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Dang that's cool. I need to get out to be goodwill soon. You've just inspired me.

Do it! There are untold treasures everywhere. One time I came up on someone's entire workbench contents at my local thrift store. I gots scads of germanium transistors, diodes, and enough silver mica caps to last me two lifetimes. All for $10! And the cashier felt bad even charging me that much "but it's in this nice case"... Yep, the parts came in a beautiful vintage storage case, too.

I built the BL3208 version of the Aquaboy. It works, but it isn't really biasing nicely. It could totally be the chips I bought off eBay (Definitely not coming from a trusted source, hahaha). I also ended up using the B version of the BL3208s, so I made little daughterboards for 'em. The clock chip is from Small Bear, it works perfectly. All components were tested beforehand.

I'll mess with it some more at another sitting. When my new multimeter arrives, I'll get the voltages written down. Maybe with some tweaking and reliable chips this will turn out to be box-worthy. 

Greetings,

I built the Snarkdoodle and it fired right up.  This is a really great-sounding overdrive. I think I have the perfect box for it, too. Thanks for the layout, Brian!

I'm about to order parts for a total recall build and I had a few opinions to seek.  I remember back in the day a dude that used to work for EHX was offering repairs and modding of old EHX pedals.  IIRC Part of his mod was replacing the 4558 opamps in the deluxe memory man pedals with something lower noise.  I'm about to order parts for the total recall and was wondering if anyone had an opinion on replacing the relatively noisey opamps in the circuit for some higher grade lower noise stuff?  maybe replacing some of the ceramics with films or polystyrene where important?   going into a build like this, id like to make it as good as absolutely possible.  I might be a fan of quality opamps after using so many of the tayda TL072's and thinking i had found gold when I plugged in something more expensive i had gotten from small bear (those tayda TL072's were garbage for a while, ya know the ones with the almost impossible to read letters on the top?)

thanks1

Howard "Mick" Davis is the guy you're talking about. He's fixed up two of my vintage DMMs for me so far and I can honestly say he's awesome. I used to live near him in Brooklyn. The first time I had him do a repair, I ended up hanging out with him at his apartment for quite a while... We were geeking out on his amazing custom-built hifi system.

I haven't tried different op amps on my Total Recall build. It sounds great as is, IMO. Maybe just go for those Small Bear TL072s. 

I buy resistors by the 100s when I run low. I keep a shopping cart as I build and when a coupon comes out, I buy.


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I do the same thing. 

You could do a little vero board power distribution. One wire from the jack to the vero, other wires to your effects.

This is what I do. It makes things very neat. It also is nice to be able to use the many bits of vero we all have laying around from previous builds. 

Thanks, Cody!

Thanks, you guys!

Hi All

Thanks for having me on the forum !

I'd just like to get some advice on how you use the templates for drilling the metal boxes when building your pedals ?

Specifically , what settings need to be used when printing them off ? I will be doing this on the Xerox machine at my local library via USB i assume.

Thanks !

Welcome to the forum! Always nice to see another female builder on here... At least, I'm assuming you're female with a name like cleaninglady. 

What a great idea. How did you make switching between the two variations possible - are there two boards in there? IIRC the resistor values were different between the HP and SA.

And that's one tasty looking green LED in the Noisy Cricket 

Thanks! I only made the cap values switchable, but I socketed all the resistors so I could make everything play nice. I don't recall what values I ended up with. I play a tele, so I guess my pedals are optimized for use with single coil pickups. I really need to pick up a guitar with humbuckers one of these days. I'm sure it would be invaluable for testing out stuff.

The Arcadiator is sick! I'm building that one currently.

Nice job!

Thanks 

I'm always scouring thrift stores for cool-looking enclosures... and mojo parts. One day I hope to find me a SAD1024 for my lonely Electric Mistress build. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I find. I have found MN chips, stashes of obsolete germanium transistors and diodes, etc... For me, it's so much more fun to build things out of salvaged parts.

I'm out of work on temporary disability. I'm supposed to stay off my feet, so what better thing to do than finish up some of the myriad of un-finished projects I have on my desk?

First is a Sonic Titan in a 1590b enclosure. I just love the D*A*M circuits. The PCB was etched by me, storyboardist layout (over at http://effectslayouts.blogspot.com). The enclosure was done by my wife. She used india inks on this one. I think it came out fantastic. One of the inks she used is sparkly, I tried to show it with the flash photo below, but it looks sooooo much better in person. Wifey now has a stack of blank enclosures on her desk, waiting for some love. 

Next is an Echopathetic in a Hammond 1590b enclosure. I usually don't spend the extra dough to get actual Hammond brand enclosures. I have to say, the Hammond was easier to work with in a lot of ways. For example, on this enclosure I used india ink to paint the pedal with... On the non-Hammond enclosures I tried to paint with the ink, it would streak all over the place and not stay put on the surface no matter how much I prepped the enclosure first. All I did was use some steel wool to prep the Hammond enclosure, and the ink went on beautifully. The drilling was smoother, too. Worth the extra money, IMO. I did the lettering with those Posca markers that Paul of DIYguitarpedals.com suggested. They're great.

Anyway, the Echopathetic circuit was designed by allesz. I etched the PCB from the storyboardist layout. Most folks don't seem to think this effect is worth boxing, but I absolutely love it on guitar. I had the BBD chips, so why not?

Thanks, Luke! I had to fill all the holes up first. I sorta felt like a dentist.