Be careful, very long post ahead…….
When I recently decided to take stock of what I had laying around, pcb-wise, I had a bit of a freak-out: a stack of bare pcb’s almost 4 inches high, and too much half finished ones to mention…… So I decided to start a ridiculous project to actually turn some of these in working, usable pedals. The past 2 weeks have been about finishing up some pedals that were near completion (JMK’s Vibe and Standard Fuzz, RAH/Thunderpuss combo, and some more in the works), but bigger measures are in order, so here it is:
Project “I”....... For “Insanity”!Project “I” will contain the following basics:
- 14 pcb’s (maybe 15…)
- 4 enclosure
- 10 3PDT stomps
- 6 toggles
- 34 knobs
- 12 LED’s
- 10 Ľ” jacks and 4 9V jacks
It’s going to be a four-part stash buster, and I’m going to use this thread to keep you all posted on how I’m doing. I’m suspecting some issues along the road as well, so there might be the occasional cry for help……
Here’s the breakdown:
Part 1: AquaTwins
An Aquaboy Deluxe and an Aquaboy 2012 in one enclosure. This will use up my entire stash of MN3005’s, and after this I won’t buy any more. This box will give me a lot of different analogue delay options, from short slapback to longer, modulated delays. And a lot more……. I’m expecting some pretty serious (clock)noise issues with this, so there’s going to be loads of shielded wire and maybe a grounded, metal separator between the two pcb’s. But just imagine running one into the other! Maybe I should add a switch to change the order?
Part 2: Űberplex
More delay madness: Multiplex with switchable modulation on both delay lines, and external Ramp and Release controls. I love my standard Multiplex, and now I want more!! I’m not expecting too much problems with this one, but it’s the only one in the bunch that needs all pcb’s populated…. Fun!!!
Part 3: JamBox
Been planning something like this for ages, but never got around to it: what do you bring to jam sessions when your playing through someone else’s amp and want to travel light? In my case, it would be a box with a booster, an overdrive, a distortion and some sort of modulation. So this is going to have a Thunderpuss, an Egghead, a Dist+ and a Smoothie. To make my own life just a bit easier, the Thunderpuss will be switchable between being first or last in the chain, Egghead and Dist+ will get switchable diodes and there’s going to be a loop to insert some more Fx. Any tips on where in the order I should place the loop are very much appreciated….
Part 4: GrindBox
This is going to be a gift for one of my best friends, the bass player from my band. First a Faultline, running on 18V via a Roadrage. After that, a 1776 Suckerpunch built to Bass Fuzz specs with a Schoontoon clean blend board added to it. I bet he’s going to run it flat out , though…… All the caps are socketed on this, so if he doesn’t like it, I can swap ‘m and use this monster myself!
As you can see above, the first step was to model all of these in 3D to make sure it would all fit. Here’s a family portret of the insides.
Next up is going to be ordering the remaining parts and enclosures, that’s going to happen this weekend. I plan to post my progress regularly here, with some nice pics to go with it. Thanks for reading this, it was quite a stretch!!
Paul
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