Messages

Interesting trends in this thread, and I'll not make myself an exception to them...

#1 - Practice more and agonize over gear less
#2 - Read more books and less social media/forums
#3 - Maintain/improve my health through good diet, exercise, sleep and less alcohol/caffeine
#4 - Keep building non-necessary stuff but don't buy any non-necessary gear
#5 - Finish my damn dissertation already (this should be #1)

I guess I'll just slap a piece of vero in and create the voltage divider shown in the upper right. Should be pretty painless and I could even use it to simplify other stuff (e.g. have it hold the CLR for the LED).

Thanks for the comments... I think I was trying to make it harder than it has to be 

Is there a way to modify the road rage to output 9v and 4.5v?  Trying to rehouse a dano pedal and would like to use the road rage to provide the 9v power and a 4.5v power source to replace the switching board...

SMH... I have made the simplest mistakes on my past few builds.  I guess this is what happens when you build in short sprints with long gaps between... lack of continuity from start to finish and limited time means stupid mistakes.  And this is a new one, I haven't seen before...

Forgot the CLR and the power supply limited the current to a degree where the LED hung on.  When I went to check voltages, I pulled out my one-spot and boom, bright flash on the LED and then nothing.  Then I realized there was no CLR... smh.  Once I replaced the LED and added a CLR, everything worked just fine.  I guess the LED was pulling all the current and the low output was due to not having enough current to drive the thing.  Crazy.  Sounds good at very low volume this morning.  Now that it's working, I'll clean it up, solder in my working 2N1101 (hfe = 45) and maybe play with R3 a bit to make sure I'm going to be getting a good range of gain and output without ending up with settings where I can't bring things back to unity.

Oh, and I'll see if adding D2 matters.  Does this diode do anything tonally?  Any forward voltage range to stick with?  The build doc says to use Ge there with a Ge transistor, but that's it.  Suggestions are appreciated.  Thanks!

Voltages coming later...

I think I got them from eBay but they look just like this...
http://www.smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/2n1101-house-number/

Can't seem to find a full datasheet, but found this...
https://alltransistors.com/transistor.php?transistor=402
http://www.datasheets360.com/pdf/-1082953503728154001

Voltages and photos coming soon.

I put together a clipper ship using a PCB kindly gifted to me by a madbeaner over the holiday break and, unfortunately, only had a moment to test it and it didn't go so well, so I have some debugging to do, however, I am curious of something for anyone familiar with the circuit...

My build has uses...

R3 - socketed (7.5k was used to test)
Q1 -
Q2/Q3 - 2N5457
D1 - 1N5817
D2 - omitted
D3/D4 - on a switch with diodes ranging from 0.27v to 0.75v forward voltage

I don't have many NPN Ge transistors, unfortunately, but I was testing it with a spam can GE 2N1101 transistor with hFe (on my Peak meter) of 45 with a leakage of about 0.08uA or mA (whatever the standard output is for that... this is from memory).  Bypass was good but the with the pedal on, I get decent volume when engaged that quickly drops off (fraction of a second basically) and the sound is then well below unity gain.  I hear distortion so it's clipping, but for some reason, even with max volume, I'm getting less than unity gain.  I'll poke around and check values but was curious if what I was finding could be caused by the low hFe on the transistor or something similar.

Thanks for any help!  Will update and provide photos once I get a chance to go over it and verify everything again...

Build doc used provided below for reference...

Epic guitar, pedal and rockstar attitude.  Love it and thanks for sharing.  This is badass!

Dang. Would LOVE to make something like this. Any idea where the joysticks came from? Also interested in the pot throw question.

So I was able to slip away for a couple minutes today and took it apart, reflowed everything, and added another couple layers of electrical tape on the back side of the dualgang pot and it fired up just fine (as far as I can tell... had  to run it at super low volume due to guests in the house).

Looking at it again, I am guessing I had a slight short between something in the upper right corner of the PCB and the back of the gain pot which caused the issue.  Solder joints all looked good.  In any case, I spent way more time searching for incorrect parts or other issues than I needed to but it helped me speed up ad IDing resistors from the color bands.  So that's a plus...

Thanks for the help and hopefully it sounds good when I get a chance to get some volume going.

Excellent looking inside and out.  Bet it sounds great and it will be a big hit when you give it to your son!

Been on the Netflix/Hulu/AmazonPrime/HBOGo thing for about 5 years. No regrets. Also got ATT fiber internet a while back on a promo because google fiber just came through. $70 per month gets me about 350Mbps download and about 100Mbps upload. Far more than I ever needed. I used to have the 25Mbps download service and never. Prices issues.

Ditto -- despite my ridiculous PCB backlog, I'm now debating buying more if a donate button doesn't show up soon 

The boards will probably be in his onlineshop. Google for DeadEndFX

Thanks for that (seriously)!  I had no idea he had an online shop.  Soo many cool PCBs!

That looks awesome!  I really need one of those PCB's  .
Are you going to do a group-buy?

Group buy!  Group buy!  Group buy!

In as well if such a thing occurs. 

I'm glad you're taking the steps to fix your situation.  Changing jobs is always difficult, especially when you pivot or shift to a new area.  It will all be worth it and the extra 90 minutes you'll get by reducing your commute will do a world of good for you, I'm sure.

Congrats!