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Oh. Also, everyone should remember two things:

1) EHX has implied that they cooked up something with the same principals as the clone and with the same control layout.

2) EHX has never, to my knowledge, cloned another pedal. It's just not their M.O.

My money is on 18V/0V operation, silicon diodes, clean blend, active treble, and buffered bypass, and not the same parts values with less filtering in general. It's released on Dec. 30 -- I expect FSB will have it traced by New Year's Eve.

[EHX]

Am I the only one amused that EHX chose to put the first major manufactured clone of the Centaur in a 1590B?

Oh dear.

The link, to the documentation of this build, was emailed to you, when you bought the relay from AMZ 

I really hope this post isn't from someone connected with AMZ, because it would reflect really poorly on them.

Ian's post says he lost the documentation that came with the PCB he has. It's also a discontinued project. And the meat of the effect is in the programmed chip. Does he have to post a receipt to prove he bought the thing so he can populate wrapper PCB?

I would like to use separate dual opamps insted of using the quad op amp.

So ... you want to make a Klon?

There may be other differences in the op amps you want to use. You have to check the datasheets.

What kind of paint do you use?

Mostly Tamiya water-based acrylic paints these days. Also model masters and some other brand that's slipping my mind at the moment. It depends on what colors I feel like picking up. This was done with just black, white, light gray, and sea grey (which has a tiny bit of blue in it, for a kind of "cold light" on the shadow).

Regarding board mounted pots shorting, I have 2 solutions.  The obvious one is to use what Barry at GPCB calls pot condoms (they are called dust seals at Mammoth).  Their drawback is that they have a sort of bump or peak on the bottom that pushes the pot away at an angle - making the shafts no longer perpendicular to the board.  I found that they are thick enough that I can shave the bump off with my X-acto knife and they will then fit fine.

The second solution is to cut pieces from a thin rubber jar opener and glue them to the backs of the pots.  I get these as freebies from businesses, but you can probably buy them pretty cheaply.

The 3M tape I use is already a decent insulator (it's thick foam tape). I also have plenty of pot condoms and (much better) dust covers. The pot condoms have other issues - they add height, and they don't have a flat surface, so you can't adhere the PCB to the back of them to keep it from moving around, and as you said with board-mounted pots they force the board up at an angle.

The problem here was specifically that the components overcompressed the tape and then punched through it when I fully tightened the bolts. It was purely my fault on construction -- I simply soldered the board-mounted pots and switches too close to the board, which put stress on things it shouldn't have because the dual gang is taller. I'll know better for next time.

Built this board and put it in a case:


The case had this "cookies and cream vein" finish from Pedal Parts Plus.

So then had to do some "research" for inspiration on the art:


And this is what I ended up with:


Almost stock. I used BC549C for every BJT in the pedal because I have a bunch of them and few 5088s. I've been trying to resist the temptation to mod for the sake of modding lately, but after playing with it a while, I decided to drop the speed limiting resistors to 2.2K. This sacrifices a minimal amount of slow speeds for slightly faster fastest speeds. I also decided to run the LED through the footswitch. There's a 2.2K from the LED's anode to ground, and the cathode connects to ground when switched on. This keeps the LFO running all the time (otherwise it would take a second to go back to oscillating) and also keeps the white LED from being blinding (and saves me from having to use a colored LED in a monochrome pedal ... I won't lie, this was the main reason).

I also socketed R7 thinking I could maybe get a tiny bit more volume, but no dice. Ah well, it's only very slightly below unity on both chorus and vintage, and the chances of me using it in vintage mode or in any situation where I care about the volume drop are pretty small.

No light shield. It's dark in there anyway.

I did have one problem when boxing it up ... I'm not used to board mounted pots, and I had them a little too shallow for the dual gang. The first time I stuck it in there, I ended up with some components compressing and poking through the 3M tape on the back of the pot and shorting out on the dual gang; then I fixed that and ended up with the same thing happening on the volume pot (though this did solve the volume issue ... apparently it was shorting Q2's emitter to ground and nothing else)! Bugger. I finally fixed it by loosening the volume pot's nut by a 1/4 turn. Meh.

EDIT: Oh, one last thing: how is it that no one else has called theirs a punyvibe? It seems like such an obvious pun, but there are no hits in google except a single mention on Circuit Workshop regarding Forrest's puny phase!

Now that they're $5, I'm much more inclined to get them after my current box from BLMS runs out. When they were $9, the difference in quality wasn't IMO worth the cost difference. The epoxy is tougher, the lugs seem more secure even if you do manage to melt it, and they just seem to actuate better. But if you don't ever need to de- and resolder the footswitch, the first two won't matter; and if you're stomping on the switch in a loud environment the second might not either.

But the Alpha DPDTs and Josh's optical bypass has really spoiled me ... they're so nice that now I'm really only planning on using the 3PDTs for LFO builds with the rate LED wired through the switch.

Hehe the little sword in the bean's hand ...

Happy Birthday sir! and to many, many more!

Friday the 13th... is that a good omen?

Yeah, I dunno. But, I will turn 42 on 12.13.14 so I believe I will learn the secret to Life the Universe and Everything next year.

I hope you phrased the question right.

Won't that destroy the universe?

Brian ... I hope you don't phrase the question right ...

Happy Birthday, Brian. Thanks for all you do.

That red phenol is pretty hot. Also kinda dig the green.

>John Hollis Crash Sync

Brian, will this include the necessary LFO on-board, or will it be a sort of "plug in LFO here." (The effect on its own does nothing without sweeping.)

It will have the option of Square/Triangle/None on the PCB. I used to have one of these (no LFO) in a wah shell and it was bad.ass. I might make a spot on the board to add on a ramp circuit for the photocell. I'll have to test it out.

Cool. I have a box for this effect, but I'm not totally sure I'm happy with my layout yet, and it'll be interesting to see what you've done with it in terms of the LFO choice.

>I was going to get them from tayda

I'll just go ahead and recommend against that. For one thing, Tayda's J201s aren't any cheaper than, say, Smallbear, and Smallbear's are known genuine Fairchild transistors.

You are going to need a PILE of them to make several close matches. At least 20. The leftovers are useful in other effects, so it's not wasted, even though it seems a bit expensive now. FETs are like delicate little snowflakes and they all want to be different from each other, so figure it you're just trying to match drain voltages within .05V, and the range can be over 1V on various pieces, you can see that there is a lot of room for it to be "wrong." Fortunately there is a bell curve near the center that will get you pretty close on several. But you still need a lot of transistors.

>John Hollis Crash Sync

Brian, will this include the necessary LFO on-board, or will it be a sort of "plug in LFO here." (The effect on its own does nothing without sweeping.)