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Sorry, i put this in the wrong place, could someone move it. Thx

Ok, so I know the rule is, Bohemian Rhapsody, don't cover it.

But,

https://youtu.be/cyc-a-DOKwk

Dude does vocals, guitar, drums and piano. It's not fair.

-M

I have tried for the third time to post a build. I always get cut off at the knees when it comes to uploading the photos. First, they are to big and then they are the wrong file type and then something else.

I now use my iPhone for most photographs. At first, I busted out the DSLR and the macro lens, too shallow DOF. I tried a kit lens on it and it not much of an improvement. I actually prefer the iPhone pics. But, they are still too big. The only thing I knew to do was e-mail them to yourself and it asks what size you want to use.

Yes I thought! Wrong! Now it's in the wrong kind of file.

There was something else too, but I am just not figuring it out.

Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not bit*hing, I just know that there is an easier way to do it and I am just being a hammerhead.

-M

Is this place legit?

I ordered 40 euros of pcb's in September and they charged my paypal. I actually forgot about it, but remembered a couple of days ago. They show the order still processing. I have e-mailed twice and no response.

I probably just need to be patient, but I was just wondering about others experience.

-Mike

I won't say I'm a guitarist. I defile my poor guitar. The only semblance of music I can make is running up and down the fretboard on drop D.

I'm trying though. A friend thought that learning jumping jack flash would be good, but I can't find a decent beginners guitar tab for the life of me.

Can someone point me in the direction of one?

I'm serious about how bad I am. Imagine a mummy and a zombie having a baby and the baby tried to play guitar. I am so ham handed that I can't believe I don't break strings every time I bang away.

-Mike

Just relating my experience.

I ordered 12 LED footswitches for a run of special edition pedals. Unboxed all 12 pedals worked as expected. Boxed 3 of the 12 were dead. I tracked it down to a continuity problem in the footswitches.

I got asked many questions and even supplies pics and returned the bad footswiches. That was 9/25. Now on 10/8 they have accused me of tampering with the footswitches and will not replace them.

Really, tampering for $25 in footswitches. Cmon. I've got so many other things to worry about. Anyway, caveat emptor! They have lost my business and can't say I've ever been treated that way by any company.

If anyone has questions I have the emails to show it.

-Mike

So I just did a build with a base Klon circuit that I have built a lot w/o problems. This was different. Lots of ambient noise, "alternator whine" at high gain and dampened pots.

Anyone else seen this?

Mike

Hi,

I am doing a Big Muff Pi build and it requires 2n3904 transistors.

I have a lot of them, but they are all from China and I am concerned about their quality.

I think they are very important to the build, but I will ask rather than assume.

Should I just order some from Mouser and if so, is there any particular one, value or parameter that I should look for .

-Mike

? About D9E (maybe all Russian) diodes.

Sorry, more questions.

Am I crazy or is the band on these backwards to the way we do it?

I'll post pics but the forum software doesn't like my file type.

Mike

So this question is about Your go to footswitch, not special applications.

I want to know what you choose and why?

I geek out over quality, but is a $15 footswitch really justified. On the other hand picking up 10 for $5 off of eBay scares me.

I'm actually looking for a good balance of quality and fiscal responsibility.

I have no idea if  "soft touch" is desirable or that sort of thing or how important gold-plated lugs are?

-Mike

While my soldering has improved 10,000% with the addition of reading glasses (I'm officially an old fart) and rote practice, my weakest joint is at the guitar jack.

Any tips/tricks or am I just a goober?

-Mike

The directions are pretty minimal for this add on.

It just states to wire one side to a diode pair pad on the PCB and wire the other side to the other diode pair pad on the PCB.

I am assuming that this means I would connect one side to the square pad on a diode pair and the other side to the other square pad on the same paAm I correct in my thinking?

Secondly a lot of OD/distortion boards have a second set of clipping diodes. My first thought was jumper these and sort of simplify things.  Is that what you would do?

Any thoughts?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Mike

Is there anything wrong with that and is that what you would do I would you utilize them somehow?

-Mike

So, I ended up using an extra Tube Driver 1.2 board I had lying around as my Valv-E-Tizer 1.5 PCB's are lost in mail limbo somewhere.

All of the 47n box film caps were upgraded to 100v. Same for electrolytic. I wasn't sure about the electro's so, I upgraded those to 100v, as well. Why yes, that isvquite a large electro you see in that gunshot.

A heat sink was attached to the voltage regulator and ventilation holes were drilled into each end of the enclosure.

Right now it is running off of a benchtop power supply. I had purchased a hefty $15 Jameco wall wart, but it introduces a lot of hum into the system. Still on the lookout for a 12vdc 1.5a power supply.

Using an EH 12AX7 tube. It's a fair amount of distortion, but I love that. It covers up my atrocious guitar playing.

A. Made with: 
   01.   Xicon resistors 1/4 watt, 1% tolerance Metal Film resistors.

   02.    Wima Film capacitors 5% Tolerance (10%where 5% was not
              available). Where no Wima capacitor was available for a
              particular value,  either TDK/EPCOS film capacitors or Kemet Film
              capacitors were used.

   03.   Nichicon fine gold/Muse electrolytic capacitors. USW series LP
              7mm.

   04.   Kemet Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors 5% tolerance. Rated Class
                     1 (C0G).

   05.    Diodes: The exact Germanium clipping diode that was used in the
              original Centaur is unknown. Some sonic testing was done and
              Russian D9E diodes were thought to be an exact sonic match. What
              we know for sure is that the diodes in question had a forward
              voltage of 0.35v. To that end, 200 Russian D9E diodes were sourced
              from Bulgaria. Each was hand tested. All 200 of them clustered
              right around (+/- 0.04v) 0.25v. I made the decision to try and get
              closer to the value that we were sure of, the 0.35v. Kevin from
              Aion Electronics has mentioned having luck with 1n270 germanium
              diodes from Tayda electronics. 100 were sourced and tested. The
              forward voltage varied a great deal. ~16 were very close or an
              exact match to the 0.35v value. ~20 were, "Hot Loads" with a value
              greater than 0.40v. For this production run of 12 pedals the
              values were in-between 0.342v and 0.372v. D9B, D9K, 1n914 and
      1n60 were also tested in significant quantities.

   06.   Alpha 16mm potentiometers were used.

   07.    Pot covers from Small Bear were used to, prevent shorts in-
              between the back of the pots and the PCB.

   08.    Gold-plated IC sockets from Mouser were used.

   09.   IC's: TL072 are made by Texas Instruments. TC1044scpa are
      sourced from Microchip.

   10.    Red LED footswitches are sourced from Amplified parts.com.

   11.    Guitar jacks are from switchcraft.

   12.   DC power jacks are from Kobiconn.







Modifications:

   1. c14 is changed to 6n8 to boost the treble. Many said the original,
               pedal was somewhat dark. This addresses that.

   2. As for the germanium diodes, see above.

   3.  The original centaur used a linear potentiometer as its output
         control. Most people seem to favor a logarithmic taper for that
                 particular stage. Being as that the human ear hears or rather
                 appreciates sound on the logarithmic scale, that seems to make
                 sense. Therefore I am changing this as well, to a 10kA.


QC:
   1. Resistors and capacitors: Each component subjected to physical
       inspection to ensure Good condition and to ensure value needed/picked
       were a match.  This was verified using a HHMM (Handheld multi-Meter,
       a Fluke 17B+).
             
   2.  Solder joints: Each solder joint was individually inspected
        underneath a digital microscope and re-flowed if necessary.      

I thought I did a pretty good job until I hooked it up. There is a very pronounced hum that does not vary with the pots on the pedal only the volume on the amplifier. LED lights up and it's fine on bypass.

My first suspect is that I cooked the build. I've noticed a tendency to dwell on a pad . I'm going to literally could 2-3 1000 for each solder connection. My second suspect is my soldering itself. It is where I need to improve the most. Failing that, am I populating the board incorrectly, are my diodes backwards, etc?

You may not be able to see it, but the backside of the pots are covered in double-sided tape. Those dust caps from small bear/mammoth are nice but they take up a lot of room.

Hey everybody, kinda new here. Been lurking for a few months doing a lot of reading and searches. I'm stumped though. I want to run the TH Customs Valvetizer 1.5 at 12 volts. I thought I had come across some info about beefier components like 100V caps, etc, but for the life of me I can't find that again. I also am wondering what other mods would need to be made?

I would appreciate any help and if this has already been asked and answered, I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

Thanks much.

-Mike