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Finished up my Hotcake/Flapjack last night.  I love it, turned out so clean thanks to the awesome PCB from Jeff (jtn191) and 3PDT board from Josh (gtr2).  I was able to sneak some mojo parts in there too, standup resistor is a 1/2 watt 1M carbon comp, I can't believe I burned through 200 1M metal films in the past year.  That spurred me on to throw as many other 1/4 watt CC's in there as I had in my parts bin.  Again thanks to Jeff, Josh, and Forrest.  You guys are pretty dang great in my book.

Just for kicks I have been messing with opamps in my Uproar, different types (4580D, TL072, BURR BROWN OPA2134PA) and stacked opamps with various combinations.  This got me to think about running it at a higer voltage.  After checking all the datasheets the input voltage min is 2v and max is 18v on all types with the exception of the 4580D datasheet which had a note that stated the max was 18v but the recommended max operating voltage is 15v.  If I have two 4580D's stacked what happens to that voltage rating?  I don't think it would be doubled like a passive component.  Anyone know?  Also if I plan on regularly running my uproar at 18v will a 4.7k CLR be enough to protect the LED?

Here is a Ross Compressor clone that I just finished, I had to stack resistors in some spots and trannies are all 2N2925's which made it a little less noisy than with 2N3904's and 2N2222A's.  I was going to go the Janglebox route and put different post-IC treble cut caps on a switch but I am trying to simplify things these days.  Without the .001uF cap that parallels the 150k (The cap you omit for the Janglebox mod) it was VERY bright. I just subbed caps until I settled on 680pF which offered the right mix of jangle and body for my tele.

Hey guys,
     I ordered parts from Mammoth and forgot to get a 1N270 for my Pastyface.  Are there any common subs I can use there?  I have a 1n295, a heap of 1n914's, some 1n4148's, and a bunch of 1n51xx stuff.  When I breadboarded it I put a 1n4148 in it's place and everything worked fine, just wondering if there is a benefit of using the 1n270.

Hey Guys!
     My nephew is turning out to be quite the musician.  At almost 14, he is a really good drummer.  I think of the bands I was in at that age and we couldn't find a steady drummer anywhere.  The rate at which he is picking up stuff is really amazing.  He has taught himself to play bass, guitar, keys, and he can sing to boot.  Love that kid.  He came home from a drum workshop last weekend and said the instructor there said he needed Pro Tools so he could start laying down tracks and analyze his playing, as well a start writing music.  I try to support him in his music (guitar, pedals, sticks, cymbals...) because my sister and her husband are just making ends meet.  I am going to spring for the gear and software he needs, I just don't want to get him anything that is going to be super hard for he and I to learn and use.  I was thinking of getting him the Zoom R16 Multitrack Recorder/DAW Control Surface and a version of Pro Tools (which one I dunno).  I like the idea of the R16 because he can record with it on the go and then come home and work with the raw tracks on Pro Tools. Also I want to get a good all purpose mic for him.  I have a vintage Unidyne III that I use on my amp at church.  The church has a SM57 that I could use instead freeing up the Unidyne III for him.  I have read they are nice for recording drums.   I am thinking my budget is around $500-$600.  What would you guys suggest? 

So I finished salvaging parts from my Lowrey organ find today, one of the last things out was a Bell & Howell cassette recorder.  I was about to toss it, but I figured I'd better look inside to see if there was anything good.  I found:
2SB22 AC188K equivalent    3 peices
2SB405 AC188K equivalent   1 piece
2SD30  AC187K equivalent  2 pieces
2SD186 AC187K equivalent  1 piece

I have seen some nice Fuzzface clones with AC188's.  A Ge Fuzz would be a nice addition to my board.  After looking at the Japanese datasheets All have gains in the 100-200 hfe range.  Would be nice to know what the pinout is, but that was in Japanese and a PDF so I couldn't even use a translator program.
What would you guys build if you had found these?
EDIT:  I used google translator and entered emitter base and collector one at a time translated from english to japanese and figued out the pinout!  Normal EBC, hooray!

I have finally done it.  I killed my 20 watt Weber Blue Pup Alnico with my 5 watt Supro 1616t.  I had this speaker in my amp originally, then went to the blue pup ceramic.  When I got my tele the ceramic was too bright so I sold it and put the alnico back.  But on wednesday at practice it started farting out after about an hour, I think I overheated the voice coil.  The coil in the speaker rubbed when I initially got this speaker from Weber, but I sent it back and they fixed it.  I wonder if they used the same coil, and all the dirt pedals and delay on top of a fairly cranked amp did it in?  Who knows...  Anyhow, I am thinking about switching to a new OT that has 4 and 8 ohm taps so I can run a 6V6 or 6L6 with an 4 ohm speaker, using the 8 ohm tap when running the 6L6 so the reflected impedance on the primary is right...  Magnetic Components is making a replacement OT for my model of Supro now, but the construction is similar to their Champ OT that has 4 and 8 ohm taps and the same mounting hole dimensons.  That really opens up the world of speakers I can use.  The stock Supro OT has a 3.2 ohm secondary so that meant custom built speakers from Weber, or lucking out on a 3.2 ohm Jensen on ebay. It could be either 10" or 12", I have baffles for both for the cab.  At church I have to be able to go from style to style quickly, so it has got to have good cleans with chimeyness and still not have a flubby bottom end when driven hard with dirt pedals.
I am thinking of (all ceramic):
12"
Weber Blue Dog
Weber Gray Wolf
Weber Legacy
Weber 1230-55
Warehouse ET65
10"
Weber Silver 10
Weber 10V
Weber Axis 10
Warehouse 10" Veteran
Warehouse G10C
Celestion G10N-40
You guys have any experience with any of these/what amps are you using them with?

The cap values in the Weener Wah BOM work well for an auto-wah/envelope filter type of wah sound.  It is cool and has a nice sort of bassy throb towards the bottom middle of the sweep using those listed.  However, if you are looking for more of a vintage crybaby/vox sound try using 10nf-15nf for C1 and 8n2 to 12nf for C5.  If you like the bass qualities of the bigger values but want more of the classic wah sound lowering R4 as shown in the schematic will increase gain AND bass.  220-330ohm is good there.  I have 10nf in C1 and 8n2 in C5, and 220ohm for R4 and it seems really well balanced with alot of resonant sweet spots.

Here is my Cosmopolitan build.  I did this one in just about 3 hours, for better or worse.  Tried a sparkle gold and sparkle black sunburst spraycan finish, came out pretty cool, but it is hard to capture it with the camera.  I am gonna try it out at church tomorrow.

     These are Myton Blonde ovedrives for an eBay customer that bought my last Electric Warrior Rangemaster Clone.  First time working from GuitarPCB boards, quite a bit trickier than working on MB's fabbed boards.  The traces are super tiny and it is easy to come up on a solder bridge as the ground plane goes around everything and there is maybe a 1mm gap between traces and ground plane.    The white one in the 1590b was built by someone else and the customer was not happy with the build quality and tone.  The other builder did a fairly tidy job, not a mess by any means.  The caps were box type and economy electrolytics, and the pots and trimpots were cheapish too.  The wiring was slightly spaghetti 24 or 26awg.  Swapped caps for Nichicon Finegold electros and some NOS ElMenco's.  I replaced the pots with some Alphas and installed a metal LED bezel and sanded ultrabrite waterclear blue LED.  Also replaced the Neutriks with Switchcraft jacks and popped in a new 3PDT.  Then I rewired it using some "topcoat" 22awg.  It was weird changing someone else's work.  It felt alot different than modding a factory pedal.  Whoever built this did their best, and I almost feel bad for messing with their work, but it was what the customer wanted. 
     The Sparkle Black pedal is a little different.  I built it from scratch and had to use a 125b because the customer wanted me to use some pretty huge PIO caps.  All the other parts are the same as in the white pedal with the exception of the electrolytics which are some audio quality Sanyo's with gold leads.  They were a little shorter and fatter so I had more clearance for the PIO's.
    In the end the pedals sound similar, but both have their own flavor.  The white pedal is a little smoother and Fenderish, almost like a cranked champ.  The black one is a little richer and grainer sounding, like it has more harmonic overtones almost like a Vox AC15 with less treble.  Nice pedals.  Sorry to Madbean for ne non-bean content.

     It is a bit of a read but here goes:
   
    I have been amassing quite a stash of castoff wah parts over the past few years. A few months ago I built them into a working wah on a board I had left over after converting the V847 to a V846 clone with a small Italian style square board in the first gen GCB-95 enclosure you see here.  That wah sounded great, I used a TDK inductor that was around 600mH, and some 2n2925 transistors with some vintage EROMAK-1 10nf caps, and TRW .22ufs.  But I ended up selling that whole board and the rest of the guts as a drop in to another guy.  
    A little while later I bought what looked to be an Italian Crybaby off of ebay. The listing didn't have any gutshots or bottom shots, but the price was pretty low and no other bidders were taking a chance, the seller had no knowledge of wahs, but the rubber tread on top was the Italian style tread with the rounded tops and bottoms to the Instrument/Amplifier markings and there was a pic that showed a bit of the underside of the rocker, it was the thicker Italian casting so I took a chance.  It got here and I flipped it over, there was a Sepulveda bottom plate, drat!  Off with the feet, and yeah regular 70's Thomas Crybaby that somebody had put an Italian rocker on at some point, the metal strap spring wasn't even over the pivot axle.  I ended up robbing the top off of this early GCB 95 enclosure for that Sepulveda wah, and kept the italian rocker, eventually selling the tread to a guy that had a nice '69 Italian crybaby missing the rubber.  
    A few weeks back I got the itch to build a new wah as I had just sold my personal Thomas Organ International Chicago Crybaby.  I had an old Thomas Organ board with some fractures in the phenolic, but all the traces had continuity.  Not the kind of thing I could ever sell due to the liability of it going bad, but perfect for a junk wah despite being robbed for all it's parts sans a few resistors.  I had some AB carbon comp resistors from an organ around, and some TRW .22uf caps, a mullard tropical fish 10nf and another EROMAK 10nf, some vintage Thomas Organ 2n2925 transistors marked 5117, and an inductor from a GCB-95 that was spot on at 511mH!  I put the Italian rocker on the early GCB95 enclosure, and had a new home for my junk-o-wah board, wired it up with true bypass and a McCon-O-Pot.  TBH, it is not my favorite pot, but it was noise free and just sitting in the parts bin.  Voila!  Sounded pretty darn good!  But then I ran into the ol fuzz conumdrum.  I had just built a modded version of a 1 knob fuzz on eyelet strips for the circuit design competition Dirt category at FSB, the wah wouldn't work well with the fuzz after it (just like a fuzzface) and sounded brittle with the fuzz before it.  Enter the FatPants!  
    I had gotten one in the order before last from Brian and had been debating where to put it.  I wanted it early in the signal chain and I had planned on putting it a spare 1590a I had handy, but didn't know if I could fit everything neatly inside.  Inspiration struck and you have the new and improved Junk-O-Wah.  It is great!  plays nice with fuzz, the Fatpats is always on regardless of wah on/off, I have it wired with a DPDT On/On toggle for true bypass by the input jack.  I leave the fat around 75% and run a bit above unity gain on the volume where everything starts to interact with the amp really well.  Sounds great stacked with everything now, and adds some clarity back to the siognal that was lost in my Echobase's bypass.  Thanks Brian for another awesome project!  Now if I can only get a bottom plate for it....

The same Rangemaster clone in the build reports.  Pretty pleased with this one.  The video quality and sound is so-so, shot on my Panasonic Lumix point and shoot cam.  I am getting a webcam this week, hopefully will do better audio recording.

Here is my latest build...  The decal didn't come out so well, I have been having issues with the edges wanting to curl up, I dunno if it is too much clear coat or what, but it is an inkjet waterslide decal.  The circuit has the standard Treble Middle mod using a .005uf TRW polystyrene cap for the input paralleled with a .0047uf Philips Mustard cap.  Output caps are greenies, .01uf and .022uf on a switch that is marked Fat or Tight on the decal.  Then there is a simple clipping section that uses 1n914's and diffused green LED's and has an on off on switch.  I find it to be useful when you are using a rangemaster for a slight boost to get a bit more grit, and alternately to expand the dirt capabilities of a cranked RM.  I tried the velcro method of mounting the PCB's, a 125B was just the right size to keep things pretty neat and still have room for a battery.  I went for a ground bus too, too many grounds to use the jack lugs...

I am building a Rangemaster for someone right now and I am going to power it with a Road Rage board for the -9v tap so it is friendly with all pedalboard PSU's, however I also want to retain a battery snap for a 9v, because it could see duty in a guitar > rangemaster > amp type of setting.  Will the road rage board greatly diminish a 9v battery's life?  Thanks!

Hello!  What LDR should I use for the Qvibe?  Have never done anything that uses one and I am at a loss momentarily.  Thanks!

Yeah, it is back, let's hope for good now! 

Here is my go at an Uproar, built on a board from his royal dudeness.  I stuffed it in a NS1590B from mammoth, pretty tight fit!  I used 1N40 diodes in place of 1N34a's, and 2 yellow LED's in place of a single blue.  IC's are 4558's until the 4580's get here.  As others have stated, gain for days!  Love it!  Big punch in a small package, and really good for chords, very defined/not lame and flubby.  Now to find some smaller knobs.  Thanks to CJ, Madbean, and El Duderino.

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I had mentioned this pedal in my earlier build report on the Boomstick with FX loop.  Very cool having the Aqua Boy running into the Echo Base.  I ran out of 10k carbon film resistors doing the Aqua Boy, therefore the Echobase has a heap of carbon comp 1/8w 10k's for better or worse.  Hiss doesn't seem too bad so I think I will leave them in.  Plans are to add the Digital Destruct dual delay board sometime this week.  Matte metallic spraypaint and middle of the night sharpie madness for this one too....  I only have 1 pedal on the board with proper a proper decal now, the first Rangemaster clone I built.  My Bad Stone clone is sharpie'd too.  I guess I am going with the "sharpie means I won't sell it, decal/nice paintwork means I will" mantra.  Enjoy!

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Hello, first post here.  Would normally post this at FSB, but the site is down at the moment (scary).  I am setting up my first pedalboard, a Gator Pedal Tote with the G-Bus-8, a compact board, so space is an issue.  I have a Aquaboy/Echo Base in one 1590DD enclosure that I am wrapping up today that I'd like to be able to have on an FX loop so I can turn both on and off at once without hitting both individual 3pdt's, so I put that in the extra space of the 1590BB that the boomstick is in to save space and 6" cables etc.  Would've been a tighter fit with a battery, so I went the, "dc jack only" route.  I built this over the past 3 nights after the wife and kids were asleep, so the pots are a little out of alignment and the lead dress isn't as tight as it could be, but it all worked on the first shot and sounds great!  Graphics and font are bleary-eyed-way-past-midnight-sharpie on a Smallbear bananna yellow powdercoat 2nd's enclosure.  Green knobs are for extra school spirit!  Go Rough Riders!  Props to Madbean for getting such a useful distortion out of a small PCB layout.  A pleasure to work with these fabbed boards.

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