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http://www.strymon.net/bigsky/

Great, another pedal that I will not be able to live without. lol

Cab Filter

There are occasionally times as guitarists where we don't use guitar amplifiers. You might be using a full-range PA system, recording direct, or using headphones. Because reverb pedals are usually placed last in your effects chain, we felt that BigSky could provide more utility for these situations. Just turn on the selectable Cab Filter to engage our sophisticated speaker response curve. Your dirt pedals will sound amp-like, and your clean guitar will have a present yet rounded response.

Sounds cool

Boxed this up tonight and I have fallen in love. Some great Stoner Rock tones to be had with this pedal. I am also finding the more I play with it that I love the "no diode" middle position on the diode switch. Its so harsh and LOUD in a good way.

I had this board sitting around for awhile and wanted to finish it up. I am very happy with the results. I can't remember off hand what germaniums I ended up with since I tried 4 or 5 pairs before I settled on these.

Here is the layout by Ataraxia Engineering I used.
http://music.codydeschenes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Fuzz-Face-4-Knob-Ataraxia-Engineering-Transfer.pdf

I used the UStomp layout and it sounds great. I am hoping to get some audio demos up soon. Im simply love the sound of this fuzz. Its a blast to play.





I think I am going to trim down the PCB since I left the mounting holes on the PCB and did not end up using them. Also, I almost cried when I tested this pedal when I accidently dropped a screwdriver on it and chipped the paint right next to the SPDT switch. I will re-shoot it this weekend.. for now its shall be played..

Just got this in the mail yesterday. Every year my wife and I get a bunch of smaller presents for each other for our anniversary and this was one of the things she got me.



And here it is with its new home.



It is very comfortable and I am so happy to have a legit strap and not a free nylon one I have been supporting in the past.

Cody

I FINALLY got this JMK Fender Blender clone finished. Its been sitting on my bench for almost a month and I always forgot to order the one or two needed parts to finish this beast. not this time, I actually remembered to get the needed parts in my last Tayda order. This thing is fun to play with and with the blend knob it works great on bass. This is my second attempt at enclosure etching and I am pretty happy with the results.




I really need to make a better 3PDT daughter board. These really just look like a mess once they are done.

No smoking weed or premarital sex tonight.. or you WILL die.

Not sure if this has been posted already but I came across a st at Offsetguitars that a dude made a FET version of the Fender 6G15. Here is the info and build doc.
http://surfybear.weebly.com/fet-reverb.html

I built a Monolith tonight and its a CRAZY beast and its been fun to play but I get some loud squealing from it with different know configs.. I was looking on Tagboards since I used Marks layout and another builder had the same issue. He said it would work fine with a 9V bat but on his 1Spot it would squeal. He said this "Used 220uf + a 220R soldered to the dc jack are wonderful, quiet pedal now." and I am not 100% sure how to do this. Does it bridge the positive and negative? Is it in line on one of them? I have seen pedals before with caps on the DC jack but of course now that I need to see one I cant find a picture or info anywhere. Can someone push me in the right direction?

Layout I used: http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2013/06/mountainking-electronics-megalith.html

Thanks
Cody 

edit:
I missed this "I replaced the 47uf cap from +9v to ground with a 220uf one. Te 220r resistor was soldered to the +9v lug of the dc jack, ans from there to the wire that connects to the +9v row in the pcb."

I will try this.

I don't know why I never thought of this before but I thought I would share just incase others never thought of this also. I have a folder that is my catch all for PDFs, Jpegs, Png and other formats that are schematics, PCB transfers and other pedal/electronics related images. Then I organize them in separate folder in "projects" and try to resize all my PCBs in PDFs for easy  printing for proper sizing. I was cleaning up my temp/catch all folder and noticed I had quite a few files with the name PCB-1.jpg and 9V-PCB.png etc.. and had so identifying markers on the PCBs to tell what the hell it was.. Just now I tried google image search and dragged the file in question into the browser and it searched for the image and I was able to find the name of the project. On a side note.. I also found other PCBs this way and was able to find a few new projects to archive.

I am happy to finally get this folder cleaned up.

Time to get back in the swing of things, I have been dealing with the crappy weather here in Fresno and just have not felt like building for the past 2 months. Travel & photography took over for a bit.

This may be a stupid question but I will ask anyway... I am trying to get a bit of stock of axial caps since I got a huge batch of CC resistors and transistors a month ago. I would like to make some beautiful "mojo madness" pedals. I took a few pedals I had in mind like the TBMKI II III, Fuzz Face etc and took down the values but I really don't know too much about caps. So I am looking for the more common values for older fuzzes and ODs to stock up on. Here is what I came up with so far.

Elec & poly:
22uF
100uF
4.7uF
47uF
10nF
2.2uF
100n

or am I going about this all wrong?

Cody

How do you guys do it.. I am pretty deep into a few other hobbies and I find it hard to bounce between them. A lot of how I do it is by the weather. There are many things I cant/wont do when the heat is over 95 degrees. I usually bring my soldering station in the house and take over the kitchen table (The wife approves) so I can get some pedals done but I hate not working on them in the garage with all my tools present.

Also, I am a photographer.. this one has been on the back burner since I hit pedal building hard. (Shameless plug http://photography.codydeschenes.com) I really love to landscapes but that obviously reqieres me to go out side.. so hot summers seem to slow me down on this also.

Lastly, I am a gamer at heart and have been gaming since I got my first Atari 2600. With a bad collecting habit in place I started collecting and repairing/modding gaming consoles. Here is an older pick of about 75% of my collection. (http://www.evolvingconsole.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arcade_Consoles.jpg)

And the most important for last. My wife of 14 years has been a great inspiration and support for me. She does not necessarily "get" my hobbies/obsessions but she understands the need for them and supports them as best as she can. With each of my hobbies she contributes in her own way. With the Pedal building, she helps with design and colors/knob schemes and like watching me get so excited that I want to hear the thing as soon as the last wire is placed. With the photography its a way for her to get out of the house and drive around with me to find interesting places the shoot. It usually turns into eating out also. With gaming there is not much she can do other than watch me play if she wants.. she is not a player bu any means. She does like some of the more cinematic games like recently "The Last of Us" and the "Uncharted" series.

All in all I would like to know how you guys/gals balance your hobbies & family.

These just got here today.. I have been giving my semiconductor tester a workout today lol

dumped the box on the table:


Let the sorting begin:


2N's OC's BC's AC's 2S's and more. 95% are NOS and the 25 I have tested so far all fall in line with the spec sheets so thats good odds so far.

These with the recent Allen Bradley's resistors I got, now I just need to get some vintage caps and I am set for vintage "noisy" builds. lol

Got these yesterday in the mail. It was a estate sale from a ham radio head that did a lot of repairs. I am now in the process of sorting by wattage first then by value. I don't know if its just me but its soothing/calming sitting there and sorting. It relaxes me...

Not sure how many Strymon Timeline or Mobius users there are here but I have waited FOREVER for this to use with my timeline. I was an early adopter to the Timeline and I hate the fact that programming it is such a chore. Shoot.. even my Midi Verb IV is not as hard.. programming the Timeline reminds me of making Yamaha DX7 patches.

http://www.strymon.net/2013/05/29/preset-librarian-open-platform-developers-edition/

There is no GUI for the in-depth stuff yet but basic org and backup is available.

for now.. commence the preset swaps!

I missed out on the first run of the Death By Audio Sunshine Reverb pedals made for or "in light of" Ty Segall. It got a very loose "springy" sound and it has a feedback knob to make the reverb go into a oscillation frenzy. So it got me thinking... is there a way to add a similar feedback loop to a RubaDub or any other Belton based verb pedal. Is it a matter of feeding the output back into the Belton brick or something like that? I'm getting some of the same sounds as the DBA with a Earthquaker Ghost Echo clone I'm working on but I would really like to add this feedback loop thing.. thoughts?

Here is a nasty demo of the sunshine.. I love how nasty it is.

I was thinking, Is it possible to have, lets say a enclosure with 2 effects and they are wired for either/or and not paralleled. Is it possible to have one set of controls for both pedals? Like one gain pot that is connected to both effects. Will a duel gain work or can I just wire up both to the same lugs on a standard pot? Just a thought.

I needed a nice little power source for my bench when testing and I figured the RoadRage would be perfect. Also, when I get a proper bench power supply I can use the RoadRage on my board. I etched the board and populated it and was planing to put it in a 1590B but I noticed I can squeeze it in a 1590A and still have the total of 5 DC jacks.





That crooked DC jack is driving me nuts. My OCD is making me open it up again and fix that lol.

I busted out the DMM and everything checks out right for the 18v, 15v, +9v & -9v.

I am attempting this weekend to learn some Eagle. I do not have any EE background and like a lot of people in the DIY scene I have learned along the way. I used to so VERO layouts when I first started a year ago and now I etch all my own boards so I figured instead of looking for transfers all the time I need to start making them. Logical right? I was a Mark's site tagboardeffects and he has a verified JHS Mini Bomb that is a copy of a Escobedo Duende JFET. I wanted to make a schematic from looking at the Vero and this is all new to me. Can someone take a look at what I came up with a see if it looks right? Then I will know that Im on the right track.

Here is what I used for reference.
http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2013/04/escobedo-duende-jfet-jhs-minibomb.html

Here is my schematic.


Here is my layout.


Thanks

Cody

My wife just picked me up some Avery clear sticker sheets and I am trying to figure out the best way to utilize them. I am having a hard time figuring out how to cut the round corners properly. Any tips out there for doing so.

All in all I just want to try this method and see how the outcome is since I still may try water slide again. I had a bad time with the water slides I did a few months back.

Thoughts?