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Just the delay, bypassed volume is fine

If it's just a little quieter than unity with the echo maxed, it's working properly.

Not really much that can be done about the echo being a little below unity. The only amplification done in the PT2399 is also affecting the dry signal as well, and there's no where to knock down the level of just the dry signal assuming you can get any extra volume out of it to begin with. Further, the filtering on the dry signal is going to make it a lot darker than the unaffected signal, so it's going to SOUND quieter regardless.

This isn't really appropriate as a slap-back style delay. It's more like a reverb. If you want a delay whose repeats can smack you in the face, you'll have to build one of the zero points (which have more room for adjustment) or one of the many, many other PT2399 delays with full dry and wet signal paths.

Presumably this is a guitar without two tone knobs?

You can hardwire a treble bypass to the humbucker alone, or a treble cut to the P90 alone. It wouldn't be adjustable once you soldered, but you also wouldn't need another knob. Just use the wiring scheme for a typical gibson, but ignore the tone pot and use a much smaller tone cap.

The kingslayer is split rail (+9v/-9v), not 18V.

All the audio pins should have 0v, and the V- pin (pin 11) should be -9V. Since you don't have anything approaching -9V, and pin 5 of your charge pump isn't creating the negative voltage, that's your first issue to fix.

Haberdasher could etch you the 1590B layout on ROG's site.

And no... automatic layouts aren't done by the software, the software shows the connections that need to be made, it's up to the designer to figure how the components are arranged to satisfy the needed connections.

Well, Diptrace can auto-place stuff, but I found it generally to be useful on the same level as auto-route in Eagle ...

Is it the delay output that's too quiet, or both delay and dry?

This is Rita, our cowico. She's named after the cat on Animaniacs. Lexa says that I'm her boyfriend, because Rita really only lets me pet her most of the time (unless she's really sleepy), but she's also friendlier with strangers regularly than either of us.* We have scheduled petting time every single day right after I get out of the shower and Lexa goes downstairs. She is an absolute expert at box inspection.


And this is Chandra, who is named after Chandrasekhar, who discovered the limit stars collapse before they become black holes. Unfortunately, despite being named after an astrophysicist, she is not a smart kitty. In fact, some of our fish would have a higher IQ. This is a cat that has difficulty with doors and is a frequent player of the "What are you eating!?" game. She also has trouble meowing, and mostly just squeaks. (Her unofficial nickname is Beaker.) She is very friendly, though (but scared of strangers). If you sit down anywhere in the house, she will find you and sit on your lap.


*Edit: This sentence has some ambiguous pronouns, but I've decided to leave it as-is, because it's true no matter how it's read.

That's exactly what programs like Eagle and Diptrace do. You draw the schematic, and the connections on the layout are then made based on that schematic.

I saw in a previous thread (I think ) you were building a zen with a buffer switch, that would fit the description.

I converted my mini zen to buffered input/buffered bypass ... that was a while before I bought this case. I'm not really the kind of guy to put a buffer on a switch, since buffered bypass doesn't make a difference in my setup.

heh, Thanks, JJ.

Paul: I did consider that, but I'm not sure what I'd add to a cardinal ...

I have a white 1590B that I drilled for four pots and either a second LED or a toggle.

I've only had the case for a couple months and I can't figure out what the heck I was planning on putting into it.

Moment of Truth? or reality check... I'm guessing here.

[not an acronym] (UK term for a full-body scan medical exam; derived from the Ministry of Transport test car inspection)

http://www.acronymfinder.com/MOT.html

For number 1, first ask your friend what effects they like, and figure out what they might think is useful. Everyone suggests a boost for a first build, but not everyone has a use for a boost and he'd be more excited about continuing to build things if he got something useful. Once you know what he's into, it can be easier to find the right project for him to start with. Parts count isn't everything.

For first projects, these are the better criteria:
1) Can they tinker around after it's built? Even just something where socketting a transistor is useful. An electra distortion is only a couple of extra parts compared to your average transistor booster, but you can play around with diodes as well as the transistor. Do the diodes really add complexity worth speaking of?
2) Is it easy to troubleshoot? See, some boosts are really easy to build, like the SHO, but sometimes things can go wrong that will be hard to diagnose. A MOSFET booster of any kind runs the risk of static discharge blowing up the transistor, which can be hard to find for a new builder.

It also might be worth picking a project that requires the use of a digital multimeter, to drive home the fact that it's an essential tool in pedal building at any level. Far too often I see people post a tech help thread and they can't give voltages because they don't have a multimeter. I feel like this is someone saying they're having trouble making coq au vin but then telling me they don't have any pots and pans! It's something that should be bought before a first PCB, heck before a soldering iron (since it's also needed for breadboarding). I wish I'd had someone tell me this before I started building, I could have saved my first couple attempts.

I really can't achieve any decent standard envelope (wha-wha) sounds with the range to the right (LED brightens with dynamics)

Make sure the sweep is at minimum, and I'd suggest sticking to bandpass or low pass. Start with the input gain down and turn it up in small increments. The up range setting is going to sound a lot less ... dramatic. Possibly even "broken" or just squicky. Once you get a little bit of sweeping, you can fiddle with the Peak.

Also, I'm fairly certain I can produce some squealing and feedback with mine in certain settings. It took me a couple days of fiddling to find the settings I used in the video so I didn't look stupid trying to demo a setting that didn't make noise.

Keep in mind that the Nautilus is meant to be a reproduction of a vintage device that can be built with today's parts, with one or two extra bells and whistles, and not a full-on "better Mutron," which is what the Meatball is.

Really any mods you're going to do are going to be either to affect the sweep or add more controls to the envelope. These are worth considering but will turn it into something else:

-Buffered input. This changes the input loading and does some other weird things. It's a big reason the Nautilus sounds and behaves slightly different from the EHX Q-tron.
-External volume (you could go with the gain trimpot -- or a real voltage divider volume control at the output)
-Decay control (make R15 variable, something like a 100K with 10K as the minimum resistance)
-Some sort of frequency selector for the envelope control (changing C4, which can affect which frequencies trigger the envelope)
-You could also make the "range" switch and the relevant resistors (R10, R11) a threshold pot. I'm not sure how big a range is really useful there, but I would say a 100K pot would cover probably the entire useful range of every guitar at almost any gain pot setting. It might even handle line level signals.
-You can tinker around with C5-C8 to change the frequencies of the sweep, but it's hard to imagine that you can't find a frequency sweep you like among the settings of the switches.

Are both the delay and dry signal above unity?

I'm not sure Brian's exact reasons for it, but in this design, the gain of the first op amp stage is 2x, and then the second stage is 1x, instead of the usual 0.5x. In any case, the easiest change is to drop R5 -- I'd socket it, then try 5.1K first and tweak from there.