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Thought it might be good to have an all purpose "things i have learnt by failing first" thread. The majority of my failed beginner builds were due to one or several of these factors. Feel free to add to the list!

* GROUND THE SLEEVES
When testing a circuit outside of the enclosure, or if using a plastic enclosure, or if using plastic isolated jacks, make sure BOTH the input and output sleeves are grounded ie connected together. The madbean wiring document shows only the input sleeve grounded because it assumes the sleeves will be connected together by the metal enclosure!

* SOCKET
When starting, socket all transistors and IC's. This will ensure you dont fry them and also if you happen to put them in backwards, you can easily pull it out and orient it the correct way.

* LED RESISTOR
Remember never to attach an LED straight to positive.. it will burn out and be useless. Always put a resistor (~2-5k) in series with the round side.

*DC JACK
Stay away from the metal DC Jacks, unless you exclusively use plastic enclosures. Buy the plastic Boss style DC Jacks instead.

*USE A PSU FOR TESTING
A battery never gives exactly 9v and will drain over time. Power supply can make a massive difference to how builds sound. Make sure you use a Power Supply when testing builds, or else test your battery!

*RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB
Use a 20-30W solder iron when starting out. Buy decent solder, it makes a big difference. Get a pair of sharp and small wire clippers to trim the excess leads. A solder sucker is also handy. A PCB holder is crucial.

So this is what i got up to today:
Firstly:

A Grapevine, this is a really cool overdrive pedal. It had been sitting on my desk waiting to be built for forever...Havn't had a chance to crank it through the big amp yet but i dig its responsiveness and the rock/rawk switch is cool, both are great for different purposes. Had a little bit of trouble fitting it in there.. no gut shots but just because i had to use a 3pdt switch and the circuit board was a bit too high up to fit the back on.. but i jammed it on there Also the LED is an ultraviolet!

Next up, i decided to re-house my Ross Compressor (guitarpcb board). I really like this compressor, sounds fantastic, but i didnt like having it in a big 1590BB enclosure.. so i figured i'd challenge myself a bit and cram it in a 1590B! It actually wasnt too difficult, i put the DC Jack on top and everything else went in easy peasy, no space for a battery though.
It used to look like:

Now its a little less attractive but smaller and easier to manage:


The UFO knobs are fantastic too, they feel like they are gliding/hovering when you turn them.. unfortunately they are a bit big to use for most builds.
As you can see i'm giving less attention to the exterior of my builds, im liking the raw unfinished look, and they look cool all together!

Built this up tonight after a long study sesh. Its the old style board without the pcb mounted pot design. Decided to challenge myself a bit and see if i could fit it in a 1590B.. Just made it. If it was literally one mm deeper i wouldnt have been able to get the back plate on. And i had to compromise and put the DC jack down the bottom.. meh!

Anyway it worked sweet first go. I had to turn the trimmer all the way up, any lower and the sound was distorted and crackily.. Also maybe not as much depth as i would like but looking around the forum it seems that is a common complaint with this build. I like it though. I owned an old Japanese CE-2 a while back, and thought it was pretty overrated.. so i sold it. I think this build sounds pretty similar (except for the switching options of course). I like the vibe option and the clean blend on this. Also couldnt be bothered painting it and just used leftover knobs.

Heres some pics:



And a soundclip:
http://www.users.on.net/~w2620/Madbean%20Soundclips/Pork%20Barrel.mp3

Its been a long time since I've finished including boxing up a build.. actually I've got about 6 completed pcbs yet to be boxed.. Just takes time to drill, paint, wire etc!
Anyway this is a mudbunny i built for a friend for his bday. Roughly to civil war specs. BC549 transistors. Sounds really good! I like it most out of the 3 muffs I've built so far. I stole someones idea of using leftover resistor wire to turn the pots into pcb mounted which is why they are three pots in a line. Also, i can recommend Tayda footswitches, pots, dc jacks and in/out jacks, they are all really good. Used spray cans for the paint job, although I'll probably stop using this technique in the future due to the toxic smell it gives the pedal and also how easily the paint chips off. Also the colour in the pictures is a bit off (used my iphone), its more orange coloured.

What a stunner..

I suppose you could say it has character..

So, does anyone here own or know anything much about Elk amps? I just bought this one, as a kind of refurb project and intro to amp diy:

Sound is pretty interesting, there seems to be low, medium, and high gain inputs. Sounds very thin though, even with the bass cranked its very trebly. Theres also a lot of hiss and the occasional pop sound, im assuming that means it needs new tubes..? The reverb is pretty cool, sounds nice except for the popping sounds when you turn it up. Anyone know what that might mean? Vibrato is broken, gonna suss it out and see if its fixable. Also, sounds absolutely terrible with any overdrive pedal, it just seems to kill the bass even more and makes it very buzzy sounding. Sounds cool with my tonebender though, very nasal but totally garage rock.
Anyway im gonna open it up on the weekend and have a geez, see if theres anything instantly noticeable.. Ive read that old amps like this can have fried capacitors, does anything think replacing the caps would be worthwhile?
Any advice/info/opinions on where to start welcome!

- I just recorded a quick clip, demonstrating clean sound and then with some reverb : http://www.users.on.net/~w2620/Elk.mp3

Built this for another dude: its a Sunking -> King of Klones with high gain mod and external presence control. Sounds cool boosting the sunking into the Kot, and then they sound equally good by themselves. Put the footswitches close together so they can be turned on/off at the same time. Not super happy with the spray paint job but oh well, still sounds good!

So i broke my wrist the other week.. i cant play guitar which really sucks, and i had a go at soldering the other day and its a bit of a struggle. So with all my spare time (in the past 2 minutes) i created a one question quiz..

1. What is this:

slepadueaqpew

First prize is.. uhh umm .. a personal congratulations from me.

enjoy

Would this be at all possible as a madbean project?

I know GGG had/has this http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/projects/28-other-projects/147-mobius-trip-looper

I originally built a G2 clone from a non-madbean board in this enclosure, but it sucked. I think I must have screwed something up but couldnt figure it out. So I gutted it, drilled an extra hole and tada Serendipity! I REALLY like this overdrive. So simple but sounds really great! Made its way to my board for the time being. I used a NE5532 ic and all BAT41. It is a little bit noisy when switched on though, not sure if that is normal.. was like that even before i boxed it up. Also i used a 2k7 CLR and it pretty much blinds me when i turn it on.. might have to fix that..
Heres a pic:

http://www.users.on.net/~w2620/Madbean%20Soundclips/

Demos for:

Aristocrat/King of [K]lones
Egodriver
Fatpants
Mudbunny
Pork Barrel
Quasar
Serendipity
Slambox
Slow Loris (with movie)
Sunking
T-Bagger
Yellow Shark
Zombii


A couple have a teeny tiny bit of post compression/reverb but apart from that its tele>pedal>amp.

Any possibility of doing a pedal that uses a real tube?
Im actually not sure what exists out there.. anyone have any ideas?
Thanks

Hey all,
So my friend has a Carl Martin Plexitone that he wants to be able to run on a normal 9v adaptor. I agreed to do the mod for him thinking it would be a straightforward case of using the road rage as a charge pump to power the 12v, but I was just reading the thread over at freestompboxes and it seems it's a bit more complex than I originally thought..
Is there a way to use the road rage to get both +ve and -ve 12v power at once?
Or has anyone done or heard anything about this mod? I know This dude does it: http://www.hugeracksinc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=75535
Would anyone be willing to help me out on this?

Here is one i finished up today. Its a mudbunny pcb with a couple mods, such as switches to choose between silicon or mosfet clipping. Infront of the mudbunny is a sort of LPB-1 boost and input capacitor blend, as is used in the Musket Fuzz, which adds the pre-gain and focus controls. Its pretty fun to play with, plenty of sounds available out of it.


Wiring is a bit sloppier than i would prefer.


I also made a soundclip of it, playing some sabbath:
http://soundcloud.com/ptszlk/shotgun-fuzz

Made this one for a friend. Id never played a real fuzz factory before, what a crazy hectic pedal! most of the time its just feeding back! or glitchy velcro fuzz sounds.
Pretty fun though and very versatile.
Also the switch switches input and output caps to higher values for a bit more bass. Not that it needs it ha!

Hey guys,
I just recently sold my favourite chorus pedal, an Ibanez Cs-505 chorus made sometime around 1980.
Before i did though i took a few gut shots just because i think it looks awesome. Not sure if anyone else here has/had one of these. Ive never really looked into it but i wonder if there is much difference between this and the Boss Ce-2? I also owned an 80's Ce-2 and i personally liked the Ibanez much better.






Im hoping when I build a Pork Barrel it can replace it.

Hi all,
Ive been trying to make my mudbunny into a (kind of) musket fuzz.
I hope its ok for me to post this schematic here, just to illustrate what ive done. Its from FSB.

Basically the bit in the blue shape i built on perf, and then i populated the mudbunny with the civil war parts list but left out R1, R2 and C1. From the 'out' of the perf i went into the C1 pad on the mudbunny.
I also used BC550B transistors, used 470pf caps instead of the 430pf indicated for the civil war specs, and i put the diodes on a switch with 1n914 in parallel, and mosfets (irf520) in parallel.
Now, if i turn the pre, focus, sustain or vol knobs up anywhere past about 12 i just get this feedback squealing noise. When i play it sounds awesome or if i turn them down enough to eliminate the squealing it sounds fantastic but im wondering why I'm getting this horrible feedback noise? Also with the diode switches on the 1n914 diodes the feedback gets a lot worse.
As far as i can tell its correct to the musket schematic.. Should i have R1, R2 and/or C1 on the mudbunny board?
Thanks
Pete

I'd better add: I had no 390R resistors, so i put two in parallel (580 and 820 i think?) to get about 330R for both R11 and R16.. could this be giving the circuit too much gain?
Also for the input to ground resistor on the perf board i had no 1M so i put two 2.2M in paralell to get 1.1M, but i think this would be ok.?

Ill also add that the mudbunny circuit works fine if i go straight into it without the perf in front..!

I'm just interested in what everybody here does day to day.. You know.. when you're not building pedals..

I'm gonna make a guess that not many of us are actually formally trained electrical engineers..? Could be very wrong though.

I'm a uni student, studying commerce/accounting.

Was super skeptical about this build, definitely thought it wouldnt live up to a ~$600 price tag.. wired it up today and wow.. amazingly dynamic circuit, the drive is very clear and great harmonics. The controls are all very useable and interactive too.
I did madbeans elevntybajillion diodes mod and used: red LED's, 1n34a's, BAT41's and some MA856's left over from my aristocrat build.
The decal is actually one of the ones you put on your walls, i just cut it down to size and i think it looks pretty neat. The enclosure was just a smallbear BB seconds.
In the guts shot you can see the huge tone capacitor, i read a thread where madbean suggested using a 6n8 for the tone cap so i ordered one off ebay.. didnt realise it was so huge!
Anyway great circuit, im thinking this one might have taken the lead over my Aristocrat and Yellow Shark..
And ive finally run out of madbean boards, time to do another order! 

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Made this one in the last couple days, sounds really nice, i especially like the blend control to mix between the effect and dry guitar, works really well to add a bit of background shimmer. The intensity control i dont like as much, when its full up its kinda sounds like its overloading the signal, i like it all the way down to be honest. Ive got an EA Tremolo as well so im making comparisons
Anyway I built it for a friend for his 21st. He is a big fan of La Dispute who have a song called The Last Lost Continent, so i thought id tie it in I planned to fit a battery in there bit i just couldnt squeeze it in without not being able to get the back on.. so i just left it out. Was also my first time using waterslide decals, so a couple are a little wonky. The colour is actually bronze with red and white splatter.
Wish I could keep it.. might have to make another!!


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