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Not sure about an official answer, but I'm still using some solder that I bought as a kid in the 80s - I wasn't doing any soldering for about 20 years in the middle there.  It still works fine for me.  But that said, I've not used any other solder recently, so I don't have anything to compare it to.  Maybe my flux is bad and I don't know it!   

Thanks for the feedback everyone. 

The knobs were an eBay mistake - I ordered something else, those knobs turned up instead, so I got a refund and some free knobs.   

I seem to have a history of doing fuzz face builds in non-standard enclosures - here's one I did when first starting to build pedals - 'Beating our tobacco tins into stomp boxes'.  I'd not heard of a 1590 at that stage.   

This weekend's project was finishing a FaceMaster germanium fuzz from diyguitarpedals.com.au with some AC125 transistors.  Thanks Paul - sounds good!

The PCB is seriously small - made to fit in tiny enclosures.  So of course I stuck it in the biggest box I could find.   

I had a metal box that a watch came in - thought I'd try that out as an enclosure.  It wasn't great to work with - the drill tended to tear or bend the thin metal, rather than cut a nice clean hole.  The knobs aren't mounted parallel as a result, as the top of the enclosure is bent around the holes. 

Finished by going nuts with black then silver spray paint.  Originally was going to call it "Fuzz Space" but the name "Galactic Fuzz" seemed to stick in the end. 

That looks beautiful - almost like it has a caramelised sugar glaze on top! 

I'm hungry now.   

It does look awesome though.  I'm keen to see other colours. 

Possibly a continuity issue between the right hand pin of the lamp, and the components on the left side of the board (if you are looking at the board with IC2 in the top right corner - like in the build doc picture of the board). 

With the lamp and Q11 etc removed from their sockets, are you still getting the 36k resistance between the right hand pin of the lamp, and the bottom pin of Q11 or Q12?  If that trace is broken, I would expect you'd get infinite resistance with the lamp removed, but maybe some resistance with the lamp in, as there is a path through the other side of the lamp, through all the SPD and OFFSET circuit, and back to the pin of Q11.  It would probably change from 36k to other values if you twiddled the SPD1, SPD2, OFFSET and INT if that was the case. 

I'd double check the soldering on the socket of the lamp - and try a jumper from the right hand pin of the lamp across to Q11, just as an experiment to see if that fixes the missing 15V over that side. 

Just be careful when it's on your pedalboard -- you don't want to drake the knobs.

Somebody would have to foot the bill if that happened. 

The knobs are first class! How did you fix them to the pots?

I used cheap plastic knobs underneath the duck heads - they fit right on.  Then super glue to make them rotate together. 

I had to make sure the knobs underneath weren't a dark colour though, as that showed through the yellow duck head and it looked like they were horribly bruised decapitated duck heads.  Couldn't have that.   Don't want your decapitated duck heads looking fowl.    

Hi, I'm Matt, from Canberra (Australia). 

I got into pedal building this year, started out as I was too cheap to buy a pre-made distortion pedal for my kid, and went from there.  Had fun building my way through some schematics from runoffgrove.com earlier in the year, and more recently found 1776effects, and from there this forum.  Have also found diyguitarpedals.com.au recently, hooray, and Australian source for stuff. 

I'm trying to get all my pedal builds written up on a blog somewhere - will put it in my signature once it is ready. 

Next big project is to build a bass guitar from scratch.  I've done furniture before, but I think a guitar may be a bit more of a challenge.  It may end up being a very pretty doorstop.  Or even a very ugly doorstop.  Anything is possible. 

One I finished recently - kind of a mix between the Dr. Quack and the Nurse Quacky.  I breadboarded the Nurse Quacky first, then added some of the bits back in from the Dr. Quack, such as the normal/bass switch, and used a TL071 for an input buffer.  Yellow LEDs of course, to go with the duck theme.

Knobs are decapitated bath toys.  I think it cost me $1 to get 10 of them.  My kid was a bit distressed when I cut the head of three of them, he has 'saved' the other seven from my evil scissors.  He still enjoys the pedal though. 

Short video demo - http://graybloomfield.com/guitar/2016/09/04/ducky-von-quackenstein/ducky/

Thanks for the replies.  I'll rewire the pedals I've done - seems the safest thing to do, if only for compatibility with other peoples' power supplies. 

Matt.

Hi,

I've done a few electronics projects over the years, but just getting into pedal making. 
In every other electronics area that I've worked in, convention seemed to be that the DC power plug/socket is centre(tip) positive, with outside negative. 

*After* building about 6 pedals for my kid, I realised that pedals seem to be wired with DC centre negative.  For compatibility with popular pedals of the past? 

So... should I rewire all the DC plugs on the pedals that I've done so far?  Will my kid turn up with his pedals and find he can't plug them in to anyone else power supplies?  Or is it acceptable to have either way? 

Just wondering if it is better in the long run to rewire the pedals I've done already.  (And also rewire the power supply too!)

Ta,
Matt.