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I scored this very tidy fabbed board from Josh... this pedal is great fun, very musical 'dark' repeats... self oscillates deliciously too...



Painted by my beloved... a real treat for the eyes this one



Buffered bypass wiring with trails...

My 9 year old son said to me...
'Dad, I wanna design a pedal for you'






As a prolific comic drawer, he created several designs using his pens and colouring pencils... 
It was a tough call, but in the end I chose "Dark Zag"...

(Aww kinda cute... I'm very proud... In a fierce super-villian kinda way )
Image was scanned and printed onto white stickerpaper...

Have you seen this site?  Its an extraordinary resource of free education... a great place to hone your math chops, which is exactly what I'm doing myself

http://www.khanacademy.org/
Or watch tutorials on youtoobs:
http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy?blend=1&ob=4

One of the last boomstick pcbs Brian had... great thick sounding distortion, similar to JTM45 (apparently)
Bass Boost mod and Insane Gain mod... For the first time I used the project drill template... gosh that saves some time, shoulda done that earlier!  lol

Well I finally stumped up the guts to resign my old job...  I've been accepted for an electronics course in 2012!  Woo!  

(Erm... hope the kids don't mind saveloys and rice for the next year or three)

This is the same demo from my Build Thread just posted here for ease of reference

http://www.mediafire.com/?lh9195stby1ygu8

This has been a long time in the making, but boy oh boy...

Overdrive Bliss!  Gotta do a demo or something, this thing sounds UNREAL!

Props to Juansolo and Marauder for this cool OD circuit, the 'Boobtube'. See the thread  here



Took a bit of research and time to design a single sided pcb for this one... this pedal is the prototype and so isn't using the final tweaked version of my pcb, it has a little more off board wiring than the final version that you can see here
Tube is an RCA Cleartop pulled from an old Conn Organ


Hard to see bu there's a little blue LED inside the tube socket... shows nicely in the dark


Handpainted by my darling wife in hazard stripes with some waterslide decals thrown on for good measure... my camera is lame, the thing is vibrant to behold in person.

Well its been a while but finally got there... lil photo essay to follow. 


The schematic.  Based on the GGG Ultra Clean PSU, some schematics in the datasheet for the IC and a Geofex Spyder.  Read up quite a bit and decided to use LM317T rather than set value regulators.   I will use four of these isolated on one pcb and get 3-18Vish on each depending on what I need.



Eagle was tricky at first but I learned a lot through youtube and from forums.  Big thing was getting a decent library to use... thanks Madbean!  This is my first PCB design.



First pcb etch... tried a number of times, lil smudgy using toner transfer but all good.



The Board assembled.  Pretty tight on there, but some good heatsink action.  Had some freaky issue with one line which came down to a dud leaking electro.  Tested and good to go



Enclosure carefully drilled out







Assembled!  Tranny is a R-Core type for hifi.  Switch, fuse, EMI filter socket... separate ground lug for mains line.  Lots of starwashers and tight bolts!  AC secondary wires twisted to reduce interference.  Top black cover also earthed through the mounting screws.  Careful first test using RCD and adjust each line for required volts.  Set for 9,9, 12 and 12.6





The end!
Also see for more info here

This is by second D/F build, this time for a buddy... using madbean's fabbed version of this tremolo.



Poindexter again mixing up the right amount of blue potion... to match the blue LED.  Dang, white is a hard finish to get right!



I used standard PCB mount pots with 'condoms' and used old component-lead trimmings to connect them to the pcb... once I figured out how I was going to do it, this was a fast and easy wire-up.  I had to lie most of the caps down on the board to fit it in the enclosure this time, but it works a treat and sounds good.

A wee project for my teenage cousin, who is a 'disturbed' fan. Hmmm... my camera just won't take good pedal pix, always has to flash so I get wierd angle trying to avoid reflections ... these are the best images of it I can muster.  



For those who haven't hear the Dr Boogie pedal... you just gotta.  
Sublime Boogie Metalness with versatile tone controls and HUGE gain.  Essential metal building.



This is a very good PCB, for the gain of the pedal its surprisingly quiet. Props madbean!  
I just started using 'star washers' on the pots... a really good idea so they can't wiggle loose.  

I killed a p90 with this pedal, literally  

Shorted the 9V to guitar input by accident when checking some voltages with my meter.  Learn from me, thankfully I have a spare pickup lying around but it was pretty gut-ripping when I found out my mistake.  Unplug the guitar when you are prodding a circuit that has volts in it  





So this is a little different than stock... tweaking things made me very happy with the sound of this pedal.

*Added 470pF cap across lugs 1-3 of gain to reduce a lot of radio interference

*Added a presence control to the output... thats the trimpot in next to the 3PDT... to take a little hair off the top end without changing the sound too much, making it fit in with my normal clean channel sound and my other pedals better.

*Settled on 1N4148 and 1N34A as the diodes... went thru a whole lot including LEDs and other clippers... these two seem to strike a nice combo

*Rather insanely I put a multicolor flashing LED in here too... It has a 220uF Electrolytic in parallel with it to filter any noise... looks cool and suits the chaotic sounds this pedal can make!

*(Edit) Forgot that I changed the value of R25 to 1K.  Drops it down to about 8 Volts... The effect is less gain and more of a 'gated' attack.

Its an addictive pedal, very playable with noth neck and bridge pups, with both my strat and my PRS p90 guitars.  

Finally this one is completed...  Had the board since March, and the ICs since December!
Wow what a chorus pedal!  I recently sold me Boss CE-5 chorus...  it was pretty average to be honest, and I've never been a huge fan of Chorus until now... this thing is total lushness! 



Painted by my darling wife, its a blend of gold and ochre... Not your usual chorus colours, but the blue wasn't doing it for me... I'm really pleased with how it turned out



I never had any noise issues with this circuit but decided to uses a shielded cable for the output from the board as it was closest to the MN3101, which seemed to be the source of noise in my proto/testing phase.

Special mentions must go to Jeremy (the3secondrule) who gave me the ICs last year as part of the PIF... woo!  And to Madbean, who offered to send me the boards again when they got lost/severely delayed in the post (Due to earthquakes and collapsing buildings where I live ). 

You guys are awesome, thankyou!!!

http://www.mediafire.com/?x3vrlxa0ki51lj0

About 3MB worth of mp3... Recorded off the pedalboard>amp>computer in one take, mistakes and all, no edits etc.  I don't have a high output guitar, this is the bridge p90 in my mahogany PRS

Pedal settings...
Tone,Gain 100% Level 45% Clip SW in middle position, Bass switch on, Mids off
This is a tasty distortion pedal

RAWK!  The uproar, 95% Clone of Suhr Riot with a few switching options... 3W Clipping diodes select, 2W Mid focus and 2W Bass boost. Tasty oversized polypropylene and mica caps,  waterclear red LED true bypass etc...  Handpainted by my beloved, photos don't do it justice it is truly livid to behold, absolutely my favourite pedal now...

Took a while to choose the final cap values for C8-10 but after research and experiments, I've settled on what works for me.  This pedal is so much fun!

Hey guys... so many cool builds going on here...

This is my latest project:



The name 'The Silver Darlings' comes from the picture which is a painting by my wife inspired by a book of the same name...  I was going to get her to paint the enclosure, but fell in love with this pic whe I saw it.



The overdrive side of this pedal is a 'Big Box'Clark Gainster clone, 'Handwired' using a turretboard, NOS/High Mojo caps etc etc...  Also hidden away in the enclosure is  Roadrage and a Slambox boost section.  Such a sweet sounding and transparent overdrive, I really fell in love with this circuit when prototyping it on 17V, the Slambox runs into the overdrive so it can really make it sit up and bark if required.


My turret layout is a modified version from here http://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=8193&p=86809&hilit=clark+gainster#p86809 Thanks to IVIark of FSB for the inspiration to make it a pedal! 

There's a few threads of Q & A about the Uproar, but this is a simple mod that makes the tone knob much more effective than stock.  I've tried what some suggested by subbing a 100KB for the tone pot and found it changed the whole sound of the pedal.  This is a simple tone mod that I got from Brian Wampler's book that works really well with the stock 10K tone pot in the Uproar.

1. Remove all wires connecting the tone pot to the PCB and instead place a 10K resistor from pads 3 to 1.

2. Run an extra wire from Volume pot lug 2 to Tone pot lug 2...

3. Connect a 47n cap from Tone pot lug 1 to ground... You could use Volume Pot lug 1 or another ground point for this.  

Done!  You can try different Caps, anything 22n or larger will probably do fine.  The result is a more dramatic tone control with the standard 10K pot than before.
Hope it works for you

This RR is an awesome little board! I have a nice fuzz pedal, HBE Germania Treble booster, (based on a rangemaster)... got a NOS germanium transistor and unbelievable tone.  It is positive grounded tho, so I had to use batteries for it, until now!




I didn't want to modify the pedal, and put the RR inside so I made a lil box out of it... 1st output is 9V+pin for the fuzz and the other is a regulated 9V-pin to run a couple other effects down the line.

I killed my first one... tried to swap out the resistors and pulled the traces off the board

Take two has R1 and R2 switched with a DPDT, for normal (2M2) and bright (10M stock) settings.  Hard to tell the difference when running as a clean boost but really nice having the option on when boosting into distortion, then the differences become more apparent.  This is a very nice sounding boost.

This has been in various stages of completeness for months, but now is finished! 







I was waiting on some parts from effectsconnection, but we had some serious earthquakes where I live in Christchurch, NZ which put everything on hold, including the mail.  We are ok, but my work collapsed and a huge part of the central city is in ruins Sadly the Uproar and Porkbarrel pcbs I ordered seem to have been lost too, as an added nuissance.

So this thing is pretty standard except I swapped R16 for an 18k (tried a trimpot first) and put some clipping diodes (3mm LED) after C5 (It was a while ago I think thats where I put them)  Anyway forgot to get a gut shot, before I stitched it into the pedal board... maybe when I next get time.  Anyways, it sounds pretty good!

This is my 3rd pedal now, and the first one I've completed to the 'Not going to pull it apart again in the near future' stage...  I tried waterslide decals and for the first time and 'baked' the paintjob in a mini oven with pleasing results. (Thats if you dont count the other enclosure which got... overcooked )
Sounds really awesome, I highly recommend the build.