Messages

I used the all-american and I also used the SINO. I think the SINO comes in a really weird TALL hat package so it might not fit if you do board mounted pots and sockets, but if you leave room or mount your pcb flat it won't be a problem.


thats the SINO pair. kind of hard to tell but they are almost an inch tall.

honestly you don't need any mojo and any matched pairs steve sells will work. I even tested crappy NTE germaniums and they worked.

I threw two oc-44's from ppp in my zombie and it worked fine. I also built a fuzz face with their oc-44's and it worked as well. I can't remember what the gain range was.. I think they were both pretty low but they still worked.

The internet is definitely a valuable resource for, uhh, liberating artwork for pedals!

It's so bad too though. I hate when I try to do graphics for my band and then realize I can't just steal stuff from the internet for commercial purposes. doh! I like to look on wikipedia or older artists for pedal artwork. In the united states any thing older than 100 years is public domain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer I love this guys stuff!

http://www.godecookery.com/macabre/macabre.htm this page has so many awesome skulls and demons.

Vb is on pin 5 of the jrc4558, Vd is on pin 1 of the MN3101 and also pin 1 of the MN3007.
To measure set your multimeter to DC voltage and connect the black test lead to ground and the red test lead to the pin you want to measure.

Hopefully it's not a dead MN3007. I got mine off ebay and got lucky I guess.

http://shop.ebay.com/sharpseller2000/m.html?_nkw=mn3007&_sacat=0&_odkw=&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3911.c0.m270.l1313

swap the gain pot for an audio taper to give you more control over the low-gain settings...

I use my zombii for low-gain fuzz sounds and it sounds really cool it gets really squeaky clean when you back off on the guitar.

I also think a rat gets into the fuzzy territory when cranked even though it is a distortion.

did you adjust the trim pot? usually when I build up a pork barrell it doesn't work until I adjust the trim pot into the sweet spot.

you can post some voltages for Vd and Vb

So this uses just normal mono 1/4" jacks, right?

I used STEREO 1/4" jack for the input to switch the battery off when the input is unplugged.
a mono jack 1/4" jack for the output.

Try and get the 9mm pots that solder directly to the PCB

I did get the 9mm mini-pots. I really like the small size of the zvex pedals, and definitely want to make soldering as easy as possible.

Good luck and let us know where you get your germ transistors.

I got a pair of PNP Germaniums from Small Bear. They may or may not be best suited, but I tried to pick something middle of the road (without breaking the bank). I also got two transistor sockets to mount on the board, so I can easily swap transistors later.

When stuff arrives and the build starts, I'll post a build thread. Thanks for all the help so far!

you will be happy with the pnp's from small bear. any of them will work for the zombii.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDJibf8uZnQ&feature=player_embedded

this kept me laughing for a good 10 minutes.

I don't know a whole lot about LDR's I just grabbed the grab bag of photocells from radio shack and used the biggest one in there. The only other time I ordered a photocell was for my tap tempo tremolo and I used small bear 8002 part number. I think for tremolos pretty much any LDR will do.

I hate sxsw. I've played it three times and it's always a total clusterf&$#. I guess I should be grateful to play it but i'm always just paranoid about my gear getting stolen the whole time so I never get to enjoy it. I don't even bother applying anymore. I think I am playing gigs in austin the friday and saturday of/after sxsw but they are regular paid gigs not sxsw related.

this is what I came up with for a series/parallel switch. The biggest problem I see is that I cannot ground the input to either effect in bypass while the switch is in series mode because it would mute the input of the other effect to ground. I generally like to mute the input wire to ground in bypass to prevent buildup in the caps which would cause a pop. I can't really figure out a way around that.

the other potential problem I see is that when the pedal is in series mode the extra wire going to input A and the other extra wire going to the output jack will just be hanging loose which is a potential problem for noise.

also if there was a way to simplify it to use a dpdt that would be great. I had to use a 4pdt to figure it out. if anybody can verify or help me out I would appreciate it. I am probably going to build my "camel toe" in the next week and I will try it out.

-mike

I really want to build one of these. the red llama/tube sound fuzz is one of my favorite go to pedals and this always looked interesting to me.

-mike

american semi-conductor 2nxxx. I can't remember the exact ones I used.
for the zombii it really doesn't matter what you throw in there. I threw all kinds of different hfe's in there and it still did the trick. just some of the settings required are slightly different to get the same sound.

what kind of dc socket is that? how does it work without shorting to the case?

The DC socket is similar to this one:

http://www.smallbearelec.com/Detail.bok?no=92

There is a piece of plastic card as seen in the gut shot on the inside, a plastic washer that you can hardly see on the outside and the the threaded part of the bush is wrapped in insulation tape. Had to use that DC socket rather than the plastic type due to space.

yeah I had a similar problem fitting the regular dc socket in my zombii but I just put it in there and hot glued it in place because I couldn't fit the retaining nut on.