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I got a lot going on at the moment that keeps my brain buzzing all the time, good stuff, no complaints.
However, I need some distraction as well, so what's better than grabbing a project off the 'should really get onto this' pile and distract myself a bit.
So I start this build log, Harbinger 2, had the board for awhile for sure, let's get into it. Not sure how long it'll take me as I find the time to dive into it, but here we go.
Yes, a warning, it'll be picture heavy. Hope you guys find it interesting.

I had a wah shell I scored second hand, I think this might be what Smallbear used to sell as kit or on Aliexpress or so. They are not as heavy duty as Crybaby shells and the hardward needs some work, buut it will be fine me thinks.



Sanding it, so far 240 grit, will go finer and steelwool, aiming for a brushed alu look in the end I think. No spray paint and damage should be reasonably easy to touch up that way later if needed.



Will do relay soft touch bypass switching, so here goes the cutout and small momentary switch for that:



I have done this before with four other wah shell and the switching works just great, so much better than the clunky mechanical switches. Never had problems so far with the ones I did this way, fingers crossed.



Making a acrylic status LED holder to sit in front of treadle, this will also protect the momentary switch from anything hitting it unintentionally.



Buffs up nicely.



Fixing it in place with two 3mm screws.





Cutting the thread into acrylic:



Here's the populated board which has been waiting for action for awhile now and the extra three position switch to change the phase shifting cap values.

Had this sitting around for awhile, about time to get it into a box and have fun with.
Certainly a lot of different sounds in there and a lot to discover, very cool.

I built it with relay bypass and didn't do the tails switch, mainly because my feet are just not built for two footswitches in a 125B. Just ain't happening for me. So that meant a few resistors to omit and a cap to jumper as they were not necessary then.

Finally getting onto building the Headtrip 2 and I don't think I want to include the Tails switch as I don't like two footswitches so close together, my feet ain't made for that.
So do I just jumper the T1 pads, leave the tails LED away of course, and looking at schematic I think I can leave C5 away and jumper that, leave R 11 and R 12 out I guess, no need for those? I'll probably use a film cap for C4.

Interesting video here well done me thinks.
It will be a never ending discussion and a encouragement for partscasters let it rip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE

This one has been sitting on the "I should that one get finished heap" for a awhile too.
Here we are, all buttoned up now as well, in a recycled enclosure.
Had it previously drilled for something else, filled the holes with car body filler, dash of paint inside, slap a laser decal ob top with acrylic face plate.
It's the reason for the slightly misplaced holes that don't quite fit the labels, but hey, Rock' n Roll it does. Close enough.
Bob's your Uncle, Fanny is the Auntie.

The Thunderbird is a great ROG Marshall circuit on a 1776 fx board, does a big stack down to earth rock sound sure thing.
In front of it a Nga Viper treble boost to kick the guts into gear even more as pleased.
It rips for sure.

The Thunderbird can be a bit hissy with the 'Top' dialed up, but it's meant to be played and then you don't hear the hiss anymore, all you hear is roar.

Since I play a bright Tele style gat mainly I do have the 'Top' dial low anyway and that leeps the high end hiss in check.
The Naga Viper is on a home brew board, both can be switched independently with 1776 finish line relay boards.

A flanger, of course.

Madbean Collosalus flanger with added active mix/blend board from clean to 100 wet.
The Mix control can be run with expression pedal, once exp jack is inserted in switching jack the dashboard pot is deactivated. Good fun to dive into the swoosssh bomb.

This one has been sitting around awhile in the "to be finished heap" as I was waiting on the last parts to arrive. Nice to get it buttoned up.
Acrylic faceplate with laser decal while my printer was still working, now it's dead...
Very cool sounding flanger indeed.










And before you quite rightly say that there's a whole lot of empty wasted space, yes, right. I use really only 125B or as in this case 1590XX enclosures because my pedal board is kinda modular setup which works relentlessly only for these two sizes on purpose. And I can live happily with that.
My feet as well, they are not the smallest either.

Here's a trio of underground secret Hitmen of the Nashville Mafia or so they say (hope no one's offended... Brian? Kevin? )

Apparently the hot weapons of guitar assassins like Tom Bukovac and Guthrie Trapp et all have these original or some version in their arsenal a lot.

First group shot is from right to left:
Sandblaster aka ODR-1, Sweet Thing aka Ibanez Mostortion and Royalty Drive aka Nordman ODR-C (the updated ODR-1, I posted that already a few days back, so won't waffle on about that, I just thought it fits nicely with the group mug shot).



With the Sandblaster based on ODR-1 I added the of course very sensible bass control to combat the one complaint about the original being too woofy at times.
Also added three position clipping switches so that I can have no diodes/two diodes/four diodes in both soft and hard clipping section. Great variety to be had here and certainly helps heaps to get the character of drive I want out if.
Overall great OD for sure and this and the ODR-C are different enough to justify both. Because you can have never have too many anyway, right?









Sweet thing is a take on Ibanez Mostortion, also a favourite with a bunch of studio wisecracks, Tim Pierce uses it as well happily I believe.
Added a voice control very much like on Zendrive which is useful and also a three position clipping switch, because why not. Useful as well I find.

First two builds of the year in the box, Solar Flare Fuzz is based on Sola Sound Hybrid Tonebender and yes it rips.
Since I don't have a stash of the original OC140 Germanium transistors I used a Russian MP38A which does a good version of peeling off the wallpaper effortlessly as well.
First two transistors are silicon BC 109C and BC 107 respectively.









Angle Grinder is a take on the discontinued EQD White Light Overdrive, has it's own thing going on.
Aimed for a bit of an utility type look here, grey powder coated Tayda UV printed enclosure.

So this is a Prince with a ton of Tone, you know who I mean, you know the aristocratic lineage, the waiting list and all, right.

Built after the original schematic added 9 to 18V charge pump circuit and onboard relay bypass.
I had even some MA856 diodes floating around which I got years back from Pedalhacker I believe when they were only close to unobtanium.
Does it make a lot of difference? I dunno.
I measured them on my CCCT (cheap Chinese component tester) and they cam up with about 0.8V forward voltage, not that different from your garden variety 1N4148 which clocked in on same testing device with 0.7 V.
Anyway, a nice classic back in my hands after I gave an earlier one I built to a friend who decided to give me money back instead. Fair nuff, build another one.

Have a fab New Years everyone! Keep it loud!

Here we go, the Princeton Overdrive:

This is based on the pedalpcb.com Hydra schematic with some modifications.

Demo here (dry clean sound reference at 1:07 in video), no other fx used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKZUkGLsos0



I built the Hydra and I think it's great already stock, however I wanted to include the mod to disconnect leg 3 of MIX pot so that the dry signal is always present (Mode switch lower position) and back to stock(MODE switch up, this reduces dry signal especially on high MIX settings for atmospheric stuff etc).
This way I have both mod and stock options to be available on a switch for maximum flexibility.

Other changes and mods: I designed a new board for it and also included film capacitors where possible rather than MLCC caps as in ppcb version.
Lastly, onboard relay bypass added.



5 pots, 5 toggle switches, 125B, what could possibly go wrong... 



Robert from pedalpcb.com has done a fab job designing the schematic and programming the eeprom, thanks heaps!
It is from my personal point of view the best FV-1 project out there, for my personal taste.

Super flexible delay that has so many facets in sounds depending on what play heads are selected and what interaction happens between the SPEED, SWELL and AGE.
I love also how it captures the sound and quirkiness of the original tape delays, like increasing the SPEED shortens the delay time, dialing AGE to CW takes off high end that makes the repeats sit neatly under the guitar tone etc. Very cool feel in it and the sounds are great IMO. So many possible settings with different play heads selected and feeding into each other, very cool.







Circuit board is designed using DIPtrace, fabbed by JLCpcb. 125B enclosure powder coated white with Tayda UV print.
In the print design I wanted to capture the looks and feel of the TEAC reel to reel that I had many moons ago. The dials have the green/yellow/red colour staggering echoing the look of the UV meters (see what I did there....), the knobs have a similar look with the silver cap.
I think I had the TEAC A 3300 model, which is sold, doh...

This is my entry for the Madbean BOTY 2021, check it out here, join the fun and post your treasures as well. The more the merrier!
Check it out:
https://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=33264.0

Have a great New Years everyone stay safe and happy!

Last boxing ups before the big guy comes through the chimney. Have a Merry Christmas everyone, stay happy and safe!

First up is a cool wee collab with Dan (jjjimi84). He nudged me to do a two in one pedal with his favourite boost and his favorite fuzz. How could I not oblige, sounds like a plan. The select switch goes from down position, lower row of knobbies, which is the excellent "Dan Boost" https://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=32634.msg313686#msg313686.
Switch up, upper row of controls is active, and it is a silicon Fuzz Face along the lines of Jimi Hendrix Axis Fuzz with some Analogman Sunface spice thrown in.
So it is either / or, not both in series or so. Meaning a very practical solution that in some songs you need a grunty versatile boost, in others a full on fuzz.
Design wise the 70ties wanted their colour schemes back... a fitting time warp. Dan and his son came up with the name "Infinity Press" during a wrestling match, he tells me, so it must be a pretty good move.
Tayda UV print, 125B cream enclosure.
There ya go. I guess I have to get Dan a board now so he can do a proper video of it...













Next one is the Royalty Overdrive, of nobel heritage so to speak. It is built after the Nordland ODR-C schematic as found on AionFX website, so it is the new iteration of Nobels ODR made by the same designer.
It's just an overdrive but boy does it have a few parts to squeeze in.
Maybe slightly over engineered, but hey, sounds great and very versatile too. I added relay bypass on board, it juuuuust fitted in.

This is a pretty wicked achievement I'd say...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTNEznULe08

Princeton is a workalike of Analogman Prince of Tone with added chargepump to switch from 9 to 18V and I do prefer the sounds on 18V on first trial run. A bit punchier and clearer me thinks.







Vertigo is workalike of Catalinbread Pareidolia which basically a harmonic tremolo with a XR2206 chip as LFO generator. Has it's own unique sound going, somewhere between harmonic tremolo and univibe-ish.
I had built a standalone one awhile back on a pedalpcb board, loaned to a friend, as it goes, he didn't wanna let go of it, so here we are with a new one. This allowed me also to put an LFO led in, because why not.
Unique sounding modulation it is.
There's apparently a bunch of fake XR2206 on evilbay, but I have been lucky so far with the lot I got.

125B size squeeze of Madbean discontinued absolutely excellent sounding Dirtbaby Delay.
If you haven't had the chance to build one I would recommend to try to get your hands on one in the buy/sell/section or so, or maybe convince Brian to do another run. It's great. Dan/jjjimi84 has just made a super demo of it that shows it off really well.

I have built two on MBP boards, one with a reverb together https://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=30735.msg296363#msg296363 and the other went into Pinball Wizard.

So itching for a standalone 125B size I squeezed with 4 smd chips and a few deep breaths into the Memory Lane.
Already firmly attached to my regular gigging board, yay.

... don't we all have that?

Anyway, here's more boxings:
Hudson Broadcaster, this has the functionality of the dual footswitch original but in a 125B and one footswitch and one vol control. More space on pedal board. It still has the 9 to 27 V chargepump circuitry and that's a banger, really makes a big difference and more versatility for sure.
Rippin'...





I had a noiiiice OC 44 in the stash with 82 hfe and low leakage, and that spins my wheels...





Next up is 'Freak Fuzz' on 'Fuschia Fuzz pedalpcb board' (aka Bearfoot FX Pink Purple Fuzz) with homebrew relay bypass.
Recycled enclosure, that's why it's black inside. Great versatile fuzzyness.







And Turbo Fuzz, a Fuzz Factory brew up with option to switch transistors from GE to SI and a tone control, fat switch.
Crazy cookie it is. Even more crazy now, if that's possible.
ACY21 GE trannies, because I had them and they are just whacky enough in there.

First boxing shenenigans of the year, here we have a Foxx Tone Machine. I did use 2n5088 transistors with around 420 Hfe as the type of transistor apparently has not too much bearing on sound as long as it's around 400+ Hfe.
I did match the octave diodes out of a bunch of BAT46 and they sound great to me, lots of octave responsiveness and coverage over different neck positions.
It's a beastly beast.







Hail the fab four...



Plexi Gold is Keeley El Ray Dorado version. Plexi and more Plexi.







Crystaline Octodrive is a two in one banger. 'Sir' Chuck on pedalpcb forum helped me with his enlightened advice on this, cheers man. Legend.
The lower switch selects a 'Chuck version' of EQD Chrysalis, nice low to mid gain OD. Switch up and we get some Roger Mayer Octavia madness with added tone control, thanks again to Chuck's musings.
Rippin' fuzz and unruly (in a good seventy-ish way) Octave Fuzz.
The Hi/lo switch adds 9 to 18V selectable charge pump and that's great on both circuits, the octave really behaves quite differently on 18V and is probably my favourite on first impression on that higher voltage. The Chrysalis OD gets a good more punch.
Nice pedal it turned out.
In a recycled enclosure, that's the reason for black spray paint inside and the LED position being a bit off. It's all goovy though.

Last build report of the boxing up frenzy before the good food and company is served.
Have a great cranking chunky chugga Christmas everyone, stay safe and well!

If I find I minute while digesting I'll crank these two fellas a bit:
Boogeyman is a Dr. Boogie with added chargepump option from 9 to 18 V and that adds a healthly kick in the nuts to it. Stand back.







Savage Drive is a workalike of J.D Rockett Animal, fully Plexi vein. Dan/JJJimi84 made me curious about this circuit and it does crank.

Look Mum no hands. Two circuits in the box and no knobbies to twist. Just the old toggle to select between lower position the classic Dan Armstrong Green Ringer octave up whacky squeaker. Fun fun fun and goes quite well me thinks because I matched the octave up diode pair. As typically on neck PU and around middle of fretboard the sweetest.
Flick the toggle up and it's the super powers shining through with some gritty wild octave fuzz courtesy of the TMR Bumble Buzz circuit. Touch sensitive and the volume control on guitar keeps things at bay when needed.

She's got super powers... both fun circuits to mess around with.







And a Mad Dog. It's a pretty much straight clone of 1981 DRV. It's got bite.







Have a happy and relaxing safe Christmas everyone!

A friend asked me to make him a Snowy white Autowah and dash on some custom graphics he chose, I don't think I need to harp on about what music he's into. Ya man.







Squeeze Box is a tweaked version of EQD Warden compressor. Smooth.





Vibrochamp is based on VfE Old School tremolo, very clever and great sounding trem and the speed / depth envelope control is pretty sweet and nifty.

Some recent boxings:
Catalinbread DLS MKIII black version with added charge pump to switch to 18V and boy does that make a difference. So worth having on this or if you don't, have a psu where you can plug in 18V as it becomes a different beast.
Beast it is anyway, a lot of glorious Marshallness in this one, I split the mode switch (on original a 4DPT hidden on inside... doh) into two 2DPDTs on dashboard which gives it extra flexibility with gain staging.
Noice. Killa sounds in this one.







Glory Ride is a JHS Morning Glory with added 9 to 18V chargepump switchable. R & R.





Sugar Hit is a Timmy original version with added 9 to 18V chargepump because why not. Also I changed the diection of bass and treble to go cw for more. And a more logical placement of controls me thinks, clipping switch on dash.







Goldilocks is a Friedman Golden Pearl, nice low to mid gain Marshall territory and tweakable with clipping (voice) and bright switch.





Raticus is ... well... a Rat. Built after MB Slow Loris schematic, great version for sure. Got an ol' school metal can LM308.







Soulbender. A nice set of AC127 from your friendly Ozzie Paul at DIY guitar pedals. It rips.