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Okay got my White Horse verified and sounding quite alright. I'll put that "on the schedule" for release later this month after I get the new switching boards in.

I haven't DIY'd in years and I just came back here looking for an optical compressor project. I ordered a 4:1 and all the availble VFE boards - so cool!

I'm wondering whether I missed the boat on the VFE White Horse? I see that it was listed as an upcoming project but it's not available currently.

The White Horse hasn't been released yet, but I am in fact working on it right now. So I believe it will come out pretty soon.

Has anybody built a successful proximity sensor-based pedal in the style of zvex with a plate as the antenna?
I remember building one a long time ago, when I was first starting maybe ~10 years ago.  Obviously a lot has changed since then in terms of my skills, knowledge, component sourcing.  But, I remember the antenna not working very well.  The wah worked but you had to get very close to the plate so there was minimal range.  Have people worked out ways to improve this?

This is exactly what the Wumpus was supposed to do...it's a modified version of the proximity control zVex uses. And yeah, the range is quite small...usually your foot has to be within an inch or two for the sensor to start working. As far as improving the range, I don't know. Not even sure that would be a good idea since you have to hold your foot up with no support to control it. Obviously it's not as expressive as a true wah, though. Couple mods I did on mine did help...one was a small voltage divider that seemed to smooth out the LED response some and the other was a trimmer for more control over the LED brightness itself.

Correct, nothing special about it. I don't usually list bypass indicators on the BOM since they are part of pretty much every pedal build, so the LED listed is for the envelope indicator.

Thanks to everyone who ordered during the sale. I made more than enough to get the next batch of VFE switching boards + micro controllers plus at least 2-3 or more projects completed for 2017. The loss of profit on the Wumpus and Softie sets back the release of the FFS kit for a while, but that's not a huge deal. Just stuff you have to contend with when running a business.

I went back and compared the Softie with some other switching solutions and it looks like I might have jumped the gun a bit on the switching noise. After comparing the Softie to the VFE switching board, my redesign VFE board, the Coda bypass and the FFX bypass it turns out they were all pretty comparable...none stood out as being more noisey or "poppy" than any other (the Coda and FFX bypass are perhaps slightly more muted during the switch-over but not by much). So, the Softie may still see the light of day at some point.

It just goes to show that no switching solution is perfect. There are pluses and minuses to both mechanical and relay bypass.

I need to ask a naive question.
How do board mounted jacks work with the 2° draft angle of die cast enclosures?  Do you mount them to the board at a matching angle?

That isn't necessary. The angle of the side wall will create a small gap on a portion of the jack but since there are two anchors (two jacks) the effect is negligible. The jacks themselves may not both be in full contact with the sidewalls but the insert screws that hold them in place are (more or less).

The re-designed switching board for the VFE projects is complete. In the end, I decided to go with the version that offers the best compromise. Note: I put some of my wires on the bottom on this prototype...they should go on the top!

Changes:
1/4W resistors instead of 1/8W
Board mounted jacks (these are pushed a little closer together to make fitting it in the enclosure a easier)
Wired DC jack.
Kept the battery option (although I like to discourage battery use).
Can use regular TRS or TS jacks - no longer need the "make" style and no work-around needed.
Can still use non-mounted jacks if you prefer...just use wires (all this will be explained in the new doc).
The micro-controller now has two decoupling caps - a 100n across the rails and a low-profile 4u7 electrolytic.

Board is almost exactly the same size as the previous one, as well. So, overall an improvement as far as making it easier to build for the largest number of people. It will fit the existing drill template but I will make one small change for those using TRS style power jacks instead of the Lumberg style (my preferred).

I'll be ordering a couple hundred of these this week as well as getting some more micro-controllers from Peter soon.

Qu'est-ce qui ce passe sur ce forum?!!?? French-mania?

It's DIOui week.

Jettez la vache, indeed.

le monde tourne encore, ne pas être troublé maître bean

C'est la vérité!

I only mentioned this one in passing a few weeks ago but since there was a response to it I'm announcing the project is cancelled. The problem is the Taptation chip. There's no way to put it nicely: it kinda blows. I'm actually cancelling any future project involving the Taptation as well. I've tried a few prototypes of different delay designs with it now and I just cannot get a good result. The max delay is too long to make it sound good at all tempos (it should be limited to 600ms not 1sec) and the tempo and subdivision LEDs make ungodly noise when used. I tried a couple ways to solve the LED noise issue but it's just not working (the DBTap used transistors to drive the LEDs thinking it might help but no). Actually, I pulled out every PT2399 trick I know over several prototypes (including using a compander and other stuff) and it's just not good enough to warrant a project.

So, sorry it's not happening. Too many downsides to it.

I'd be all over it if they had done stereo. But, I'm also a stereo snob now.

Lower wattage resistors can produce more noise in the aggregate but generally the low voltages in guitar pedals (say 9v) this is not such a problem. They are worse for handling current limiting applications (say if you have a large enough current draw through a series resistor).

Here's some good info: http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=93431.0

Looking forward to both definitely but feel infinitely worse that youre bummed out about it, give yourself a break!

Thanks, I appreciate that. I'm definitely hard on myself when it comes to failure but only to the point where it motivates me to move past it and do better. I had a couple of stressed out days but I'm over it. It's a learning experience.

More description of the Wumpus failure: the problem was in my process, not the circuit design itself. For most of these projects boxing up the final "product" is a no-brainer. It's something that can be done in-between manufacturing and release. 99/100 times this is fine, but not in this case. If I had boxed mine up before going forward I would have realized that a frakkin' proximity sensor can be whacked by its "proximity" to a grounded enclosure. It's a failure of thinking through on my part. The design can work (if you disengage the sensor from the enclosure) but it makes no sense the release it in its current format (1590BB) that way. The ideal design would be a 1590B with a micro-jack to connect a remote sensor.

I had the same issue with my Aquaboy, so I tried the solution above and it seems to have fixed the problem. I accidentally drilled my jack is as far up as it can go on the enclosure. Could it be just that the output wire connection point on the pcb is close to the pot itself?

It very well could be. The wire may act as an antenna to amplify the clock signal (which is well within the audio spectrum). It's the pitfall of having a board designed in a small space with the jacks located where they are. I think for the next run I will just relocate the In/Out jacks to the top where the 9v connection is. Sorry if this caused frustration.