Topics

The middle of March is when I began preparing for the disc golf season in Kansas City.  My guitar playing (and pedal building) normally take a back seat to the social aspect of disc golf through leagues and tournaments.  However, it's pretty obvious that 2020 is not going to be a normal year.  As an extrovert that lives alone, I've decided to finish up some half finished builds from the winter that I was going to slowly tackle over the summer because I'm going to need something to keep my hands and my mind busy.  First up is Diablochris's Tesseract Reverb.  If you're familiar with this build, you'll notice that I used a 3PDT switch and have an extra pair of wires connecting to the third lug.  There's a design quirk on this build that never lets the dry signal get totally dry when the effect is bypassed.  Chris worked with me to understand it and offered a suggestion on how to still allow the tails functionality while letting it eventually fade into a dry signal once the effect is disengaged.  The effect itself is pretty cool.  While it never gets totally wild, I do like how I can use it for shoegaze style sounds when you turn things up a bit.   I've normally used delays instead of reverbs but can see this being something that gets some serious time on my board.

Artwork was inspired when Stranger Things announced season 4.  Some of the etch didn't transfer completely (The B in Reverb) and I may try my hand at trying to hand cut that out with an X-Acto blade sometime soon.  I'll definitely have the time to mess around with it . 

Up next is Madbean's Rustbucket.  I'm working on artwork now.

After 3 months of testing and debugging,  my Blueshift is finally boxed and on my board.  I do think one of my delay chips sounded a bit off during the initial build but once I replaced both of them (and their clocks) it really sounds fantastic.  My 3207's were from 2 different runs (the CoolAudio graphics looked a little different on each) and I think there may have been slight differences in the runs.  Gordo's description of a "slight modulation that never really goes anywhere" is perfect way to put the feel of this effect.  The chorus is expansive and unlike anything I have played with.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my troubleshooting thread.  One of the awesome thing about this community is it's desire to help each other when someone has a problem or doesn't understand something.  You learn a lot more when things don't go as planned .  Also, Kevin at Aion did a fantastic job with the layout.  How he managed to cram this many thru hole components into a box this size is really a work of art.

The paint is a slight homage to the original.  It was my first time working with sparkle paint and I love the way it turned out.  The name and graphics also date back to the 80s with a nod to TRON.  I was having problems initially with the boards separating from their pins so I put a little yellow component wrap inside and it fits like a glove now.

I picked up a White Horse after hitting a dead end trying to correct Aion's Blueshift.  And would you know it; I've managed to find some other weird issue with a considerably simpler build.  I noticed that when I engage the pedal and am not playing, a hum that gets progressively louder comes out of the effect.  When I begin playing, the hum compresses down with the rest of the signal, so I think that the overall compression effect works. 

I used Lumberg style jacks so I didn't do the grounding ring thing connected to the footswitch.  That said, I'm going to make sure that there's adaquate contact between the metal enclosure and the jack later tonight.  I looked at the inside of the effect this morning and could see a little paint in there.  I don't think that's really the cause because the hum isn't near as present when the blend knob is counterclockwise, bringing in the clean signal.  But that aside, the fact that the effect gets progressively louder when I'm not playing seems odd.

I used a 2.6V white diffused light for the LED, and have maxed out the brightness of that light on the switching board.  All of the switch functionality works.  The voltages look about right on most of the pins, but I did notice on the pins that say "varies" on the TLE2074 the voltage is approximately 0.

I plan to do some more signal tracing this evening, but if anyone has encountered an issue like this (maybe it's not even an issue) I'd be interested to hear.

For some reason I thought I had shared this but apparently not.  This is the 4th Kansas City Prairiemaster I've built.  It's the first one in a normal 1590BB box as I realized I didn't need the extra height in the first two boxes.  I also did some control re-labeling.  This is also the first one in a "custom color" of hunter green. 

This one is really unique in that it's being auctioned on my Facebook page to help add to Kansas City Disc Golf's 2020 Ice Bowl donation to local KC food pantries to help fight hunger! Last year I donated one of Grind Custom's Supernature effects I built to a raffle, but felt that the auction would be better as non disc golfers would bid on it.  I'm really excited to let a few of my passions overlap like this!

Also, this one comes with sound demos!  And pictures by someone good with a camera!  The gutshot was by me and looks like crap, as expected .  I had a lot of fun learning some of the ins and outs of recording guitar over the past two weeks.  I'm going to try to make demos a regular thing going forward on other builds.  Check out some of the sound demos here:
https://soundcloud.com/cstimko/sets/kansas-city-prairiemaster-demos









If by chance you're interested in helping support Kansas City Disc Golf's effort to fight hunger in the metro, you can find information about the auction on my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/timkotronics/

My Blueshift build has been giving me fits, so I took a break this weeekend to finish the enclosure for this. A friend asked me to build something for his sister for Christmas. He couldn't tell me anything about the music she plays or the instruments she has, so I decided to go with an LM308 build since that's my favorite distortion. It's also the first VFE build I've done, and I'm really excited to finish the other two I bought (a co press or and a Klon). It's also the first time I've worked with a 1590B enclosure in nearly 2 years. It was fun to revisit something smaller than my tropical work.

Sound wise this thing is incredible. There's so many tonal options from the classic Rat sound to something modern and heavy. There's rven this cool octave thing I found if I turn the gain down and use the 1n34 soft clipping.

After searching everywhere for 10K-C 9mm pots, I found them at Mouser. They have a long shaft so I attempted to use a Dremel to cut it to length. Next time I'll use a music lower setting because it melted the plastic knob at an angle.  It's still functional though.

The graphic is simple but looks good on the small box. I'm a big Tom Wolfe fan (journalist and author) so I put that in there as well.

I finally finished up my Aion Blueshift last night.  The good news:  It makes sound.  The bad news:  I think something wrong with the chorus path through IC9 (the lower MN3207 on the schematic).  The trim pot didn't do a lot there when moving it like the trim pot for the IC3 path.  There's also some warble in the effect.  Through my time on youtube, the whole thing with the Dimension C was a lack of warble from the two seperate delay paths.  Maybe the sound I'm hearing now is correct (it still sounds massive and lush), but the effect of the trimmer made me think there may be something else at play.

Here's a quick video of the effect I put together this morning.  The order of the effect is switch #2, switch #1, no switch, switch #3.  If you've built this effect, I'd be interested to hear whether or not mine sounds like yours or if something is amiss

Sorry for the deluge of questions this morning, but I was about to check out from Smallbear with some 2n5458's in my cart and it told me they were out.  I looked at the schematic for the AD and it appears that JFET is being used as an output buffer.  When designing the Kansas City Prairiemaster, I used a MPF5102 JFET as an input buffer for the clean boost side of that effect.  I assume that since the 5458 is being used in the buffer configuration, then any standard JFET would work in place of it (as long as the pinout is the same)?

I am in the process of populating a few VFE boards.  One of them is the White Horse compressor.  Smallbear is out of the Silonex NSL-32SR3 photocoupler.  Mouser doesn't carry them.  Allied and Newark both do though (too bad I placed a Newark order a week before I ordered).  I had a pretty bad experience with Newark and would prefer not to go through them.  Is there an equivalent part that Smallbear currently has in stock that would be a good substitute?

I'm ordering a few parts for finishing my Rustbucket build, and had a couple of questions.

1.  That 2u2 is a bipolar cap, right?  That's what the pcb symbol and schematic say.
2.  I have the rev 1 version of the 2019 board with the mounted pots.  It also takes a small frame switch.  I assume a switch like this?  https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/506-TMS1T4B5M2RE?

Thanks! I have bit off a lot all of a sudden with partially completed board (a "that escalated quickly" thing) where I tried to build enough boards to place a decent order for components.  So I'll be spending the rest of this year designing enclosures for the 5 builds I'll have done soon.

I am ordering a few parts I need to build DeadEndFX's Mutron BiPhase pedal (or giant box on the floor), and needed to order a very specific Kingbright LED.  The only store stocking them was Newark, so I decided to try out their store for the other capacitors, switches, and ICs I need to grab.  While ordering capacitors, I noticed that there's more types of film than I had previously known.

Metallized PET Stacked
Metallized PET
Film / Foil PET
Film / Foil PP
Metallized PP
Metallized PPS

I looked through my last Mouser order, and saw a mix/match of Polypropylene (PP), Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), and Polyester.  I was curious if I should be ordering one type over another, or whether I should simply order what's cheapest.

I first started building pedals 5 years ago this winter with Joe Gore's Tonefiend projects.  I quickly moved to more complex pedals than those simple layouts, but I always knew that I wanted to come up with a combo clean boost and treble boost.  Earlier this year, a stranger walking by my house heard me playing guitar and knocked on my door.  After some discussion he asked if I'd be willing to build him a Rangemaster style circuit.  At the time I was starting to get burnt out on building PCBs, and laying something out on Verobard sounded like fun. 

I tried a lot of different combinations of treble boosters.  The first version of this pedal used Jon Patton's Fallstaff Overdrive, but it didn't have the sound I was going for. 
After I found someone in a Facebook group selling lower gain PNP transistors, I did some research and came across the Sziklai layout for a Rangemaster.  I ended up putting an AMZ stupidly wonderul tone control at the end (as well as a bypass switch) with a 50K-A pot that thins out the tone a bit.  I found it's really useful when you turn down the input cap control.  The clean boost is based off the MXR boost, but I added a FET buffer at the beginning that's always on, and used AMZ's wiring suggestion for modding a tubecreamer to be buffered bypass.

Also, thanks to Madbean for helping with directing me to some resources to help with an incredibly annoying switch pop.

The pedal name and graphics have been done for nearly 10 months now.  I'm glad to finally have a circuit to put in the box.

I've been spending some time this year away from building projects and focusing on understanding how circuits are designed.  Since I began pedal building 4 years ago, I've been fascinated with the Rangemaster and germanium based pedals in general.  So the first design I've been working on has been a layout for a Darlington (well, it's really a Sziklai) based layout using 2 transistors for creating Rangemaster tones with an additional output tone control on the end.  The eventual goal is to replace the tone control with some sort of synth style resonant filter, but I'm starting here for the moment.  My circuit has 4 controls.

* Input cap blend control
* Boost control
* Tone control
* Tone bypass switch

After working through the layout and through getting parts onto my breadboard that sounded good, I ended up with this schematic:
https://i.imgur.com/Pp19p55.png

And this layout:
https://i.imgur.com/096MeHK.jpg

However, after building it and connecting it to a footswitch I got an awful pop.  I spent the past week reading about the causes of switch pop, and I definitely have a 50ish mV voltage on the footswitch pin that corresponds to the effect output.  I noticed that my schematic (like most Rangemasters) lacks an output pull down resistor, so I clipped one of those into the circuit.  However, I noticed that the voltage only dropped when adding a smaller (100k-10k) resistor rather than the typical 1M / 2.2M often seen in modern circuits.  I know the Big Muff uses a 100k pull down resistor, and after reading through the diystompboxes archives, this seems to be an acceptable value.  However, I'm still at a loss as to why that's the case.  I'm not sure if my large output cap for a Rangemaster (220nF) has anything to do with it, but perhaps.

One of the other things I read about in my research was a resistor in series with the input / output as a current limiter.  I didn't find a lot of explanation on this (much of the focus is on the pull down resistor), but I have looked through a few schematics and have seen resistors after the tone/volume/buffer/last stage with a series resistor before the output with some sort of capacitor to ground in parallel.  I was curious if there are times you opt for this type of design and times you don't.  One of the other things that I'm not sure about is whether having a tone control after the boost section is a good idea.  Most of the time I see a tone control placed before the volume, but that won't work in this case.

Thanks for helping.  Circuit design seems to be a black hole - when you're looking for answers, you find more questions

I was watching the JHS Blog video yesterday (shout out to KC local Seuf Guitars Shaun and Marq who built that offset with the maple neck and black inlays he was playing; they refinished my Johnny Marr Jag in Sherwood a while back), and Josh mentioned something about the "new improved Boss buffer."  Upon hearing that, I spent some time scouring the internet for information about this.  The consensus on sites like gearpage is that the buffer is indeed better, but no one really delves into whether or not the circuit change or if Boss is simply using higher quality transistors/ICs for their buffers. 

Has anyone here looked into the Waza line, and, if so, is the buffer some new topology or just more modern components?

Since I began playing guitar again 5 years ago, I've dreamed about owning a single coil hollow body.  As a big fan of Elliott Smith, I've gravitated to the ES-330. There's actually a cool sunburst vintage 330 on Craigslist in my area right now.  But I own one big hollow body (a '92 Gretsch Country Gentleman) and thought that I'd enjoy playing something a little smaller (I'm not tall, and the big body guitars can get awkward to position when standing).  And when Epiphone released the Johnny A Custom, I knew I had a guitar I could mod without cringing at wrecking a vintage or custom shop instrument.  I got this instrument in the fall of 2017, and when doing a setup to replace the nut the tech broke the freaking headstock .   I got a reasonable amount of money for the guitar plus the guitar back repaired and knew that it would be ripe for any projects I felt like trying.

As a fan of the Gretsch, I decided to go with their single coil pickup choice in the early 50s:  The Dynasonic Darmond.  I opted for the TV Jones T-Armond.  It's also the 2nd hollow body I've re-wired.  I swore after doing my Gretsch 5120 I'd never do another one.  Well, the Johnny A is 1.75 to 2 inches thick depending on the carve, which makes moving pots around even MORE difficult.

The harness is homemade with parts from StewMac (they're the only ones who sell gold things) and Mojotone.   I have knobs but I realized the knob pointers I had didn't fit the US size pots so they'll be here later this week.

The pickups are bright, sparkly, low power (as designed), and maybe the clearest thing I've used.  Someone had had the Dearmonds are like a Tele on steroids.  I don't think they are quite as spanky, but the definitely twang.  They have a depth that I've not had in a guitar before.  So far I've found them to be quite fantastic for fingerstyle.  I'll be breaking out the drive and fuzz tonight to see how they treat it.  It's a great addition to the family!

Originally posted in the wrong section.  This is what happens when you try to multitask too much on a workday .
- - - -
I went to a forum/workshop in Kansas City that featured local builders in the music scene here.  Shaun and Marq from Seuf Guitars were there as well as Paul from Scarlett Amps.  I know both companies (Paul works on my tube amps, and Shaun repainted my Jaguar), but perhaps the largest name there was Josh from JHS (which is from Grandview, a suburb of KC).  It was an incredibly well attended forum where the smaller guys were surprised with the number of questions (Shaun told me "I thought it was going to be the Josh show"), but I had a specific question for Josh about switching, one that I'd like to share here along with his response.

I'll give you some background with the question first.  When I started pedal building 4 years ago, I became obsessed with boost pedals.  So much that the 3rd and 4th builds I ever did (a clean boost and a treble boost) are still on my board.  I've longed for putting these two builds together in the same enclosure with the ability to switch the order for the two effects.  Knowing that doesn't work so well for a treble boost, I began exploring the topology of John Patton's Fallstaff Overdrive, a buffered treble booster.  After coming up with a few tweaks that got the sound to where I wanted, I had one last thing I wanted to add - an internal switchable buffer on the treble boost side as this sits first in my chain and I don't use a buffered tuner pedal.  This all appeared to work fine until it didn't.  I got a lot of hum in that part of the circuit.  I soon realized the notion of the switchable buffer seen in a pedal like the KTR uses a 3pdt switch, which was a much bigger design undertaking than the way I had done it.

Ok, onto my question.  I asked Josh how he decides whether a pedal will be true bypass or buffered bypass.  His answer changed the way I'm starting to look at switching.  He mentioned that switching is hands down the most complicated part of a pedal often as people was the bypass or circuit engage to happen with no noise.  Seeing how the thing is a mechanical part, this is incredibly hard.  He also mentioned that the myth that true bypass is "better" is just that and is based more on the early boutique builders's ability to get their hands on 3pdt switches to wire them up than some better sound.  JHS pedal switching is designed per pedal; if true bypass fits that circuit with minimal noise, they'll go with that.  Or they'll go with a buffer.  Or opto.  Or relay.  I've been thinking about switching on the end result of the effect (true bypass or buffer).  I'm now starting to think about it based on whether or not the transition between the effect and the bypass signal has no big click, and figure out how to make it happen.  Perhaps you all think this way already, but I didn't.

One final thing.  Josh mentioned through all of his studying and research into switching, he feels that the Japanese may have gotten it right with the Boss/Ibanez design of the flip/flop transistor design.  I see very few of these in DIY pedals.  I also think it would be incredibly difficult to build a stand alone board for this type of switch and market it as such, which is why I don't see any of these.  So to the people who do layout, why don't you use the flip flop switch design?  Has the relay switch, which I think at a mechanical level achieves a similar workflow, replaced them in modern building?

Thanks for reading.  The more I get into building, the more I realize how far I have to go in understanding.

The winter build season is winding down for me as warm months, outdoors, and disc golf are calling my name.  My friend who asked for the Muff I posted earlier in March has a friend who works at the same guitar store.  He just bought a Peavy T-60 and a Peavy Deuce.  He wants the most 80s pedal for distortion he could think of.  I hadn't planned on any more builds this winter so I could focus on a somewhat original design that has unfortunately not worked out as expected, but I had a Rat board in my collection and agreed to do the build for him to take my mind off of the other circuit debacle.

Aion board with LEDs in the 2nd clipping diode option.  I also used a TH Custom Opto Bypass board.  Thanks to Matmosphere for hooking up the metal can LM308.  I know they don't sound that different than the plastic ones.  They just look so cool.  Your jacks are in the mail today (sorry about getting them to you so late).

I looked long and hard for a theme for the artwork.  I had originally thought of focusing on cheese words, but I stumbled back onto the Pizza Rat meme late one night and decided to run with it.  It's also the first time I've ever used hammered paint (I did on the sides).  This stuff is impossible to mess up!

This will probably be it for me for a little bit.  As mentioned, I'm working on some concept around a clean and treble boost pedal that hasn't quite panned out.  I also ordered one of the DeadEndFX Mutron BiPhase boards which will sure be an undertaking.  And once Madbeans restocks the Rustbucket I will have my personal summer big build queue filled!

In a soon to be published build report, I built a pedal with an internal switch for a buffer.  It's a pedal that goes early in my chain, and I don't use a Boss tuner, so I've always counted on the first pedal to buffer my board.  I built the simple buffer that Joe Gore's Tonefiend guide shows:

http://www.tonefiend.com//wp-content/uploads/DIY%20Club%20Project%203%20v02.pdf
(the circuit schematic is on page 19)

When I breadboarded the circuit, I used some 2n5457s I have left over.  However, not having many of them, I tried the veroboard version with a few different transistors:  A J113 and a PF5102.  After some searching I found some people recommend them as decent replaces in buffers (in particular this article http://stompville.co.uk/?p=763).  However, when I had the buffer engaged and turned my tuner pedal on in front of it, I got an awful hum.  After spending a lot of time ensure I didn't wire or solder something incorrectly, I removed the transistor from the vero and put in a socket.  The PF5102 had the same result, but the 2n5457 had none of the nasty hum.  So while I'm glad that I discovered the issue, I do have some questions.

1. There are slight differences in the specs between the PF5102 and the 2n5457.  Which one of those particular specs should I be looking at in terms of buffers?
2. Now that the 2n5457 is out of print (and getting a little too pricey), how are people building FET buffers now?  Is there part of the schematic I should look at altering?

Here's one of the 3 builds I'm finishing up this month.  This one is for a friend who wanted a Green Russian Big Muff with a mid boost on a footswitch.  He gets this, I get a Jazzmaster parts guitar.  Thanks to Kevin @ Aion Electronics for letting me know whether this made sense.  It sounds killer.  It's even got the old Green Russian mojo of 2 1nF caps in series to make a 500pF (because finding 500pF is much more difficult.





A few additional notes.  The name and the design come from a Russian watch company called Vostok.  They make incredibly functional automatic mechanical watches that last forever and are incredibly cheap (in the $100 range).  This design is for a Radio Room clock, which designates the time at which no chatter needs to happen over the radio in order to listen for distress signals. 



I also bought myself a new sanding block called a Preppin' Weapon, invented by guys who do automotive painting. And it sands beautifully.  For anyone who's gotten into enclosure etching this is something well worth the money. 



And I got boxes!  Now I just need to work on a sticker for them.  For now, writing on them by hand will work.  I stuffed them with pink bubble wrap from Tayda because I have tons of that stuff .

I'm hunting for a PCB mount DPDT switch that's going to be internal on a verboard layout I'm doing.  I figured it would be easy to find something like this, but it's proven to be more difficult than I had originally planned.

I found this But I was hoping to find a switch that allowed me to cut an entire hole away on the trace.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/NKK-Switches/AS22AP?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtHXLepoqNyVRD4PxOQKi4n87ErVP2%252bksQ%3d

What this is (X represents pin, O represents open point on the board):
OXXO
OXXO
OXXO

What I would like:
OXOXO
OXOXO
OXOXO

I can cut trace between two holes next to one and other, but it's easier if I didn't have to.  I wanted to ask the community if they've seen anything like what I'm looking for.

Thanks!

Before my sabbatical from building, I populated 5 or so boards.  2 of them were the Lovetone Flange, which I finished on Christmas Eve.  I knew finishing that pedal would lead me back into building, and I was right.  This month I finished 3 (!!!) builds I've wanted to complete for a year.

#1 - Giant Hogweed No. 3

A couple of years ago I shared a story on how I was asked to build a pedal for Mick Thompson of Slipknot.  I decided to build him something that was totally destructive in it's sound and opted for a Giant Hogweed.  He loved the pedal, but found his style of guitar playing (single volume knob, active pickups) had way too much output for the pedal.  He couldn't get the signal to clean up in the slightest without turning his volume down to 2.  So after some great help from Hogweed designer David Rolo, I was able to implement a bias control.  It doesn't get clean per say, but it cleans up a lot more than the original did.  The artwork is the same as the other two I've built.




#2 - Supernature No. 2

When Grind Customs FX released the Supernature, I bought a couple of boards.  I really enjoyed this fuzz and how well it interacted with other pedals on my board (it's way less temperamental than a Fuzz Face due to the silicon transistors).  I'm running a charity disc golf event this weekend called Ice Bowl, and thought this would be a cool prize to give away.  The artwork is pretty psychedelic and features a reverse etch, which I'm a big fan of.




#3 - Lizard King

Brenja sent me this board, which is based on the T-Rex Gristle King a while back.  I've been more into boosts lately after purchasing a 1963 Blonde Tremolux this summer (clean boosts in effect just turn the volume on the amp up), but so far I've been pleasantly surprised by how organic the overdrive from this thing sounds.  Plus, the fact that it also has a clean boost effect that can be put before or after the overdrive makes it a winner in my book.  The artwork is (again) a reserve etch.  However, the text didn't turn out as readable as I had hoped. 




That's probably it for me until the end of February.  I have long had a clean boost and a treble boost on my board (they were the 2nd and 4th pedals I ever built based on Joe Gore's Tonefiend builds) and want to do a layout with both effects in a 1590BB.  I'm also going to explore some of the variations in clean boost (like ROG's Tonemender) as well as some treble boost mods (maybe a Darlington) until I settle on a topology.  If anyone has some good boost circuits to look at please let me know .