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DEFX makes some really great clones/remakes of old, expensive and hard to obtain pedals.
The mail carrier just came by and dropped off the DPDT momentary foot switch I needed to finish this one off...
The Echodrive Red is a PT2395 delay that is digital but sounds kind of analog. It has a 12AX7 configured as  pre and post gain stages... The nice thing about this tube based pedal is that it doesn't use wimpy non tube voltages like 12, 24 or 30 volts... It drives the tube with around 190 volts on the tube! All this in a pedal!
20-30 repeats is easy for this pedal and there is a "slam" switch that not only makes the pedal go into oscillation, it also modulates the delay time for a really great sounding effect.
This build was involved but the documentation is great and everything well explained.
I did a couple of deviations from the instructions... First, this pedal has two regulators... A 5 volt and a 12 volt. The 5 volt regulator input feeds off the output of the 12 volt regulator which I don't really care for... In the past I've had instability problems when feeding one regulator off the output of another. Basically, I butchered a trace that fed the input of the 5 volt regulator and ran a wire to it from the raw DC supply. I also dont like big value caps (1000uf) on the outputs of regulators, it's a recipe for blowing a regulator... So I changed a few things around on the power supply.
This uses a 12vac power supply input and rectifies it for the low voltage section of the pedal and this pedal also uses a small torroidal transformer in reverse to get the high voltage needed for the tube. Ingenious design!
I'd like to thank Dino for making this available. This was an expensive project but much more do-able than buying an original, which goes for crazy money.

Hi everybody!
Just finished this one. Great documentation, great quality board but it took a while as it's a pretty involved build. I had to troubleshoot once built because the toggle switch was defective... That was a pain to change out... My fault because I didn't check the switch before I installed it.
Anyway, this thing makes a lot of weird noises, the ring modulator is a good one though.
As always, the cosmetics on mine are extremely minimalist!

Hi Everyone,
I bought some PCBs from Effects Layouts and one of them was the Truth Bender which is basically a clone of the Fuzz Bender. For a modern fuzz, the Fuzz Bender is great! It has the sounds of a Tone Bender style 60s  germanium fuzz with the added versatility of very effective tone controls and a "bias" control that sets how sputtery you want the fuzz to sound.
I also have an original Fuzz Bender and had to take it apart to find out what specs the Ge transistor inside has.
It's an NPN Japanese Ge transistor with a hfe of around 117 and a leakage of 1.08ma! You read that right, 1.08 milliamps! So this is a great project for all those leakey trashcan bound transistors.
The two silicon transistors have an hfe of 150-200 each. It tried a couple of 2N3903s with an hfe of around 50-60 each in these locations and the 150-200 hfe transistors sounded better.

Yeah, you heard me!
Maybe I'm blind but it sure would come in handy... Several times when I type in Madbean it automatically jumps to the forum. Sometimes I DO want to go to the BUY page...

See pic. Blue and yellow wire need to be switched. I was wondering why mine didn't work in bypass mode.

It had to be done, it was only a matter of time... The Glass Bi-Hole, as in two holes. Double your pleasure, double your fun... What were we talking about again??
Anyway, this is a Bi-Phase using 2 Glass Hole boards. I built the pedalpcb Duo Phase and fell in love with the way it sounded so I got the Brite idea, "why not do this with 2 Glass Hole boards where the phaser stages can be mixed and/or matched?? Like I said, it had to be done.
Luckily, each Glass Hole board has 2 unused op amps which come in handy for making the sync/inverted LFOs.
How does it sound??? I have no idea, I'm waiting for the glue to dry on the light shields... But soon, very very soon...
Many thanks to Brian for making these boards available and especially for answering some questions I had about the boards. These boards were perfect for making this up, unfortunately, I over-thought it. It was a case of "if it's not broken don't fix it. Lol!
I was able to figure out a way to incorporate an expression pedal to control the LFO(s), the 3rd pic shows the +/- 5 volt supply needed. It works very well.
And yeah, my paint job sux, it needs knobs plus some other cosmetic stuff. I don't care! I do this strictly for the electronic manipulation!
They don't call me Franklinstein for nothin! Lol

Hi everyone, Synthcube has MN3005 in stock for $15 each.
If you use "FLSH21" in the coupon code box, you get 20% off so that makes each MN3005 $12!
You're Welcome!
Lol!

Not a question but just to let everyone know...
I just bought a bunch of LDRs from Tayda Electronics, the Waitrony KE-10720, the only one that Tayda sells. When I received them they looked off. They have more squiggly lines on their face than the Waitronys Tayda sold around a year ago. I took some measurements and they are different. The old LDRs measure around 10k ohms with LEDs like the Glass Hole uses. These new LDRs measure 45-50k ohms with the same amount of yellow LED light, so they are different.
Will this make a difference in LDR projects? Who knows, but in my experience LDRs that get down to 7-10k ohms with LED light seem to work really well in these LDR projects, especially the phasers.
Has anyone else noticed the difference in LDRs that Tayda sells?

Pic one: old Tayda LDR
Pic two: new Tayda LDR

Hi Everyone,
Here is my build of the Aion Quadratron project. Too many controls, confusing! Lol! I guess that comes with the territory making Lovetone circuits...
The build was very straightforward, Mr Aion has always done an excellent job with documentation of his projects. I matched the LED brightness and the resistances of the LDRs so all 4 of each would be close in specs to each other. I have found that this helps with getting a strong phasing sound with optical phasers. I always knew that LDR tolerances are pretty widespread but I was surprised at how wide the tolerances of LEDs of the same type are!
As you can see in the attached pics, the jacks on the back are extremely close to each other, especially the 2 expression pedal jacks. I used the "Cliffs" style jacks that LMS sells and I had to do some major manipulation/modification to get the jacks placed according to the drill template. In the end, it's all good and everything fits and works as it should. If I were to build this again, I'd move the DC power jack to the left, closer to the "dry out" jack so the 2 expression pedal jacks have more room.
I also found some 4.7uf mylar caps and used those instead of the 10uf electrolytic caps. I really liked how Aion give the builder a choice in which to use.
How's it sound? Great, but I don't know what the heck I'm doing! This will take some time to learn what the controls do and how they interact with each other. For example, the two "span" pots act weird in certain situations... On some control combinations, the widest depth is at the midpoint on the span controls, any more advancement of the span controls actually lessens the depth of the phasing. But in other situations, the added span control definitely gives other depth options. I think I read somewhere that Lovetone pedals are a pedal tweakers dream and that is very true.
Anyway, thanks Aion for a really great project!

Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question on the build docs so maybe someone (Brian?) can answer:
On the Softie project, how much current can pin 5 of the PIC sink (or is it source)? The reason I ask is that I have a enclosure that I'm using for a project and the way the indicator LEDs are done, it uses an array of LEDs. The greens are separate from the red LEDs. I have the greens down to 10ma and I'm gonna try to get the reds down to 20ma. Will pin 5 of the Softie PIC handle those currents?
If anyone was wondering, the S.V. Gemini was broken and the case will work great for a K.O.T. clone. Even if the Gemini worked, I would have done the same thing... I'm not a big fan. Lol!

Thanks in advance...

Hi,
I had a friend's 1980 CE-2 pedal and decided to build my PB pcb. This is a 2015 version, and I am assuming this is NOT the Rev.1 version? This is the one that needs R29 jumpered and a 10k resistor between pins 4&5 of IC4?
Thanks.

R28 (330 ohms) doesn't need to be there... So, why is it there?? I'm getting 5.5 volts at the input of the 5 volt regulator because of R28.
I'm taking it out!
Lol!

Ok, so I had to build a second one of these contraptions... My 1st (prototype) one is on the left, the 2nd on the right. The 2nd one is so much cleaner looking because I already knew what I wanted in the build.
I used a 3.5mm jack in each box that I can use as an umbilical cord to carry over the LFO signal from the 1st one to the 2nd one so I can configure it as a
LFO "master/slave". Each box can be used independently from the other one also. I can also use both boxes in series for 4 delay lines.
I'll try to get some audio up soon

Hi everyone,
A quick question about the Tappy project. I'm thinking about using it as an LFO for other projects. Does anyone know what the voltage output is of the Tappy LFO? I see the project has a 5 volt regulator so it's probably a little less than 5 volts. Has anyone measured?
Thanks.

Ring ring!
Actually, I have a question about the Collosalus PCB...
The two 15uf caps in the LFO section that are back to back have the negatives attached together in the Collosalus PCB. In every other LFO where I have seen the back to back electrolytics used, it's always has been the two positives connected. Is there a reason why this isn't the case on the Collosalus PCB? Just wondering...
Thank you!

Merry Christmas everyone.
Today I submit a couple more Flangers I have built. First one is the "NZF" which stands for Near Zero Flanger by Dr Alx. Here's the link on the design with build notes:

https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=107353.0

It's a double delay line flanger that goes to "zero" and back, so the neat TZF effect comes through loud and clear on this project. The real benefit to this one though, is that all parts are easy to source AND with only 3 knobs and a switch, is pretty user friendly to operate.
Knobs are for "Rate", "Depth", and "Feedback". The switch is for pos/neg flanging.
This one takes some time and effort to calibrate, but it can be done by ear and the results are very nice!
I used a 1590C enclosure so the board just fit and the depth of the case made including the jacks and footswitch possible.
This runs on a standard 9 volt effect power supply and the one deviation I did from the original circuit is that I added an 8 volt regulator to the PCB. I have found out through experience that BBD effects work so much better if the power provided is regulated.
One more thing... Those aren't real MN3204 ICs, they're actually MN3207 ICs that some unscrupulous online vendor relabeled. They are perfectly good 3207s though, which is what this project requires.
I have no idea why I called my example, "Le Flange"...
Thanks to Dr. Alx for this neat design!

Ok, this is a great sounding pedal! The Hoof is basically a BMP with transistors # 2&3 switched to germanium and the clipping diodes changed out for red LEDs.  The "shift" knob really adds versitality to this circuit. It works to shift the midrange according to where the tone knob is set.
I used a MB Mudbunny 2015 PCB that I had laying around for the board. I also went out on a limb and made this a PNP circuit with Road Rage inverter. I had 2 very high gain PNP germaniums and I wanted to use them in something.
For graphics, I stuck to my usual neo- minimalist functional artwork. Lol!
Transistor gains for all 4 is around 200 for each transistor. In BMP circuits, 200 is the magic number for me!
Anyway, great sounds come out of this box, it has BMP like tones plus rangemaster style tones also. Highly recommended!

This is for the Dead End FX Larry flanger, a clone of the old Mutron pedal flanger. Basically, it's a flanger built into an expression pedal. For this clone, it uses a Morley volume or wah pedal as
the enclosure.
This flanger has a traditional LFO that sweeps up and down or with a footswitch can change over to the footpedal to control the sweep. This flanger has a very wide sweep, not quite as wide as the old A/DA flanger, but still quite wide for a flanger. I set mine from 35kHz to 750khz. If using the pedal to control the sweep, it sweeps from 35kHz to 950kHz.

Hi, I'm about to build a Big Cheese clone (DEFX board) and had some questions about the transistors used. I've read that the original pedal used BC549C (hfe ~400) and the DEFX version (plus all others I've seen) asks for 2N3904 (hfe~200) transistors.
Has anyone played around with this? Does it matter in this circuit?
Thanks,
Daniel

Hi again, this is kind of a pt 2 of my other post about the 4049...
It looks like the standard for driving BBds is the 4049UBE IC. Is there any reason a 4050BE can't be used instead? I know the 4049 is an inverted buffer and the 4050 is non-inverted but I don't see why that should make a difference boosting a clock signal.
Anyone have an answer?
Thanks