Topics

          Ok, This makes me feel like the biggest noooob around.  I finally got around to building the Sunking V3 that I had purchased.  I included the clipping diode mod that gives you a tone of options.  With all of the pots, mods and what not & anything else that I thought I could do to to thoroughly confuse myself, I pit it on my testing rig and viola!  I had given birth to one of the mythical beasts here!   

          Feeling proud of myself, I designed the box, drilled it , painted it and installed my new Sunking.  As I always do before I close up a box, I took it to the music room for a thorough break in.  I plugged it in and ........  no sound. 

          So, I took it all out of the box and went back to the stage I knew it was working.  After unsoldering the input and output jacks and DC to put it back on the test rig, I didn't have high hopes that it was going to work  but .......  there was my awesome Sunking!  So I thought I must have made a noob mistake wiring the jacks and DC.  To defeat this I installed the Input and output jacks back on the pcb.

          OMG GROUND HUMMMMMMMMMMM.   All I have effectively done by doing this is remove the Input and Output jacks and 3PDt bypass switch of my testing rig.  While testing in this format I made sure to try one or the other and both Sleeve connections tied to ground to see if I was just missing a ground point.  Neither had any help.   

          Does anyone have any Ideas?  Thanks again for all of the wonderful searchable advice here.

"B"

Hello all,
         I am perplexed that I seem to have the same signal when bypassed as when engaged with my Bumble Bee.  To Preface, I am not one of the fx wizards here on the forum, however the Bumble Bee is my 13th (yes lucky # 13) pedal build.

        I have gone over all of the solder joints countless times, cleaning and reflowing anything that might be suspect.  I have checked all of the Emitter, Base and Collector pin outs for all three transistors until I am blue in the face.  I have replaced the Input and output leads twice, thinking that some how I might have a stray hair wire touching that was sending input to output.

        I always put the pcb's on the breadboard testing rig before I box them up.  The rig is powered by a 9volt battery and I have checked it's voltage.

        My question at this point is one seeking advice.  Should I go the rout of the audio probe or start looking at voltages next.  This is my first build that I have run into this problem.  

        Usually if I don't have signal, I break out the audio probe and see where the last point the audio is present and work from that.  This time there IS audio at the output, it is just the same as when the effect is not on.  To make sure I was hearing the circuit, I disconnected the input, switched the effect on and there was no output.  Thus, I have verified that the problem is not in the switching of my test rig.  Any Ideas?  I'm sure this will lead to a DUOH! moment.  But I look at it as a puzzle to be solved and a lesson to be learned.  Any help is appreciated.

"B"

Edit:          Jon, The Pots do not change anything at this point.  I am using Chromesphere's Russian germanium transistors (ufo style) for Q1 (Current = 547va Leakage = 36va HFE = 56.7) and Q2 (Current = 566va Leakage = 24va HFE = 60.2) and a Russian tophat for Q3 (Current = 1445va Leakage = 214va HFE = 136.7).  I am totally slammed with Daddy duties today but will get voltages tonight when I get the kiddo's down.  Thanks again for the direction.


EDIT #2    After a little time with my audio probe and my radio shack  multi-meter I am even more confused.

           Leaving the output connected to the test box out, no matter where I place the input probe I get the same signal (un-effected).  When I reversed the process and left the Input connected to the test rig same thing!   I also get audio when I probe the c6 electro! I thought being the first thing in line with the power that is a little odd! I doesn't matter whether I have power or not during these tests, I tested both ways.  That brings me to my next conundrum

          I tested a 9v battery this am & it read 8.7volts by the time I had finished all of the testing it read 7.46.  All of these numbers have to be wrong
          Q1: .561
                .563
                .563
          Q2: .553
                .562
                .655
          Q3 .732
               .739
               .766
"B"

I could use some help and understanding!

         I had another Roadrage at my disposal and wanted the Fuzz Face that I had built early on in this adventure to be able to sit on my board without a battery.  I followed the instructions in MB's Road Rage Doc wanting to have the Sag control.

         Without plugging audio in, Everything powered the way that it should.  Funny thing though, when I started rewiring the audio in's and outs It was like I had never added the Road Rage.  I have included GGG's layout here in the hopes that someone might be able to lend me a hand.

         ANY help in troubleshooting this issue would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks B

Hello all,
          I've got the bumble bee up next in my sights. I was looking at the ge transistor sets on Small bear's site & wondered if there was a strong reason to get the " continental " set instead of the generic set. I know that opinions are subjective but ALL are welcome. Thanks in advance for any input everyone.

B

          This time along with thanking Mad Bean for his hard work I need to thank Haberdasher for the etched board and gtr2 for the 3pdt board!  I just can't say enough about the community here. 

          Now, here is my Serendipity.  The board from Haberdasher was awesome!  Until this project, I had only worked on fabbed boards.  I have to say that IMO layout and quality of etch make all the difference.  If you are not careful, the solder will run away down the trace  ! It definitely upped my soldering game.  The enclosure is the same as my first report.  I did the white gloss with diamond glitter paint, then envirotexed it and added the decal and envirotexed it again.  To the best of my knowledge the kanji is Korean for the appropriate controls.  Either that or my friend is secretly cracking up that I would put those words on my pedal haha  !  As with all of my builds I have the hardest time with knobs..... I'll update it when I find some that work!

          I LOOOOOVE the sound of this pedal.  It does have an unusually stronger "pop" to it's switching.  I intend to build a rig around the GEC9 so I'm not worried as it will always be on.



         And the Guts

          First off, let me say a huge thank you to Mad Bean & K.Rock! for their help and support with the coolest hobby to date.

          Below is my version of the Ego Driver.  It has the clipping mod (the led's are 3mm water clear blues in the eyes of the skull) that frankly is only minimally different to me but I use it over the standard clipping anyway.  As you can tell, I am a fan of twisting and braiding the cable.  It makes for an interesting rat's nest of wiring.  K.Rock!'s White rhino 2 channel mod is in there too.  What a useful little addition. It's a quick solo boost when switching from HP to LP with the separate volume control. I'm still learning about finishing the box the way I like it.  This time I started with a raw enclosure, sanded it, painted it gloss white, sprayed diamond glitter on it then Envirotexed it.  Then I printed a water slide decal, applied it and Envirotexed it again.  Aside from the bubbles (I'm buying a butane torch today! arrrrgh), It  is starting to look the way I want it.  I have the hardest time deciding on knobs.  I think this one is due for some metal top hats or plastic speed knobs (seeing as how I like to twiddle with my sound a lot).  Again thanks ..... I am truly stoked about this!




          And the rat's nest.......

          Ok, as I am still new to understanding exactly what components do, I'm having a hard time looking for a place to start figuring this one out.  Any help from the collective knowledge here is greatly appreciated.

     First, the pedal in question is the Krankosaurus.  I have built it all up without the 3pdt footswitches and tested it out in my test rig.  The Distortion is awesome, exactly what I was hoping.  The Boost is also cool, clean and loud! So what's the problem right?  My third test was to put the distortion in series with the boost (dist -> boost).  That turned out great as well.  Then I got the crazy idea that it would be cool to be able to reverse the order if I wanted to completely saturate the distortion end.  (I currently do this with a Boss comp in front of all my dirt.  One quick stomp on the comp and the distortion starts to melt down (in a good way)!) SO, I put the boost in front of the distortion and got exactly what I was looking for ............  Then I rolled the volume down on my guitar and the whole thing started squealing like I was roasting a live pig! 

     This doesn't happen with my current setup or even when I put my Fatboost 3 clone infront of my dirt pedals.  I'm perplexed.  If it is not meant to be that's ok.  I still love the pedal with it's intended design.  I'm more after the lesson of why something like this might happen.

Thanks in advance and again,

"B"   

Hey there guys,

     If I could ask those of you that are etching metal plates... Where do you get your material?  I would like to try etching a few badges while I'm experimenting with etching enclosures.  I've seen what looks like maybe 1/16 thickness or thinner metal badges etched on a few build reports ( including Mr. Bean) and think it looks awesome.  At first I thought y'all might be etching PCB material until I started comparing thicknesses.  Any help would be appreciated, but if you have a link that would be stellar!!

Thanks again.  Cheers,

"B"

Hey guys,
      I'm finishing up my Ego Driver and was about to fire away and solder up the led clipping mod when I had a thought about incorporating the LED's into part of the design of the enclosure (ala the owl eyes I've seen here with the Tremolo build).  As sound is WAY more important to me, is there any disadvantage to using 3mm water clears instead of the 5mm?  Has anyone tried this?  I'm still new to understanding how all of this stuff works.  I figured that if color has anything to do with it, then size might matter.  (no punn intended)

Thanks yet again

"B"

This is probably a completely noob question, but can I use these caps for the smaller values ie 470p??

Is there any advantage in using these or should I just look in the silver mica / ceramic world??

Thanks again,

"B"

I would appreciate anyone who could help with this question.

     Is there a simple way to install in order switch in the Krankasourus?   

My fulltone gt 500 as a switch on top that lets you determine whethe.r or not you want the boost or the distortion first in the signal chain.  I was wondering if there would be any benefit to adding this to the Krankasourus.  I know it is quite a dramatic difference on the fulltone as to which 1 you have first.

     this might actually be cool for those of us who want to put more than 1 effect in a box is well.  I'm just starting to fish so please excuse me if this is been addressed before.

Thanks guys,

B

Mr. Bean,
             Not to rush or anything, but seeing as how the Kingslayer is one of the "for sure" Feb releases, do you have an idea of when you will be releasing the BOM?  I have a few holes to fill from an order to Mouser and would love to add all of the parts for this new beauty.  Any information is much appreciated.

Thank you in advance,

"B"

This might just be a noob question but I love the youtube demo of this and am itching to build my pcb up.

Can anyone tell me are C2 and C3 axial electrolytic caps? Their values are 4u7 so I would think so but don't know for sure.

Thanks in advance

"B"

[Just figured this one out!! its TL ... not TC.....Doh!]

Hello there fellow Beans,
    I'm sure that I'm not the only one that has stared at their computer screen with either Mouser or Small Bear open in several tabs desperately hoping the "part" they need will jump off of the screen and scream "pick me , pick me."  With that said, there is a wonderful Mouser ordering tutorial here http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=2970.0! Even with that (which has helped tons!!!) I'm still coming up short on a few parts and would appreciate any help in finding them.

    1) IC's:

         a) JRC 4558 (is this the same thing ? http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-Instruments/RC4558P/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtOXy69nW9rM0%2fHbfl0f%252b3pDm0gqa87S%252bs%3d)

         b) TC 2272 Just figured this one out!! its TL ... not TC.....Doh!  Where do you get one though?

    2) Diodes:

        1n34a

    3) Caps:

         Mallory 150's in the values listed for the Bumblebee  (Small Bear has 1 value I think.... unless I'm not looking in the right place)

         (100n {the one I see on Small Bear's site}, 4u7 & 1n)

Again, thanks for any help and direction for this rookie destroyer of diodes!

"B"  

     Does anyone have a suggestion for my next project?  
   
    I recently finished an Aristocrat build and love the idea of two pedals in one case.  (Professor Bean, I can't wait for the "nano series" pcb's!) I've heard a lot of good stuff about the Ego Driver overdrive, so naturally as soon as they come in I'm going to pick one of these up.  I've seen a lot of drive/boost pedals, but I like to switch between two different sounds and leave my Fat boost for it's job.  Recently I built the "Late 60's version of the Fuzz Face" from GGG.  The germanium fuzz is cool, but am still looking for that "Rolling Stone's Satisfaction" kind of sound.

    I would like to control Fuzz and Level of course.  However, I think it would be nice to have some kind of tone shaping options as well.  The GGG has 2, bias and contour.  This rules out the Sprout and the 1 knob fuzz pedals.


    I should mention that I'm still a noob at this.  The Aristocrat was only my third pedal.  I can say that I'm hooked and interested in learning how to put these things together from scratch, rather that "paint by number!"  I have no problem bread-boarding a pcb to test variables of values in a circuit, but I'm a long way off from etching or designing a circut.  Any suggestions about hacking into a pcb would require a whole lot of patience.  I appreciate any help in advance and look forward to the next step in catching up with the rest of you.  



[attachment deleted by admin]