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Found this Telequipment D54 oscilloscope locally and wondering if it would be a good buy for a beginner.  I've never had a scope, but for 30 bucks I'd think it was a decent enough deal.  Would I see a lot of limitations in using this with amp/pedal testing and whatnot?  Thanks!


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Catch up post of the last few months for me...



Celeste Chorus -  built for a friend who is wanting to get into building, but just didn't have the time to throw himself into getting the projects done.  Etched faceplate by the Haberdasher himself



Testing Rig I made for the same guy using some really cool screw terminals... the bases are ceramic!



Sagan Delay v2 -  happy with how this one came out sonically, but the etch is kind of a mess.  This one was for me and I'm always a little lazier when I build for myself.  If you built the first Sagan and weren't into it do yourself a favor and build the new one... the fidelity is sooooo much better.



Tap tempo switch 🤷🏻‍♂️



Noise Ensemble from Fredrik's layout- I really dig this circuit.  It's super fun and gets really weird, but I think it has more practical applications than it's given credit for.  Built in a 1590g, named after a bit from a comedy bang bang episode I was listening to while I built it.  Again, a super messy thing because it was for me.



Couple of Into the Unknowns from Fredrik - I built one of these a while back for a friend, he loved it and let a friend borrow it.  So then the friend of my friend, says "hey I want to buy this, and can the guy make me a back up."  So these two were for my friend, and the other is the backup.  In the spirit of making sure I'm not cutting in on Fredrik's glory (and income) for designing this awesome circuit I won't be making anymore of these.  But yeah, I think they turned out nice!


Another Sagan - had to wire some of the pots off-board because I wanted the controls further away from the switches on the bottom.  Was a request from the customer to make it "twin peaks themed", so that's the story on the Chevron.  Much happier with how this one turned out, aesthetically, compared to my own!



Another Noise Ensemble - a friend played mine and loved it, wanted to make it more bass friendly so he wanted a blender.  He also wanted to be able to activate it on a momentary as well as latched bypass so I used a VFE board to achieve all that.  Thanks to Gordo for pointing me in the right direction of that switching solution!

That's it for now... working on another Sagan at the moment and then I might take a little siesta from building.  We'll see.


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All this talk of the building community slowing down or whatever got me feeling a little convicted about my lack of participation in what helped me get so interested in the first place.  So here's a bunch of builds I've done recently!

Into the Unknown - my first successful etch!




Little SHO




DiabloChris6's Nasal Cavity aka Sample/Hold side of a Maestro FSH... I have added the CV input since building this and it's a fun little add-on.



Madbean Pepperspray - so this and the next one were builds I did for a guy locally who had wanted to get into building, bought some boards and parts, but ran out of time be able to start it up.  Really pleased with how they turned out.



Madbean Sabertooth - he was a twin peaks fan, thus the chevron pattern



Obviously, these all look very similar, but I've been trying to get things more consistent and recognizable as I have gotten a lot of interest from locals about doing one-off builds and whatnot.  Still trying to fine-tune the process, but I've also really enjoyed etching a lot more than I had.  Using an abstract design takes some of the pressure off when you're trying to get it to look "right". 

And just to comment on the other threads regarding the current state of building... for me, posting to Instagram is just so much easier and more of my musician friends who may be interested in a build will see it there.  Contributing here is important, but it typically falls to the wayside after I've already sent images of a new pedal out into the world via social media.  Regardless, I'd like to be better about being active on here again.  I would probably have given up building a long time ago had it not been for the support of this forum! 



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Hey, it's been a while since I've posted 'round these parts, but my builds are finally things I can be decently proud of, so....

Green Ringer with etched pcb.  I found the layout on here several years ago and had the transfers lying around, so why not? 


Naughty Fish-  the switch tip covers really make a difference IMO.



Broken Arrow OD (AKA Durham Crazy Horse)   This was a pcb I got from Black Horse, it sounds great!  No gutshot, not sure why I didn't take one.


Mangler - I got this board pop'd from someone else on here with a snazzy PPP enclosure. 


Booster - a friend needed a little booster/buffer at the end of his effects chain just as a recovery stage.  It's a CAE Line Booster/Driver on vero.  Layout from tagboard effects. 

CJ's Stutter Trem - sounds grrrrreat!  Got this board pop'd by someone on here too.  Messy wiring.  I made this for someone in exchange for a table saw.


STM800 - finally got this thing done and it's my fave.  Like seriously, my fave.  No gutshot for this one either, but I promise I built it! 



PTP voltage control - Ha.





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New Rig Week!  I'm a bit of a lurker, but there are few people in my life who get excited about this sorta thing.  Welcome.



1983 Peavey Roadmaster - Power section is SIX(!!!) 6L6gc's (original peavey-branded sylvanias), with a 12ax7/12at7 combo driver.  The preamp is two 12ax7's, and then it has a 12ax7/12at7 combo for the reverb.  Yep guys, that equals TWELVE bottles of sweet tubey goodness.

I've only had it a week, but I've been impressed tonally with everything it can do.  The "pump" knob, which just overdrives the preamp, leaves a little to be desired but at least it's a very natural sounding overdrive.  From what I'm reading there's no solid state anything on this thing.  The cleans are nice and full, but then again I've only played it through this 215 cab.  The reverb pan is gigantic but the delay time on it is super short.  I think I'll disconnect it because it introduces some noise when I use it too.  I've got ThomasH's reverb on my board anyways to satisfy that need.   

Got the whole rig by trading a few things I had lying around that I wasn't using, so the fact that it was "free" was quite a bonus.  As a family man with 2 kids, living in a residential area, I have no business owning a 160 watt tube amp with a 2x15" cab.  But who cares, right?!  I had been looking for a rig that was usable for both bass and guitar, and I found it in this guy.  I'm really jazzed about the cabinet as I've always really liked the aesthetics of Traynor's TS series.  It's got some dings and scrapes, but its not a collector's piece anyways.  It's only an 80 watt cabinet so I can't completely crank the head, but the speakers break up real nice when I push them.  The internet chatter is that the speakers are old square magnet eminences, but I may swap them out for some EVM's or something if I need to push them with a band (haha, that's hilarious... as if I'll ever play in a band that would necessitate such playing).

Here's the best part- I am the first owner of the head.  Yep, 32 years old, and its just been sitting in this music store all this time.  A couple of the 12ax7's have been replaced, but everything else is completely original.  I don't want to molest anything in case I want to make it original again, but I really dislike the aesthetics of the head.  I've removed the front panel and I stained/poly'd a piece of poplar that I'll use in it's place, but that's just a temporary fix (going for the Verellen thing).  The plan is to eventually wrap a grillcloth over it, change some knobs, doll her up a bit.  If you have any scraps of grillcloth you're trying to move then let me know!     

I don't post all that often, but I'm pretty proud of this one.  It's a cave dweller feeding into a GuitarPCB Paramix, with a TH Custom's Reverb hardwired in the second loop.  I used the insert jacks on it just in case I want to use it solely as a blender because I'm primarily a bass player and would use it often.  It's a pretty convoluted contraption for just using a blender, but it looks impressive on stage and thats what's important, right?

I was just going to name it "The Swamp", because it definitely sounds very swampy, but then I added the LFO modulation daughterboard to the dweller (the little etched guy in the bottom left) and thought it sounded kinda spacey.... thus Shquornshellous Zeta.  I could've gone for the more obvious "Dagobah", but... nah. 

Anywho, it sounds awesome, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.







My 4 year old really wanted to show me how good he was with a screwdriver...
   

So, I've got an old tascam cassette 4 track that doesn't have a PSU, but I've been using the 12volt tap on my cheap joyo pedal powering thing.  It only draws 100 mA on the 12 volt tap, but the stock PSU for the unit has a 500 mA draw.  The unit acts all screwy most of the time when I try recording and I think this is due to the power situation.  So, I've been looking for other solutions since the OEM psu is ridiculously expensive.  I found this: http://www.parts-express.com/panasonic-kx-a11-12-vdc-500ma-ac-adapter-55-x-21mm-center-(-)--129-005 

I don't understand how closely wattages need to match with these things, which brings me to my question.  The OEM PSU has 7 watts of power consumption and the above linked psu has 12 watts, is that an important difference or will that psu work? 

I should also say that if any of you have a psu for tradin'/sellin' that would work then I'd totally take you up on it.  I've got some sweet raccoon pelts I need to unload.  Thanks! 

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G15396

Is this what I think it is?  And has anyone tried them before?

So, a few years ago I would have considered myself a pretty "husky" guy.  At that time I wore 38x30 jeans, and that's why I'm allowed to make the joke

Just your average fat pants, nothing fancy.  This was my first time drilling an enclosure and I didn't realize how close I was putting the knobs together when marking all the holes.  I will quote the great Canadian Alanis Morisette: "you live, you learn."  The letters are stamped with a metal punch and I thought they came out pretty nice.  The letters on the back panel look kind of janky because that was my testing field.

Cheers!

Alright, so I'm posting this over here because I am a beginner and the solution is likely something very simple that I'm just not considering. I went through every pedal troubleshooting article I that my attention span would endure, and now I am going public. 

First, I need to confess that I committed the cardinal sin of pedal building:  I did not rock it before i boxed it.  I hope all of you will be able to forgive my transgression and hear my plea of help despite my direct disobedience to this law, which is only meant to enhance our pleasure and not diminish it.  I did, however, try to rock it before I boxed it.  I made a pcb testing rig with the audio probe per jkotura's little tutorial and it worked great.  According to the probe, my problem lies at R1.  When I touch the probe to the left of R1 I get the signal, but when I touch the right end pad it is silent.  There looked like there was a hairline solder bridge between R1 and R2 on the left pad so I scratched around between them to break it.  It didn't really make a difference.  After that I thought it was a power issue and that my jack was wired wrong on the tester (and it was), so I just went ahead and boxed it thinking that once I got it in there it would magically work.

So its all wired up now in the box.  There is a loud hum and a very faint guitar signal coming out  (and I mean verrrrrry faint).  It bypasses fine and there is at least a very faint guitar signal coming through which tells me it is wired okay.  All of the pots work because the hum changes in volume or character when I use them and the fat switch.  The transistors have been biased at 12v.  When I measure R1 with my DMM I am getting a "0" reading.  R5 also uses a 1M resistor and it measures as it should, I also double-checked that it is the right value by the colored bands.  R2 also measures fine.  So I'm really feeling like R1 is the problem here.  The joints feels sturdy on both sides of R1.  If I would have done this the right way then I could show you a picture of the back of the pcb, but I'm confident its okay because I was checking all over for problems when it wasn't working in my testing rig.

I also figured out I could still probe the circuit by attaching an alligator clip to the tip of the output connected to a probe.  I was pretty proud of that little discovery (even though the circuit still isn't working), and confirmed that the problem is still at R1.

I'm kinda worried that I cut the trace when I was scratching between R1 and R2.  But that doesn't make sense because it would have completely eliminated the guitar signal, right?  I have tried figuring this out by looking at the schematic, but I'm still learning how to read them.  I just can't get over that there is a signal coming through, which increases and decreases in volume with the gain and volume pots.  The hum is much much louder, but that guitar signal is getting through somehow.  Any help is appreciated, thanks!

So, as I'm sure you are all aware you can stock up big time for cheap on ebay from some of these Asian distributors on parts.  I was looking to buy some of these multi-value parts lots just so I didn't have to order a single 56k resistor every time I start a new project.  Anyone know of reliable distributors for this sort of thing?  I was looking at this posting...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-10M-1120pcs-56-Values-1-4W-0-25W-1-Metal-Film-Resistors-Assorted-kit-Set-/120962771537?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c29f16a51

Even though some of them are multi-value lots they don't explicitly say that the parts are labeled with the value.  I know it would be wise to measure them all anyways if they are coming from a distributor like this, but yeah.  Also, I know that ordering jacks and switches may be kinda sketchy with these sort of distributors, but I felt a little more confident with passives.  So, in the expert wisdom of the folks on this board, what do you say?

Hi guys, so I'm brand spanking new to the board and I just completed my first build so I thought I'd show it off and get any feedback you all may have.  This ain't no crazy hard Multiplex or whatever, but I'm proud of it.  I first need to thank ChromeSphere for royally hooking me up.  He's the best and you should buy anything he sells... ever... because he's awesome.

The board is an etched version of Madbean's Rangemaster board.  My soldering job is absolutely atrocious and I'm glad you can't see it very well in the pictures.  I used one of ChromeSphere's etched power inverters so it can run off an external power source.  All the parts are pretty run-o-the-mill stuff, except the transistor which is one of the NOS European ones that ChromeSphere was peddlin' a while back.  So that adds "mojo", right? 

It sounds fantastic, but I used a 22n cap for the fat switch, which I'm not a huge fan of.  Since I socketed darn near everything I'm going to mess around with the values a bit to figure out what's good for me.

Feel free to tell me what I did wrong because I'd love some constructive criticism.  I bought one of those ROG Supreaux Deux boards from OftenFX and I'm looking forward to putting it together real soon.  Thanks!