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Have any of y'all seen any good deals on gear for Black Friday yet? Usually someone will have some pedals with dramatically low prices, but I haven't seen any yet.

Last week, I ordered a power supply from Sweetwater and a discount pedal from a place called Gearnuts... On Monday, I checked the USPS informed delivery and saw that a package had come from Sweetwater. Instead, there wasn't anything from them, just the pedal. Apparently, Gearnuts is run by Sweetwater, but is a discount offshoot that doesn't offer the same customer service. Just an FYI.

Has anyone here ordered from Pro Audio Star (proaudiostar.com) before? They have some good close out deals on DOD pedals that no one else has, but I've never heard of the company.

I had someone ask me if I could make them a pedal that they can use to just kill their signal after they're done playing. When the pedal is switched off, do I need to have either the input or output connect to ground, or can I just leave an open connection?

There's a phaser pcb I'd like to mount in a wah treadle, but I can't find a 500kC pot with a gear. Does anyone know where I can get one, or how to add the appropriate gear to a regular 16mm pot?

I've been doing this off and on for 8 years now, and soldering a bit longer than that. In the past, I would replace solder tips when they wouldn't stay tinned (or before I used brass to clean them, when they started to look rusty).

In the past year, working with lead-free solder, I've started having the tips just straight up fall apart on me (The tinned part starts to get thin, bend, and then eventually break off completely). Apparently this is a known issue with lead-free solder.

Has anyone else run into this, and if so, is there anything one can do to cut down on the number of tips they're going through.

I'm build an old AndorNot (Clarinot Cubed), but to finish it, it looks like I might need to check the schematic or a wiring diagram. Does anyone have one?

I haven't tried this yet, but it looks like it might be worth trying. How to test solder joints.

I was putting a decal on a pedal and I dropped the enclosure while adding the second coat of clear coat. Is there a good way to get the clear coat off without messing up the powdercoat?

Normally I'd just sand the whole thing down, but it would be nice if I didn't have to repaint it.

Could you make a circuit using something like a vactrol where the resistance side would be set up so you could connect it to a jack meant for an expression pedal, with the vactrol serving the function of the expression pedal?

Does anyone have a copy of Culturejam's Drop-In Rat Build Docs they could share with me?

Is it possible to test a schoon toon before connecting it to another board? If so, how do you do it? Is it as easy as connecting the in and out to the other board together?

Creeper Fuzz, built using a Snarkdoodle board to the Craig Anderton specs. I'll post a gutshot tomorrow.

When building the Snarkdoodle to the Craig Anderton specs... Should I jumper R1, or just leave it empty there?

My chunk chunk build was ready to be biased, but no matter how much I turn the trimpot, the voltage at T1 is in the 9V range. It does change when the pot is turned, but always somewhere around 9V. It was possible to bias each of the other J201s though.

So far, I've checked capacitor and diode orientation and general wiring, and resistor values before the first J201, with no part substitutions.

Should I try just switching out the trimpot, or is this something else I should look at?

EHX has this new pedal that functions like a sequencer for expression pedals.

(EHX 8 Step Program)

First off, this makes me want to build expression inputs into all of my pedals.

Secondly though, it seems like it should be possible to make this create a simple stutter effect for guitar. Originally I thought I could just wire it in like a volume pot, but I tried that and it didn't work... But, now I'm think that at the very least, it could control the rate of one side of an LDR, with the other side controlling guitar volume. Could I just replace a rate pot on a tremolo-type circuit with a connection for the 8 Step? Any other ideas?

I've finally finished assembling the loophole, but I'm having some issues with it. If the record switch is engaged, both the record light and the play light are both on. Additionally, when just the play switch is on, it plays back just a loop of static (it's definitely playing "something" back though).  The filter, vol and dry knobs all seem to be working fine.

I'll post gutshots in the morning and also try to see what signal I'm getting at pin 20.