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Hello folks!

I was asked to take a look at a broken "Van De Graff OD" pedal which is supposedly a TS clone with some mods. I can't find any reference to it online and the worst part is that I vaguely remember seeing it someplace a few years ago.

I don't have the pedal yet but I'm 95% sure it's gonna be an etch job so a schematic would come in handy, if anyone is aware of one.

Hi folks!

I got asked about putting together something like this
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nWCF4UX4I7Q

Any ideas what might get me in the ballpark?
Thanks!

I suppose it was about time I boxed one of my own boards... 
It's my SMD Fairfield Barbershop clone, finally off my desk though it didn't make a dent in the pile of crap still there.

No good reason for posting this as it was rather uneventful. Nothing much to say about the build other than that I finally found the use for some crappy Tayda 1900h's I've had since forever.  That cheap plastic strips like a high school dropout in Vegas.
Luckily, envirotex came out much better than in the pictures.









For anyone interested, I still have a few boards left...

Just got hit by the age effect...

Most of the enclosures I got lately are dinged and banged up. Sanding them down for a minute or two doesn't cut it anymore as gashes are deeper than I'm used to. A tendonitis I've developed in my right elbow makes it impossible to fix the enclosures with elbow grease alone. Any tips on using machinery to make it easier on my elbow?

Tried one of these at a buddy's house, no luck. It just scuffed the pedal some and I daresay it made it worse.

Can someone give me a weight ballpark figure for 200 Xicon resistors as mentioned in Mouser price drop thread?

The builddoc calls for a silver mica 200pf. Does it have to be sm?

There sure is, and here's (finally) mine.

Of course, it doesn't come without a "whoops" moment....
I did half my build before the summer vacation, populated the board and wired the switches in... and then realized I have the wrong p1 and p2 jacks. Fine. Ordered some, labeled the flying wires and left for vacation.
Fast forward three weeks, the jacks are here, solder everything together, plug it in and... nothing. No sound, no light. Thought my supply may be faulty (as it's been acting up lately), plugged in a battery and... nothing. Opened it up, started looking it over and realized the battery was getting kinda warm. Unplugged it, checked the jack with my dmm and there it was. A short circuit. Majorly miffed as I've cut all the wires to size and taking the blasted thing out of the box really was out of question. Unsoldered the dc jack, checked the wires and apparently I mislabeled the wire going from the 9v pad as "-" back before the vacation. Blindly soldering it without double checking was all it took to get a completely dead pedal. 
Luckily there was just enough slack in the wires to make it work, otherwise I'd be having a mother of all headaches right now.

The pedal works fine now. I'm not much of a player (nor have I ever seen a real Lovetone) so I can't really say how well it works. Ian, was there a YT vid of you demonstrating the sound range? I need to hunt it down and compare.
I don't own an expression pedal so I can't comment on that functionality either. First time working with a shielded cable too, so I shielded the input as well for practice sake.

Obligatory crappy pics... no envirotex due to 9mm pots. Overtightened them and it shows on the label. It's bothering me more than it really should but that's my OCD for ya.

Not that I haven't built a pedal before  but in all my pedalbuilding never have I built a fuzz pedal.
It's time to put an end to this injustice so I'd ask you kind folk to suggest three fuzz builds (with obtainable parts, I have no desire to go digging for $$$ cans in Russia  ) that best cover the fuzz world. Two extremes and one middle ground would be great!

I do have a JMK Scuba muff board someplace, if that fits into any of the "must build" categories?

OK I'm just too dense for certain things... can someone handhold me through this one, please?
Here's a schematic. There are five pots in there and for the life of me I can't figure out which way should pins 1 face and why?
Thanks!

So I finally threw together Jeremy's Iron Lung (Shredmaster clone) that he piffed to folks willing to do a buildreport and a demo.

TBH, the demo sucks a big one. I never would have recorded it but it was required so here it is. What little I can actually play is played with no gain to speak of so this is completely foreign territory to me. I just tried to twiddle some knobs so that you can hear some differences, fwiw. Played on a bridge humbucker through a Kemper Badcat Hotcat 30R profile (hello, Paul!  ) with some compression and some reverb.

It was a nice build, fits into a BB with room to spare. Thought to include one of Josh's relay boards but for the life of me couldn't find where I stashed the chips. 

Powdercoat of my own doing, transparent inkjet label, envirotexed label only. That's how I roll these days and methinks I'll be sticking to it for quite a while longer as it's the beez kneez compared to everything else I've tried. There's some funky lighting in my room so I tried tweaking the curves to show the actual knob color (as all the pictures were coming out weird).

All in all, very satisfied how it turned out! Never played the original so I can't compare.
Thanks for a nice project, J.!

Alright... I thought I was actually gonna finish Ian's Dopp 2.1 this week. I have it mostly soldered up, the box has been drilled and powdercoated, I even have a pitiful excuse for a graphic done.

What I obviously don't have is tiny knobs that actually fit the blasted 9mm pots! I made a point of ordering some 12mm aluminum pots from Banzai, only to find out they are nowhere near wide enough to accept 9mm pots. They are perfectly usable on knurled shaft 16mm alphas but no way on the 9mms. Same with all the other pots I have in stock that are tiny enough for the Dopp build.

So... what do you guys use when pots are tight and you are using 9mm alphas? Since my Dopp ETA just got pushed to September, ebay suggestions are fine...

Thanks!

FWIW....

In all honesty, I never thought this would happen when I signed up... almost missed the fact, too! 

[really]

I think you can see where this is going...
Has anyone managed to get envirotex on the enclosure and keep it thin enough to make Alpha 9mm pots work? I really don't want to clearcoat...

It's our very own Bengt's Blue Monster. I had the board semi-populated for weeks now but just couldn't find the time to finish it. Now that I'm messing with powdercoating and envirotexing, it was finally time to make a home for that board. The enclosure is actually one of Stevie's that I had lying around and the color fit perfectly so I decided to use it. I do have a similar color powder in stock but as with almost everything these days, I just couldn't find the time to try it out.
I'm not happy with offboard wiring. No planning went into it and it really is sloppy. Knowing fully well that I'd just drop the whole thing if I left it for another day to do a better job, I soldered it up just so it works. It'll have to do for now.
This is also my first ever envirotex finish. Plenty of dust in the finish due to pouring way too much ET and having to wipe off the runs for hours. There's one big run left from it curing overnight without me around to wipe it off. It's not that noticeable though when the pedal is on the floor so I'm not gonna fret about it. I'll adjust my process in the future and I'm quite confident I'll do a much better job of it pretty soon.
The label is a transparent inkjet sticker I picked up on ebay. Worked fine and didn't smudge at all.

So... onwards with the imagery...I'm sorry about the lighting, it was the best I could to with a cell phone at the moment.

Alright peeps, I need some guidance from all y'all powdercoaters out there.

So I put together this cheap powdercoating setup and I'm powdercoating in a highly inappropriate space but it's the best I can do given my living arrangements.

My process is:
- dry sand @220 grit
- clean with acetone wearing nitrile gloves
- put in cold small toaster oven (forgot to preheat) and use IR temperature meter to read the pedal surface temperature
- once the part has reached 200C (~400F) as measured by the meter, set timer to 15 minutes (the powder actually started to liquify at around 120C (~250F) and it took several minutes to reach 200C)
- when done, remove from oven and let cool down

Here's my first ever shot at it. Questions after the pics (taken with a cellphone camera with focus issues).

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.


In order of appearance:

Pic1. I did get a nice uniform gloss. Very happy with that one but the color is slightly darker than the powder itself. Is this normal and color-dependent?

Pic2. There's a lip forming at the bottom edge of the box. I assume this is from too much powder?

Pic3/4/5. There's a black line along all the edges. Powder seems to have pooled on the edge but not over it. How do I get uniform coverage? It looked fine when powdered, the coat separated some time during the curing process. I don't think it was lack of powder because in Pic4 you can clearly see that even the inside of the cover is amply covered with powder, not to mention that lip of excess powder (I'm guessing here). Why is the powder not sticking to the bottom edge when the top edges (Pic1) are covered just fine? Is it because the edges are sharper? Should I round the bottom edges some?

Pic6. there's also some powder pitting where there was no aluminum pitting. I checked the edges prior to coating and they were fine. Same problem as with 3/4/5?

Pic7. Again with the edges showing, now on the screw holes. Also, one major pit near the hole and one smaller. What could have caused that one?

All things considered, this turned out way better than I hoped. The enclosure is completely usable, I'm just nitpicking here. If possible I'd like to iron out these tiny imperfections and I'll be set to finally box some circuits. I can't believe how easy this actually is, even when conditions are far from ideal. 

Thoughts?

I know there's a fair number of you...

Do you folks sand the enclosures before you coat? How deep a ding is too deep to cover up? How rough can the metal be and still be covered acceptably by the powder?

 Hey peeps!

I've built a SWAW (from a SWAW schematic, not Autobahn) and I'm not sure it's working properly. I've received some voltages from a few very helpful folks (big ups to Tokai and Fendman) but I need some time to closely compare (because pin usage is different on my schematic). Ballpark figures seem to be good enough and there seem to be some discrepancies even between the two aforementioned Autobahns.

I do get quack but I don't think it should be this tame. Also, I only get quack with decay pot turned all the way down. Any clockwise movement and I lose all quack.

Any ideas as to where I should be looking for issues first?

Thanks!

EDIT: Oh yeah... FWIW, I'm using LM324 and NE5517D, both smd.

Hi all!

As I'm mostly not putting a battery jack into my monstrosities, I was wondering what's the bare minimum of DC power filtering that gets the job done? Right now I'm thinking a 100R in series and a 100uF to ground, but as with anything I'm more than willing to be taken to school?

Thanks!

Not much to show really, but at the rate I've building lately (glacial) every working fully completed build makes me high-five myself whole day long, buy myself beer and drink myself under the table no matter how the build looks.

It's one of my SMD Zendrive boards, built for a golf-playing buddy of mine. There are too many wires going everywhichway that I needed to hide because I'm out of 1776 3pdt boards so i had to make do with one I found lying around (which of course had a totally different pinout).

So FWIW, here it is. The pictures were taken at 1AM with a phone camera so I apologize for the crappiness and outoffocusness.  I just wanted a record of me actually finally getting one done.

 
Hey peeps!

Anyone aware of any color FR4 sellers in Europe? I only found abcfab but they are stateside and the shipping costs are ridiculous.