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The weather in KC has been uber hot over the past week.  My summer activities are normally less pedal building and more disc golf leagues and tournaments, but this June heat wave is just misrable to be outside in for 2 or 3 hours.  As a result, I've been working on enclosure designs for some of the completed boards I have in my stock.  I finished my Sharkfin this weekend, and it's been a real pleasure to play with.  The filter is dynamic, and has so many tonal options.  But the reason I wanted this one boxed up was the sample and hold function, and it's so much fun.  I spent the morning tweaking the trimmers to come up with a sound that I really liked.  I could see adding a couple of knobs to tweak these settings on the fly.

A note on the name: For a long time, I though the pedal was named a sample, filter, and hold.  It wasn't until I built the Parisit Studio sample and hold circuit realized I had been calling the effect the wrong thing for years.  So I decided to go with that name here. 

The etching turned out really well; I'm starting to get the hang of it.  I originally had plans to do a multi-color paint job on this, but opted for this design instead.

The Wolfshirt requires both a 3nF and a 50nF capacitor.  I think I could use a 3.3nF and a 47nF instead, but wanted some thoughts on it.

Thanks!

Oh boy.

It seems every 3 months or so I decide to complete a "big" build.  My first was a Multiplex Delay with a modulation board.  My 2nd was a Big Muff with octave up and downs on their own footswitches.  But in terms of components and size, this is the biggest thing I've built to date.  I used the standard Sagan board, and included both a Madbean Ping reverb and a GC P-LFO modulation.  The Ping's small size really made fitting all this stuff in the box so much easier.  The P-LFO added another dimension to the sound, giving the delay some tape warble on low settings and some otherworldly sounds when you dial it up.  I've gotten a chance to really play around with it this evening, and it's a fantastic delay.  The 1/3 sync or the 1/2 sync make for some great sounding effects.  I find this pedal a little more difficult to use than my Multiplex, but it's got  more options to dial in a specific sound.  I can't wait to play with it.

A close eye will notice that the toggle switch doesn't control the dry kill; it controls the mod board.  During my initial testing, I found that turning down the mod board seemed to remove the modulated signal.  So I designed my drill template and design with only 1 toggle switch.  However, I realized that it didn't remove enough of it to make it robust enough to offer a simple unaffected delay signal.  While a dry kill switch would be nice (I may go back and add it), the switch for modulation is a must for me. 

The design is based on the classic Roland TR-808.  I had the boards completed nearly a month ago but had no idea what the graphics were going to be until a week and a half ago.

If you're looking for a challenging and rewarding build, try this one for sure.

I've had a basic $5 helping hands since I started building pedals last year, and the center screw has stared to strip to the point that it won't hold up anything of weight (like a PCB when I'm trying to populate it).  I looked on Amazon, and noticed that there are some very expensive helping hands (around $50) that have 4 super flexible arms connected to a metal base.  The 2 I found are called QuadHands and Hobby Creek Helping Hands.  From an engineering standpoint, each hand acts independently of the other hands, which seems like a much better design.  I used my Helping Hands quite a bit, but spent a lot of time fiddling around to get it into the right position.  I'm also starting to populate entire types of components (like resistors) at once then solder them instead of doing one component at a time, so I feel like I need a solid tool to hold my board while I put the parts in it.

If anyone has any experience or thoughts on this, I would love to hear them.  While $50 is a lot of money for something like this, I could see myself using it a lot.

I am going to try my hand at making some vactrols, but wanted to ask about exactly how to seal them up.  I was going off of this site:  http://sound.westhost.com/project145.htm.  I purchased a couple of sizes of heat shrink to go around the led and the sensor, but wasn't quite sure how to seal it up.  I noticed they used something called hot-melt aheasive.  If someone has also made vactrols this way, where do I find this stuff?  I checked at both my local electronics supply store and an art store and they had no idea what I was talking about. 

If you seal your vactrols another way, I would love some help with this one.  I need to make 7 for the various projects I have in flight, and figure this is a good skill to know.

On my last order, I asked for a B2M pot for the Sharfin project.  Unfortunately, they sent me a B1M pot.  Generally, these are the types of careless mistakes I make by ordering the wrong pot.  But this time, I verified by my receipt that I had ordered the correct one.  I sent them an email stating the issue, and they responded this morning that they'll send out the correct value.

Good customer service rocks.  It's what keeps me going back to a store.

I'm doing a rebox for a guy at my guitar store of a stereo phaser pedal, and wanted to make sure I'm wiring it correctly.  I'm using a 4pdt footswitch, and plan to wire it like this:

First, a story:

I have always been a big fan of the Smashing Pumpkins.  In 1995, I got a Christmas present from my parent to get a new CD, and I bought Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness because my local record store didn't have The Beatles Anthology 1. This ended up becoming the soundtrack of my teenage years, along with Siamese Dream, Gish, and Adore.  The shear amount of music that Corgan and Co released made collecting and listening to it quite a chore, but their loud than soft then loud dynamic was an eye opening experience for me that greatly affected the music I listen to this day.  Ok, end of the story .

I've been working bit by bit on a big Sagan Delay build, and working on some smaller builds in between.  I had finished the circuit sometime last month, but I finally got it boxed up over the weekend.  It's a guitarpcb board that went together easily.  The pedal name and font are a definitive Pumpkins nod.  The 2 graphics are from a font that was made for all the little graphics inside the lyrics book of Mellon Collie (bonus points if you can identify them; they're both heavy fuzz songs).  Someone had written on this forum that this pedal sounds like a hive of bees, and I can't help but agree.  Turned up to the Pumpkins settings (volume around 12 or 1, tone around 1, sustain dimed) into a clean amp gives that compressed jet engine sound. I also found fun to turn the sustain way down, and drive it with a fuzz face (that's the setting in the picture).

I'm finishing up my Sagan Delay, and plan on ordering one of MB's new Reverb PCBs for 1590G enclosures to include in the same box (because it's tiny).  I am planning on also including a modulation board.  I used one of 1776's boards in my Multiplex Delay (which sounds great BTW), but I was curious if there are any other options out there for modulation.  I haven't managed to find one, but wanted to see if anyone suggested others to look into.

I just finished the Supreaux Deux, and noticed something funny after boxing and testing it yesterday.  I get a really loud pop when I hit the footswitch hard, like something is moving then re-seating.  If I press the footswitch gently with my hand, no issue.  I also notice when I tap the top or shake it when the effect is engaged I get the same pops.  I assumed this was due to the fact that I socketed my resistors and didn't trim any of the leads.  I normally trim the leads, but had issues with a build I did a few months ago in relation to that.  The resistors weren't staying in their sockets and kept falling out.  So I was wondering if there's some specific technique people use for socketing these and bending them to they remain seated when you're using the pedal.  Thanks!

I just finished my build of Culturejam's Triton Delay, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  Sourcing my 2399's from Smallbear a while back made setup a breeze (The first one I popped in sounded awesome), and the effect is really something different to have on my board.  This was the first acid etch I was pleased with too; leaving it to etch for 15 minutes was the trick for me!  The graphic (and pedal name) is a nod to the web comic XKCD.  The wiring is a bit sloppy, but there's a lot going on in here with top mounted jacks, 5 pots, and 2 footswitches.

I've gotten decent at doing acid etches for my enclosures, but one of the things I've noticed is they don't see to etch very deep.  I've been using this (bought it locally)

http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/20-5555?scode=GS401&utm_medium=cse&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=google&gclid=CNrtjre2jssCFQsPaQodk0YP8A

If I wanted to use something other that PCB etchant, what should I look into?  I'm looking for good, deep etches with sharp lines. 

This is a really cool custom build I did for a friend in Oklahoma.  I finished it up last night, and she's sounding great!  Here's everything going on in the box:

• A Big Muff, built on the Mini Muffin board from THCustoms.  I used some of Wampler's suggested mods for the filter section to decrease lows and open the sound up a little.  I also included the AMZ body control to control the mids.
• THCustoms U-Boat Sub Octave
• Guitar PCB's Emerald Ring Octave Up
• JMK PCB's Paralyzer.  This allows me to run the 2 octaves, buffered (really helps with the tracking on the sub octave) and in parallel, which allows me to avoid crazy phasing issues.
• Guitar PCB's effects switch.  This allows me to change the order of processing for the muff and the octaves.

This is hands down the most stuff I ever want to put in a 1790 enclosure.  Because of the tightness, my wiring isn't as clean as it normally is.  Waterslide graphics with some design input from my friend.  Ignore that bad drill hole in the lower left; I covered it up with some cardboard and electrical tape on the insde of the include.

This is easily the biggest build I've done to date.  I'm glad it all worked as soon as I fired it up!  I also finally came up with a name for branding .

I finally got to box up the last circuit that I've put together over the holidays (that's currently working).  This one is The Beast from Black Horse Effects.  It's a combo overdrive pedal with the Maxon OD820 and the Klon Centaur.  I love how compact this thing is, but I had a rough time with the footswitch wiring (my mistakes).  I also ripped off one of the solder joints for the footswitch, and had to hack together a connection between the Klon output and the output of the pedal.  I had around a dozen pedals that I put together without much issue.  The moment I put my testing rig together, BOOM, 2 of my projects don't work.  I was thankful to have an oscillator and an audio probe for these!

Either way, I'm really happy with the way this one turned out.  The colors and graphics were a good combo for this.

I had posted last month about a pedal a friend asked me to build for him.  It's a Big Muff style pedal with a modified tone stack.  Then it's got both an octave up and an octave down, all of which are controlled by their own footswitches.  I ended up going with JMK's Paralyzer to run the 2 octaves in parallel then blend them back together. But I have a couple of questions before I start this.

1.  Enclosure - I got a 1790 enclosure based on a previous boxing of a Multiplex Echo Machine with a mod board.  For those who have done a 3 footswitch pedal, do you go with a 1790 or an even bigger box?
2.  Power and Ground - I have 3 effect boards, a board for the parallel of the octaves, and 3 footswitch PCBs.  That means a lot of power and a lot of ground.  I was thinking of using some stripboard to run all of the power and grounds to, then connect those to the 9v jack.  It seems pretty simple.  Any other ideas?

Thanks!

First up is the Andromeda Overdrive, based off of the Nobels ODR-1.  I owed a friend money for a concert ticket, so I built him a pedal of his choosing.  He plays a lot of red dirt country, so I suggested this build.  And I built one for myself as well .  This thing is huge!  It's got so much headroom for the drive to just flow through.  The tone knob is really cool too and lets you dial in some great harmonics.  I was rocking this with my Gretsch hollow body through an old Ameg Rocket, and it sounds killer.





The other one I built was the Solaris Fuzz Face.  I didn't own a Fuzz Face, and I'm slowly making my way through the old Germanium pedals (I have a Rangemaster that was my 4th build).  The transistors were sourced from Barry at GuitarPCB and really sound great.  I had played through a friend's modern Fuzz Face, and I understand why this type of pedal should only be bought from a builder that's got the correct components. 

A note on the graphics here:  I had been printing my waterslides using a transparency setting at an Office Max using their laser printer, and appearently Black is the only color that really can cover up the paint on the enclosure.  I was trying to do a white paint for the text, so I painted the top of the pedal white.  Unfortunately, the red on the graphic wasn't opaque enough to cover up the white.  So it sort of looks like there's a sticker on the top.  While it didn't come out as clean as I wanted, it does have a vintage look to it, which is all right.

I realized I made the wires on my toggle switch for my compressor too small, so I attempted to unsolder them and replace them with longer wires.  Well, I am pretty sure no switch is being added now, because it seems like I burnt off the pads that accept solder .  It's not a catastrophic thing since the switch added a little additional compression (now it's just a shorter compression).

But after this minor issue, I think I'd be interested in the correct way to unsolder components from a board.  I'm sure this won't be the first time I have to do this.

I just finished putting the components on my PCB for my Bear Hug Compressor, and there's sound coming out of the circuit, so it looks like I got everything soldered correctly!  However, I need to bias Q1 around 5-5.5V.  Now there's a test pad on the board (and I was wondering why I had a pad that had no component in it ), so I assume that I connect one of my probes from my multimeter to that. 

Where do I connect my other lead?  Do I need to have the power on, and a signal going through it to bias?

Here's the schematic is on page 3, and you can see the test pad there: http://1776effects.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bear-Hug-V2-1.pdf

Thanks all!

I'm about to start building the Bear Hug Compressor (http://1776effects.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bear-Hug-V2-1.pdf), and the BOM called for an On/Off SPST toggle switch.  When I placed my order with SmallBear, they only had SPDT switches.  Here's the one I got:

http://www.mammothelectronics.com/electonic-switches-s/21.htm

Since the SPDT has 3 lugs instead of 2, and the Bear Hug PCB only has points to wire 2, I think what I need to do is wire lug 2 and lug 3 to the board, and leave lug one alone.  Based on the schematic that's in the first link, the switch is only enabling a resistor in the signal path or disabling it.  It's not a switch that selects between 2 things.

Could someone let me know if I'm on the right track?

Hi all!  I just finished perfboarding my 4th pedal, a Dallas Rangemaster clone.  Rather than connecting the Germanium transistor directly to the board, I had my first go-around with using sockets.  I've gotten the board constructed, and verified that it works, but the leads are really long; they seem too long to put into the box without something grounding out.  Do I need to trim them down?  I've seen another post that describes sheathing the legs (with electrical tape I assume) rather than cutting the legs. 

Thanks for the input!

-Chris