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A manufacturing error has been found on the Zp Micro PCBs that will effect SOME of the PCBs sent out. A small trace between pins 7 and 8 on the bottom side of the PCB has been discovered an most definitely does not belong there. This error will cause the modulation to not work properly.

After a visual inspection of the remaining PCBs on hand, I estimate that as many of 20% of the PCBs have this error so if you have one you need to check your board for the trace.

Fortunately, the fix is pretty straight-forward. Use an Xacto knife or sharp razor to cut the trace off the PCB. This will remove the connection. Please see the pic below. While there is no underlying ground plane between the pads to be damaged, please use care to limit the cutting to just this area.

My apologies for the inconvenience. I will definitely bring this to the manufacturer's attention.

Yup, definite manufacturing error. Go ahead and cut that thin trace with an exacto knife or razor. The pads should not be connected.

I just checked the remaining boards and found about 10 like that. I'll post some more info on it in a bit.

I'll take a look at some of the boards today. Hopefully these are just isolated instances of a manufacturing error but I will see if I can find any others.

RobA - Any chance you can get me a close up pic of what you are seeing?

If you use some steel wool and clean the PCB with Acetone tinning is not necessary at all. Solder will flow very well. You should do this immediately before building. If you do it and leave it for a few days the copper will discolor and you'll have to repeat the cleaning.

If you want to prevent the underlying traces from oxidizing over long periods of time, Liquid Tin will help. Or, you can just run solder over the bare copper traces while soldering the PCB. This is pretty much what I do now.

Now, if you want to go the extra mile, after you do all the soldering wick or use a desoldering gun on the traces inbetween the pads. It will clean up any messy stuff and look spectacular.

You only need a stereo jack when using a battery. So, sure.

And BTW, www.bitcheslovemyswitches.com. This guy doesn't play around with his orders.

I was a little disappointed with my recent order of DC jacks--it's shipping 1st Class even though the shipping cost is equivalent to Priority. Considering you can get the Priority boxes for free from USPS it doesn't make sense.

The last batch of enclosures I ordered from them (pre-painted) came pretty quick and were in good shape. But, there were no screws included. Not a big deal since I have tons of extras but that was a pretty obvious omission!

The dev board won't be required to use it with analog delays. It's just really convenient for testing. Integration can be done with less parts/features depending on the situation.

Got my PedalSync MV64 development board yesterday. Hopefully this will mean some tap tempo goodness very soon. I'll be testing it out on a variety of BBD delays and reporting back. I hope to be able to suggest easy integration into the existing MBP analog delays.

cool!

do you think the buffers really make much difference in sound?

I'm sure they make some difference. I don't know whether that would a plus or a negative though.

1- To kill the dry signal lift R4.
2- The LFO on the ZP is almost identical to the Echobase, so you should be able to implement the same mod here. I'm assuming it uses a couple of diodes and a bland pot...corrrect?
3- It depends- do you want the FX loop to include or exclude the filtering? To include it, the loop would go right after C48. To exclude, pull the send right before C31 and return goes right before C48. This is untested, but I believe these are the best spots.

I don't even remember doing that, but I do seem to have the files. I'm not positive of the accuracy...I have no recollection on where the values came from.

Here's the schematic for the dirt part.

Ticking could be caused by a few things. Power supply as stecykmi  mentioned, lead dress (IOW move input/output/pot wires AWAY from the modulation IC on the PCB) or the actual IC itself.

The Micro definitely does not tick under normal operation (at least none that I've found in my own builds so far). The demo I did was with a One Spot.

For diffused you can go as low as 330R I find. That's pretty bright.

For water clear, I prefer really high CLR values...up to 22k even. I don't like getting my retinas burned out

Try this:

Replace R16 with a 5kB pot. Wire one pad to lug 3 and the other to lug 1. Solder a 220R resistor b/w lugs 3 and 2 on the pot.

When the pot is all the way down, you have approximately 220R of resistance with the 47n cap (c15) forming a low pass filter with a frequency of 15.4Khz. When the pot is all the way up, you have about 5k of resistance creating a corner frequency of 667Hz. So, it essentially "cuts" the highs.

This should give a very wide tonal range on the repeats.