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Hey guys.

Ok so I just finished building my Krankosaurus and Zombii and am on to the enclosures. I ordered some blem enclosures from Pedal Parts Plus which was great since they cost the same as their unfinished ($5.70ish). I also bought a sheet of water slide decal after seeing crashguitar's excellent results in the build reports.
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=103.0

Unfortunately I ended up with 3 red enclosures since they pick your color for you and I just realized that this will be a problem for color graphics if the decals are clear since last time I checked, my printer doesnt print white. If anyone has ordered this before, is the decal white or clear?

Also, If anyone has any ideas how to get my design I've attached below, I'd be happy to hear it.

Thanks



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Yeah that'd be cool too. I was attracted to the Ringtone not because of the sequencer but the possibility that you could "tune" each of the steps to different notes and select which one would fit the song. But like I said, any ring mod would be welcomed.

Wow! Thanks a lot for the sketches! It helps explain a lot.

Lifting the common ground of the four caps is not same as breaking each connection individually. In the original mod, the caps are completely out of circuit when the switch is open. When changed to break only the ground connection, the caps are still in circuit, and are connecting together points of the circuit that were not meant to be connected.

Ah ha! I knew there was something I was missing! Otherwise I'd be pissed that I went through the trouble of buying a 4pdt when a spst would have worked. Although it still appears a 4pst would have done the job and saved me a couple bucks...

I would at least put Cb on its own set of contacts, and perhaps Cd as well. That would take up 3 of the 4 poles, and you'd still have one left for the LED

Since its a compressor I don't want to introduce any more noise into the signal than I have to so I may end up just wiring them all separately and sadly use an LED with one color The rotary switch sounds like it would have worked better. I wish I knew more about switches when I was ordering parts. Oh well.

It occurred to me in a dream that you owe it to yourself to call this pedal the dyana ross.

That is pretty amazing and is making me rethink my original idea of Dynasauross

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! I can't wait!

Thanks Brian!

The zvex ringtone tt seems like one of his more usable "weird noise" pedals but I would take anything. I can't find a pcb for a ring mod anywhere
Thanks

That would be great! I already bought the 4pdt a while ago but it would help me a lot to understand whats going on here. In the mod schematic, it looked to me that the switch was either connecting from the positive pads, through the caps, to the ground or there was nothing running to ground.

As for the LED mod, do you think it would be possible with the 4pdt I have?

Thanks again!

This is unrelated to the question I asked but I'd also like to add a soldering tip for any newbies that I just discovered.

If you're like me, you forgot to order the single row sockets for transistors or maybe Smallbear's were just a little too pricey for you. I found these 6 pin IC sockets at my local electronics storefor $.19 each. Take your wire cutters and clip it right down the middle. Snip snip and you have a perfect 3 pin transistor socket that is even easier to solder than the single ones since the other legs hold it in place.

Hi,
I'm building a compressor from Tonepad but they dont have a forum over there so I figure I'd pick your brains again since you've helped so much  before. The comp has a mod that adds a 4pdt to swtich between the caps for a dynacomp or ross clone. I had a coupole of qustions just so I'm understanding exactly what its doing.

1.) Did this mod really need a 4pdt? Since the dyna settings are empty (I assume NC means no connection), isn't this turning a 4pdt into a 4pst? At that, couldn't the same effect have been achieved with a spst since all it is doing is breaking the caps' connection to ground? I already bought the 4pdt but I have a feeling its a bit overkill

2) Is there any way I could hookup a dual color led to this pedal for the indicator that would give me color 1 =dyna, color2 = ross, and off=off?

Thanks again guys

Pedal layout
http://tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=9

Mod layout
http://tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=24

AHH!! The battery life! I forgot all about that.
Thanks a lot!

I'm in the middle of wiring my krankosaurus and am just getting into the jacks and switches. I'm alittle confused why the diagrams call for TRS jacks for the inputs though. Not only is nothing hooked up to the sleeve but even if there was, since patch cables are TS, aren't both ring and sleeve going to the same place? I already have my parts but for next time, couldnt the same result be achieved with a TS jack and and the 9v- hooved up to the sleeve? Forgive me if there's an obvious answer here.
Thanks

Thanks for the soldering tips. I got my boards and (most of) the components and it makes everything make a lot more sense having something in front of me. A lot of "Oh! THAT'S what they talking about!" moments. Anyways, I had a few questions about your tips.

1) Everywhere else I've read that I should be using rosin-core solder. I know acid-core solder would obviously eat through the traces but I was wondering why you recommend to avoid the rosin core stuff.

2) Just how temperamental are transistors? Enough to require always require sockets or could someone being careful to heat sparingly solder them directly to the board.

3) There seems to be a lot of debate about the tinning of the traces. How much of it is a necessity to ensuring your board still functions in a year and how much of it is just builder's OCD (which I know is highly contagious).

Other than that, Thanks a lot for the help. I soldered my first resistor to my first pcb and then realized I was using the wrong pcb. So far that's been the only mistake so far! fingers crossed.

Thanks haberdasher, that helps a lot.

Hi Pigyboy,
Thanks for the help and the soldering tips as well. I've built cables before but this is going to take a different level of soldering. As far as I can tell, the only info I can find on the project pages is the Farad level of the capacitors. The main issue I seem to be having is knowing which type of cap to get which I can't seem to find on the pages. I looked a little closer and noticed that the cap outlines are different sizes and shapes on the wiring diagram. Should I be able to tell the type of cap from this or should I wait until the PCBs arrive?

I'll be starting with the Zombii fuzz first since it seems to be the simplest of the pedals I'm building but I'd like to order all the components in one swoop to save on the shipping.

I'm a noob here. Just ordered my first PCBs and getting my stuff through mouser and am sort of going insane from their options on the caps (as for resistors, I was able to just get all metal film). I noticed you marked ceramic for pF, Electrolytic for uF and film caps for nF. Should I just choose my caps based on this breakdown? What is the actual type of film cap to use? Also, I notice a lot of people recommend the Vishay Dale resistors but is there anything wrong with just buying the cheap $.05 KOA speer ones? If it makes a difference, I'm going to be building the Zombii, the Krankosaurus, and a Ross/Dyna clone from Tonepad.

Sorry for all the questions but until I get the boards and get to start building, all I have is confusing choices to fill my time.

Thanks and love the site Brian!