Topics

1

General Questions / El Guapo fuzz and transistors

« on: February 04, 2023, 11:28:39 PM »

I'm working on an old board for the El Guapo fuzz. I bought 2 2N3565 transistors and decided to check their HFE before soldering them in. I found that they're wildly different. One was about 500 and the other one was maybe 290ish. Any recommendations on which I should put in Q1 and Q2?

2

General Questions / Dreamtime question

« on: January 22, 2023, 08:55:47 AM »

Hey y'all I'm finally getting around to building a Dreamtime and it turns out I don't have an 8.2nf cap. Is there another value I could use, like 10nf, or should I just wait to order the right value?

Looks like it's in the audio path coming out of the fv-1 into the TL074. Is it part of a high pass filter, or something else? Sorry if my questions are dumb. Dumb questions lead to important questions and I'm just a little bird trying to jump out of the nest

3

Build Reports / Madbean Fuzzy Britches

« on: December 31, 2022, 11:35:53 AM »

Here's my last build of 2022. @madbeanpedals fuzzy britches built to the Jordan Bosstone spec.

I made some modifications to this Robert Crumb drawing from the cover of Big Brother and the Holding Company's album Cheap Thrills. My parents were uptight and disliked music when I was growing up, yet my mom had a copy of this record. It made a lasting impression on my preteen brain. James Gurly and Sam Andrews reportedly used Bosstones in those days with big fender amps and teles, later switching to SGs. This pedal sounds great into a clean amp with my tele. I'm diggin it!

4

Build Reports / Sound Skulptor DI503J tube/fet/passive DI and reamp 500 series module

« on: September 05, 2022, 12:26:53 PM »

This is the most excited I've been about any build since my amp earlier this year. It's a 500 series module from Sound Skulptor for DI and reamping. I had been wanting something for reamping so I could use pedals as outboard gear with my DAW. I had been drooling over the sound skulptor cp4500 ever since I saw @leevibe's thread about his build. I happened to notice the DI503J while browsing the sound skulptor site the other day and pretty much instantly bought it. It arrived Thursday, and I finished assembling it last night and then tested it today. This was really fun to build and I had no issues.

5

Open Discussion / Show and tell: old MXR distortion+ block logo

« on: March 02, 2022, 09:41:05 PM »

I've been sitting on a box of pedals for repair for a friend of a friend and I decided to dig through some of them today. One of them was this block logo MXR distortion+. From poking around online, the EIA pot codes seem to point to 1979. This is definitely not an area of expertise for me. Anybody able to verify this?

The foam inside has long since crumbled, and it's kinda messy but the pedal seems to be working as intended. Too bad someone drilled a hole in the side of the enclosure to stick an adapter in from the battery snap to a barrel jack. I'm going to see if the owner would prefer an actual 9c jack installed in the hole.

I did some work on a friend's mid 60s gretsch amp this past summer, and other than that, this is probably the oldest thing I've had the pleasure of peeking inside. If I've interpreted the pot codes correctly, than this pedal is older than me

6

Open Discussion / Kicad footprint question

« on: January 24, 2022, 10:50:53 AM »

I've been farting around in kicad a bit trying to get familiar with it but I'm having a hard time figuring out which footprint to use for offboard wire connections. Can anybody point me in the right direction?

7

Build Reports / couple recent builds- florist and naughty fish

« on: January 16, 2022, 06:48:34 PM »

Here's a couple recent builds. Dan @jjjimi84 painted the florist for me back in the fall. He said "it's a weird one" and I love how it came out. I'm not much of a chorus guy, which is why I built this one. I wanted to see what I could do with it. There are some cool sounds in there for sure.

I just finished the naughty fish a few days ago, although I had done the enclosure almost a year ago. I like how the design came out, but it was one of my first no film decals and i trimmed it a little too close to the edge, so the outline toner didn't adhere real well. This is a cool pedal with lots of wacky sounds in it. I can't wait to check it out more and try it with bass and keys and stuff too.

pics below with some quick sound clips of each

8

Open Discussion / Tascam to release new type ii cassettes next month

« on: January 08, 2022, 06:19:08 PM »

Reportedly not new old stock but a new formulation. Not a standard run, just limited edition and sales are restricted to US only.







I've never had any type ii cassettes to run in my tascam machines so I'm curious about this. It would be great if they were somewhat regularly available, otherwise I'll stick to my stash of type I.



https://tascam.com/us/product/424/top

9

General Questions / Non-polar vs Bi-polar caps (naughty fish and florist)

« on: October 27, 2021, 07:14:08 AM »

The florist calls for a 2u2 bi-polar cap and the naughty fish calls for a 2u2 non-polar cap. Are these the same or different? The florist build doc has a mouser link for the cap but the naughty fish doesn't. Thanks

10

How Do I? Beginner's Paradise. / help with understanding etch layouts

« on: August 19, 2021, 09:22:21 AM »

I want to try etching a few boards, and I noticed what looks like two different approaches to how etch layouts are made. I was accustomed to seeing the perf and etch layouts on Effects Layouts, where there are big sections of bare copper on the face of the board that tie all the grounds together like the ground plane of a PCB. From what I looked at here in Etcher's Paradise, it looks like Brian does them the same way.

The discrepancy came up when I was looking at etch layouts from General Guitar Gadgets, where they don't have the obvious ground plane on the face, but it does seem that all the grounds are connected on one trace and to all the ground connections for the offboard components. Can anybody confirm that how I'm understanding this is correct? Connecting all the grounds with a trace seems more like how it's done with perf, is that right?

I attached examples of what I'm trying to describe. First is the Zygote- fulltone 69 layout from etcher's paradise here, and the second is a pnp fuzz face from GGG. not trying to compare their circuits, just the design approach to the layout for how they're etched. thanks

11

Build Reports / CosmoTone- Aion Astra

« on: August 08, 2021, 06:49:17 PM »

I actually built this back in April before my daughter was born, but it had been sitting in my troubleshooting box for reasons I can't even remember. At some point, I know I had gone through it and added the transistor sockets for some reason, who knows, but I never got around to play testing it again. This was one of if not my first go with the gold foil no film decal, and it's a little off center.

I should probably fix the spliced and electrical taped wire, but I'm just gonna enjoy a completed build for a bit first. This was also my first project from Aion, and the wiring layout threw me a bit.

Anyway, this pedal sounds cool, fuzzy but holds together well for chords- pretty beefy. I've got half a dozen other pedals that are almost done and need wired or boxed up that I started before my daughter was born, and I'm hoping to wrap some of those up soon. This feels like a success!

12

Open Discussion / Lead solder safety and small children? (Late NBD)

« on: May 12, 2021, 08:33:58 AM »

My daughter was born a little over 2 weeks ago. She was 6 weeks early and spent 2 weeks in NICU, but she's home with us now. She's doing well and everything is ok, aside from my wife and I adjusting to being new parents.

I want to get back to working on pedals as time permits. I've always tried to maintain some basic level of safety with lead solder, so i wash my hands after stopping working, don't eat at the bench, and use a fume extractor.

Is wiping my hands with a wet wipe sufficient before handling my child? Is washing my hands in the sink preferable? Anybody know specifically more than "I did ____ and my kid is fine?" Particularly if any of you have a background in this area. Thanks

13

General Questions / tone bender bender- variants

« on: April 27, 2021, 06:48:50 PM »

I'm starting to plan out building a handful of tone bender variants. I already have a mkii pro that I built a couple years ago. I've been wanting to do a mkiii and/or a park fuzz, so I have a pastyface and an aion phobos board. Maybe I need a second Phobos so I can do one as a mkiii and one with the park specs.  I also have an aion poseidon board to do the catalinbread katzenkonig thing. I need to snag a dustbunny and a bumblebee, which are sitting in my cart right now.

I should do a mki for good measure. I can get a pedalpcb tone vendor I guess. Looks like small bear doesn't have matched transistors for mkis currently, so that might prove to be a little tricky. I also want to do a, EQD black ash so I'm looking at the pedalpcb carbon black.

What other tone bender family projects should I look at? I'm aiming to do all these at the same time so I can try them all out. Might be a little nutty. I hope I can finish them all before the end of the year, along with everything else I want to do

14

Open Discussion / PSA: Those cool Rotosound tone bender enclosures are back

« on: April 19, 2021, 06:45:08 PM »

I'm not affiliated with the seller in any way. Just wanted to give a heads up that these are available again. I just ordered a few


GAPco Vintage Pedal Enclosure - Pressed Steel https://reverb.com/item/33419848-gapco-vintage-pedal-enclosure-pressed-steel?utm_source=android-app&utm_medium=android-share&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=33419848

15

Build Reports / couple gold graphics from last week

« on: April 18, 2021, 08:26:38 AM »

I finished a couple of gold foil pedals for a friend last week and forgot to post them here. I'm starting to iron out all the pitfalls of using the gold foil stuff but it's still a little tricky. The gold stuff is a little more fragile during the application process than the normal no film stuff. The pedals are a pedalpcb covert and a rullywow serpent boost that was one of the first non-kit pedals I built a few years ago. I don't have a gutshot of the serpent boost but it's ugly!