Messages

Thanks for all the well wishes, guys. It means a lot.

Positive note: I've quit smoking, drinking (well, maybe 1 drink a week) and lost 10lbs all in the last 3 weeks. So, I'm actually getting quite healthy because of all of this.

I just realized "Exploding Heart Territory" is the perfect name for my Foreigner cover band.

Some may (or not) have noticed I've barely been around the last few weeks on the forum except for a couple of scattered posts. About three weeks ago I ended up in the ER with a blood pressure well north of "exploding heart" territory (take the highest numbers you see on the scale, add 30 and that's about where I was). Luckily, with medication it's being managed down to just under "hypertension 1". Unfortunately, there are still some issues that are making everyday life difficult: I cannot be upright and doing normal things without an enormous pressure developing in the my head. So far, my doctor has not been able to find a reason for the pressure and I don't know how long it will be before I am back to just regular abnormal.

Point is, things are at a crawl right now. I am shipping orders when I can but that's about it. I can be up for about 30 minutes or so before I have to lay down to make the pressure subside (it sucks). So, don't expect too much to be happening in the next few weeks. The exception is that I did order the UberTuber boards as well as some re-stocks and a few new prototypes. Those should be here in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, this post is not a sympathy grab...but since it is having such a big impact on my life it's important for everyone to know I have not abandoned mbp. I just need some time to get better. That's happening, but very very slowly.

No country bashing please.

The purpose of the resistor is to limit the total current flow through the LED and it does so in either position, so yeah that setup works fine.

And, it's not a matter of just 9v being enough to power 8 LEDs....do you have enough current to supply all 8 at once? The answer is yes in both cases for any typical power supply we use for guitar pedals. And, the LEDs must be in parallel.

I'm surprised I still had this!

On the PCB it is CBE top to bottom.

This is an easy answer so you need to work just a little to get it.

1- On the schematic, what's the collector of Q1 connected to?
2 - On the image of the PCB traces in the project doc, where is that connection shown on Q1? That's the collector.

The difference in boost settings is probably due to the taper. The Kingslayer uses an audio taper 10k volume pot whereas the Klon(e) uses a linear taper. The still have about equal amounts of total boost, but the positions on the control are in different places.

For the diodes, you are not going to hear much difference until the gain is at least half-way up. Maybe even 2/3rd. Also, it will depend some on diode choice. For example, if you use 2 different sets of germaniums you might hear very little difference (or any). Diodes where there is a larger gap between forward voltage drop will be most noticeable.

Passing/leading notes is where it's at. It's the best way to spice up those pentatonic scales!

According to what I just looked up it seems like there was an internal trimmer for the Blueprint Trails. My guess is he had the trimmer connected between either pin8 of the TLE2074 or the circuit output and the output jack. You'll lose true bypass but that might do the trick.

Neither value is wrong but I can see why he might suggest 100k. The 1MB might give you less "in-between" blend of diode pairs because of the different taper but more distinction at the extremes (fully off, in the middle, fully on) than a 100kB. The 100kB probably does the opposite - more blend of diode pairs in between the extremes.

After I ran out of the WIMC pots I just used 1M so that's what I put in the doc. Only way to know if you prefer one over the other is to try. Pretty easy to do - solder in some wires to the PCB temporarily and run those to a breadboard where you can swap between the two pot values.

Are there any size specs for the caps? 100uF @ 50v could actually be quite large. While an 11mm will certainly fit in a 1590BB for height, the actually width of the caps could be too large for the space allotted on the PCB.

It's probably not a big concern with the Leviathan because the 100uF has a lot of space around it. But, if you are planning on purchasing more than you need for future builds....

For reference, I use Lelon low profile electrolytic caps in most of my builds. The 100uF are 8mm diameter but I generally design my boards to accommodate that size. And, they are only 5mm tall!:
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/140-SS101M1E0805P

https://www.mouser.com/Lelon/Passive-Components/Capacitors/Aluminum-Electrolytic-Capacitors/Aluminum-Electrolytic-Capacitors-Leaded/_/N-75hqw?P=1z0x0woZ1z0zl3mZ1yx4awy

Yes.

have you checked to see if you are getting variable resistance from the opto-coupler?  the flashing LED suggests you are getting variable voltage going to it, but the part may be defective.

That should not be causing the effect he's describing. The opto is only for the ramping control and the internal photocell only reacts to input...it won't flash on its own (it's separate from the LFO). Rather, the JFET (q1) is used as a variable resistor to modulate the signal amplitude for the trem effect.