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Would still be interested in your opinion on that last point, Brian?

Here's the decal my friend designed for me for my pedal



Don't let the madebymike fool you, I'm not building this for anyone else. It's (along with a Current Lover) my present to myself after a year of working my arse off!

Pin7 is on the compander looks a tad high to me...did you end up with 33k for R11 and 12?

Is this something for me to be concerned about considering I used 47Ks? You can see them in the images if you look close...

Would fixing this make biasing cleaner?

Anything else I should check? The only sub I did around that point was that R14 was 47K instead of a 51K

Will do on the TL072s, and I used 47k for r11 and r12 as recommended?

Good news, folks!

Hi guys







So I've finished my DirtBagDeluxe (well outside of boxing it anyway) and I'm pleased to say I'm really happy with the results - the modifications to the BOM for the v3205 suggested here:

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=3366.0

I also have TL082s in IC1,IC3 and IC8 as I only had one TL072

Here are my IC voltages for anyone who needs them after doing these mods:

Supply = 9.22V

IC1:
pin1-3: 4.62
pin4: gnd
pin5-7: 4.6
pin8: 9.22

IC2:
pin1: 1.30
pin2-3: 1.80
pin4: GND
pin5-6: 1.80
pin7: 7.66
pin8-9: 1.80
pin10: 6.7
pi11: 4.5
pin12: 1.80
pin13:9.2
pin14-15: 1.80
pin16: 0.7

IC3:
pin1-3: 4.6
pin4: GND
pin5-7: 4.6
pin8: 9.22

IC4:
pin1: GND
pin2: 4.6
pin3-4: 6.43
pin5 : 8
pin6: 4.63
pin7: 5.85
pin8: 8.17

IC5:
pin1: GND
pin2: 4.63
pin3-4: 6.17
pin5 : 8.17
pin6: 4.63
pin7: 5.69
pin8: 7.94

IC6:
pin1-3: 5.69
pin4: GND
pin5-7: 5.22
pin8: 9.22

IC7:
pin1: 2-6 V moving
pin2: 4.61
pin3 4-5V moving
pin4: GND
pin5-6: 4.64
pin7: 4.4-4.8V moving
pin8: 9.22

IC8:
pin1-3: 4.62
pin4: GND
pin5: 6.65
pin6-7: 6.72
pin8: 9.22

IC9:
pin1: 4.48
pin2: 4.7
pin3: 4.79
pin4-6: 9.22
pin7-9: GND
pin10-11: 4.62
pin12: GND
pin13: 4.5
pin14: 9.22

Whew that took a while. So I think it sounds great - yes there is some background hiss when the repeats are kicking in and yes the compander does seem to snap shut a little tight when repeats do tail but after doing the bias process a few times I've managed to get it set up where delays sound nice and can also self oscillate if I want, so I'm a happy puppy.

Many thanks to all who helped especially Brian and Scruffie for the fixes, and Lacesensor and Tenwatt for doing the troubleshooting builds. It wasn't simple and I'm not proud of some of my part replacements, I just couldn't get those resistors out so had to resort to tack soldering from above, which is ugly, but there you go.

ALSO: it's picky about power. I was gutted when trying to bias it at first when daisy chaining it on my FAME desktop supply until I used a high mA output, and it's happy daisy chaining on my switched mode Diago powerstation style supply too - so make sure you have it getting plenty of juice!

Hope this is useful to folks

Cheers
M

Brian did build several prototypes of this and other boards, but he has admitted that perhaps the proofing was a little rushed. His builds went together well and quickly, so there was no expected problems to be had.

I don't understand.

If the testing builds were made on the production boards with v3205s and the original bill of materials and experienced none of these distortion issues, then why are we being told to make these changes?

I might have to look into buying some more desoldering apparatus if I run into difficulty getting these components out, and I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Mike, are you the same MadebyMike as ShortscaleMike in the U.K.?

If so if you want, if you post me your board i'l do the mods for you, i've got a good desoldering pump (which you can pick up from Bitsbox.co.uk pretty cheap) and have quite a bit of experience fighting with boards.

Thanks for the offer, but I'll do my best to sort it myself. When I realised I would have to start desoldering things I went hunting for a pump on bitsbox (I love those guys) but foudn it's sold out unfortunately, or I would have got one:

http://www.bitsbox.co.uk/tools.html

I don't want anyone to think I am overly criticising Brian here (and your comment about him carrying on doing what he does, of course that is the last thing on my mind - he is doing a great service to many effects lovers and that is to be applauded completely).

I remain a big fan of madbean pedals.

Certainly I have laughed a lot at the incessant begging of projects to be released a few times!
Jacob

I guess I wasn't a part of that pressure, I just heard about the project from someone ordering a PCB and posting about it on HCFX, and ordered it from the madbean website along with the CurrentLover, which also excites and impresses me as a project. I've ordered from Brian a few times before this and been nothing but impressed, plus I've used his schematics as reference for veroboard layouts also - this has all contributed to the fact I was under the impression this was a solid 100% tested and verifed BOM and would all go together smoothly.

Thanks for your detailed reply Brian, I really do appreciate it - as I do the offer of a replacement board. I may take you up on that and build the newly recommended BOM from the start on that, but I think I owe it to you to attempt to make the changes you've recommended to my current board first. If and only if I fail to get a working solution would I consider it fair to ask for a replacement board.

I understand this is complex and a demanding build, but I'm not sure that I accept someone willing to take it on should also be expected to desolder components that were not misplaced - I'm sure noone enjoys doing this on an expensive 2-sided board. They're lovely to solder into - desoldering and clearing pads not so much.

I guess most of the frustration and confusion is coming from the fact that there's people like Dirk who built his and with one component jumpering is fine, and then a bunch of guys here who had unworkable distortion and had to make a bunch of mods to get things in line - and still at this point we're being told that either we could be 100% satisifed by

1) the original BOM
2) the original BOM with the 100k x2 switch
3) the original BOM with the changes mentioned in this thread applied.

You have to admit that is a lot of different options and as someone who's wanting to limit the amount of tricky unsoldering it is a bit overwhelming.

I'm particularly not looking forwards to changing R10 and R42 in particular.

I'll do my best and let you know if I end up experiencing unrecoverable trouble.

Thanks
Mike

Brian did build several prototypes of this and other boards, but he has admitted that perhaps the proofing was a little rushed. His builds went together well and quickly, so there was no expected problems to be had.

I don't understand.

If the testing builds were made on the production boards with v3205s and the original bill of materials and experienced none of these distortion issues, then why are we being told to make these changes?

I might have to look into buying some more desoldering apparatus if I run into difficulty getting these components out, and I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I understand your concern, however it is not as daunting as it may seem. If you go slow, make sure you mark the components your are replacing with a sharpie, and have a little patience you will be successful. I did all of the changes yesterday in about 45 minutes using desoldering braid from Radio Shack.

I used desoldering braid on the previous components I have already socketed (R21 and C14, which now are to be reverted to their stock values.. ) and didn't manage to get the 2 sided via completely free of solder for any of the joints, it involved inserting the socket whilst reheating what remained - which is not a simple process.

To be honest, this is a lot of changes, and the build PDF still seems to not have been updated.

I'm getting quite concnered that with the amount of desoldering I'm going to have to attempt on a very tight board that I'm going to end up with a non working delay, which will be very annoying considering the initial outlay and the time spent building it this far. I really would have expected that both the v3205 and 3005 versions would have been built and tested on the production boards before this was made public - that's surely the bare minimum level of testing for a multi use board?

I certainly didn't start building this project (or purchase the board) thinking it hadn't been verified as working, and the build document didn't suggest this either, indicating that only two component subs and some jumper changes were needed to convert for use with the Cool Audio chips.

At this point I really wish I had a fresh board to work on, but as it is all my caps and most of my resistors (including all but one of the above changes) have been soldered in place. It's going to be a lot of work to attempt to make these modifications and I'm pretty disappointed I have to do so.

Having said that I appreciate that Brian has investigated the issues and tried to put it right, but I do feel let down this was not tested before the boards went on sale. I have outlayed significant monies on the board mounted pots, and chips from Small Bear along with the board itself. I just hope I can get something workable out of it.

Thanks. Unfortunately it looks like I have a lot of unsoldering to do, which is very disappointing.

Brian, any more progress?

Thanks for the updates, when you're done are you going to provide a minimal list of subs from the stock values to address the issues?

Sorry just saw this thread.

My board currently has R21 as 100K, and R11/R12 as the originally spec'd 47Ks for the 3205s.

What would you recommend I do right now? Anything that should definitely be subbed? Should i revert R21 to 1K for example, or is it still your recommendation that I hold off until you have a final definitive list of values?

Got it, thanks. I've been tweaking some more this morning so I'll hopefully have some more ideas later on today....mostly just dealing with the compander right now.

Any news on this? I'm still waiting for the result of your investigations before I continue populating my board