal a month:

Left the waterslide in the water for a itsy tiny bit too long but I like how it turned out.

This one has been on my to do list for quite some time
A demo can be heard here

Hi all,

2017 started and I just had a week off from work, so I decided to spend most of my time getting hooked up on solder.
Recently I bought an Abductor Delay II PCB from Deadastronaut (the one with the numbering missing, had a great time checking, doublechecking and triplechecking my components, 'twas a fun challenge ).

Just finished the final layer of paint on the enclosure and it's starting to dry up pretty nicely. Will have a go with a water slide decal later on as soon as my gf has time to help me with the design.

Here are some pictures of the build so far. The knobs are just there to check whether they fitted properly, received my first batch of knobs yesterday so I can finally finish some other projects as well.

Don't you just love it when a package finally arrives, containing all missing components for projects you plan to work on? I do too, until the point I found out that I forgot to order a component a few minutes later. Won't be the last time I guess

In this case it looks like I need a 3k6 resistor at R16. I could just put a few resistors in series, but I really don't feel like doing that. My question is, can I simply take a 3k3 resistor instead? How would it affect the overall sound?

The BOM and schematic can be found at: http://pcb.delyk.com/modulation/52-cherry-pie-tremolo-pcb.html

Hi community,

I have built a deathklaw and all was going fine until I replaced the pots and the SPDT. For some reason the ghost switch does not affect the signal in any way. As I'm still learning (I haven't really 'debugged' many of my builds) I was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers to see what the underlying cause of this is.

I did check if the switch itself was the problem, that doesn't seem to be the case. I also replaced the switch with a second one but that didn't seem to help either.

Any thoughts on this?

Kind regards,
cresconio

Hi there,

Recently build the mangler and I'm really digging it, although I'd like it to be a 1-knob pedal.
I'm not sure how to bypass the volume pot. Any thoughts on that?

Kind regards,
Cresconio

Hi all,

Just bought myself a taptation and put it on the breadboard. The specs tell me I only need to connect the MCP41100 to pin 6 of a pt2399. I was wondering if someone managed to (and if it's possible at all) to connect the taptation to a deathklaw. I thought it was just a matter of connecting to the pt2399  (or at least the junction where the delay pot connects to both BC550 transistors but alas...

Taptation works nicely I think, leds flash in the correct way and if I bridge the output directly my amp starts making noises at the designated tempo

Kind regards,
Cresconio