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I just recently picked up a Rane AP13 acoustic preamp, which actually came with an AKG gooseneck internal mic for acoustic guitar. I'm currently playing an Alvarez Yairi WY-1 that I've had since '97, and I love it. I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron and I'm considering installing the mic via Dual Lock or mounting a small wood block to attach it to inside the guitar. At any rate, currently the guitar sports a typical under-saddle piezo pickup and battery powered preamp. So I'm guessing the current wiring is hot signal from piezo to tip of TRS output jack, battery negative to ring and ground from piezo and battery to sleeve. Does that sound right?

I'd like to incorporate the internal mic and the Rane AP13 allows for TRS input, with tip from hot piezo, ring from hot mic and sleeve being ground. However, how do I wire this up with my existing battery powered preamp setup? I would assume that I still want the preamp to only power on when a cable is plugged into the jack, but I can't figure out how to make that work if I use the ring from the TRS for the mic hot signal.

Any thoughts and insight is much appreciated. Thanks!

Jonathan

Okay, this is going to sound strange.  My long-time (12 years) gigging buddy and bandmate is moving away.  I want to make him a one of a kind "tuner".  Basically I want a single LED that lights up when it receives any audio signal.  Preferably brighter with stronger signal and fading as the signal from the guitar dies.  Does that make sense?  Seems like it would be a very easy circuit to come up with, but I'll need someone more versed than I to draw it up.  Anybody feel like helping me out?  I would greatly appreciate it.  Yeah, so if you're wondering, he'd always be "in tune".   

Thanks!

and of course the Clusterfuzz had to be the one.  I haven't been tempted by any other commercial pedal in a long long time, but this one had me from day one.  I was just waiting around until the right time.  I have been back and forth with a bunch of different fuzzes.  The Cosmo was fantastic, but I sold it and I never could quite get the synthy, 8-bit goodness out of it.  I've only had a few minutes with it this evening and it is just incredible.  I've got it loaded up on a grab-n-go board for a practice I have this evening for a Santana tribute band I'm playing in.  Already know I'll be able to dial in the tone I'm looking for. 

Great job to Brian and the guys for an incredibly versatile and great sounding pedal. 

I keep coming back to THomas' build here:  http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=18394.0, which is just an epic build.  It would be perfect for my monthly acoustic gig, but I'm not sure that having a tube protrusion would be good for me since I want something I can just throw in my acoustic bag, which might get jostled a bit. 

So with that in mind, can you guys point me in the direction of a solid state project which might fit the bill as a front end for an acoustic multi?  I love the idea of the toobey goodness offered in the valvetizer, but is there a way to accomplish something like that solid state?  I'm sure there probably is, to an extent.  I'd then add a Bear Hug for compression, probably a Six Shooter or 5 Band EQ, a Cave Dweller for a little delay and a Tenebrion for Verb.  I may also throw in a Chorus board that I already have, then the Line Driver for direct out. 

Thoughts are appreciated!  Thanks. 

Hey guys,
Looks like we lost some posts discussing swapping out C22 to provide the ability for the Rate LED to light at lower speed settings, but I can't remember what the suggested values were.  Seems like there was also talk of swapping one of the trannies, maybe Q12 or Q13, for an MPSA13 for more speed.  Any direction on increasing the speed and getting the rate LED to show lower speed settings?  It's not a deal killer and my preference would be not to go desoldering resistors around the speed pot, but thought I'd ask if it's an easy fix, since I socketed C22 and the trannies.  Thanks!

So, after refusing to spend another $50 on printer cartridges for our 10 year old, originally free Canon Pixma 410 printer, I decided to bite the bullet last week and buy a color laser jet printer.  After a lot of research, I settled on the Brother MFC-9130CW multifunction printer.  Ordered on 5/6 and received on 5/9.  Was doing my first decal prints tonight and made sure to set the paper for glossy paper, manual feed, etc., etc.  First couple go through fine, then next one....FUSED TO THE FUSER ROLLER.  Done, just like that.  You gotta be $hittin' me.

Man, I'm pretty ticked, so I needed to vent to somebody.  I've reached out to B&H Photo, which is where I purchased it from.  Let's hope I can get it returned.  Of course, I just put all the original packaging in the recycling today.   

Hey guys,
I've been a bit slow on the pedals recently as I've been spending parts money on hardware for a new guitar.  Here's a parts caster I just finished up to scratch a tele itch.  I've never owned one and have been hankering for one for a while.  The body is an MJT Taos Turquoise medium aged body that I bought from a buddy of mine that does a lot of gear trading/buying.  I also got the flamed maple neck from him and the gold anodized pickguard.  It's an old neck and neither of us have any idea of the make, but it's gorgeous.  The frets needed a little leveling and recrowning, but it was fairly easy to whip into shape.  The rest of the hardware was either purchased from MJT or from eBay.  Really can't say enough about how good Mark & Matt Jenny are to deal with.  These guys are absolutely top notch in their craft and how they treat folks. 

The pups are from Cavalier Pickups.  Goodness gracious do these things sound freakin' fantastic.  I went with the Fat Lion in the bridge and the Lion King in the Neck, all with 4-way switching, well...because.  Man do these things sound awesome.  If you check out TDPRI.com and ask about pickups, you'll see Rob's pickups highly lauded.  There's a reason for it.  Great price too. 

Anyway, got to really put it through it's paces this past Sunday and man it was just lovely.  Not sure it will completely replace my Gretsch 6118T Jr, but it will definitely be getting plenty of playing time. 

Here are a couple recent builds, both for me.  I'm a big Jerry Garcia fan and his Mutron tone has always been a favorite of mine.  I built the Kraken for jams with my buddies when we venture into Dead territory.  Pretty fun pedal.  Speaking of which, that's a hint to where the artwork comes from. 

My printer sucks, I'm ready for a new one.  What was supposed to be black always turns out this washed out crappy blue black.  Oh well.





Next up is a Cupcake.  I actually really like the sound of this.  I was kind of surprised, but it is a pretty musical compressor.  Building this in the 125 was like building in an old Incredible Hulk lunchbox.  I'm not a fan of 1590A's and I like the top mount jacks for 125's, so that's what I went with. 

This is a powder coated enclosure from BLMS.  All good except that the screw holes have no threads to speak of.  I mean, you can pull the screws back out with your fingers.  Pretty pissed to discover that after completely finishing the pedal.  Guess, I'll have to make a plan.  I don't have anything to retap the holes, but I might be able to find some larger screws. 

What size screws do most enclosures use?  Maybe I can just go up a step or something.  Ideas welcome. 

Hey guys, I'm looking for some 20awg solid copper wire to hook pots to pcbs, a la juan solo.  Is this what I'm looking for:  http://www.altex.com/20AWG-Solid-Bare-Copper-Bus-Bar-Wire-100-BW20-100-P144341.aspx

Or can someone point me in the right direction?  Thanks!

So it's New Pedal and Power Supply and Pedal Board Here at the house.  I've outgrown my Pedaltrain 2 & BBE SupaCharger so I made a mild upgrade to the Pedaltrain 3 and Voodoo Lab 4x4.  I recently picked up a TC Electronics Nova Delay to replace my Boss DD7.  As much as I wanted to go with one of the DIY delays with Tap Tempo, I got this Nova for $120 and really wanted something that had a few presets.  Pretty stoked about diving into that pedal.  Of course I'll be keeping the Multiplex Jr on the board as my always on delay. 

I've got a few additions in short order so I needed some more room.  Not to mention that I haven't been able to fit my wah on there so...

Here's to re-organizing the pedal board!  I'll probably be adding a routing box as well to make cable hookups a little easier to deal with when running through the effects loop.  I'm thinking that Korg DT-10 is taking up too much room.  Maybe a Poly or Pitch Black?   

So I get together about once a year with three old high school & college friends to make music.  We generally pick 15-20 of some of our favorite tunes and we spend the weekend playing & recording them, for the sake of posterity nothing more.  Last October we holed up in a beachside cabin for 3 days for another round.  Since there are four of us, we basically track everything we can live, played against a midi drum track, then come back and lay the vocals against the live track.  We try our best to leave room for the live feel and some jamming, to hearken to our Deadhead roots. 

At any rate, below is a link to a Dropbox folder with the files from that session, called the Feudal Sessions.  You can download the whole thing as a zip, unzip and drag into iTunes.  I played lead on half to most of the songs and sang on a few; Desire, Everybody Needs Love & Twilight, if you want to put a voice to a post. 

It ain't perfect, but we love going back and listening to these recordings.  Hope you guys enjoy. 
Scattered & Pickled - Feudal Sessions

EDIT: Since John made the request below, I'll go ahead and put the links to the other two "albums" in this first post, along with my solo project done a while back. 

Scattered & Pickled - Are We Live?

Scattered & Pickled - Suite Sessions Gone too Pharr 

Jonathan Payne - Ten Song Conversation

Okay, so I've spent 30 minutes searching for a post that I'm sure no one wants to bring up.  It's about the changes to the components that were found in that one pedal that used to get built on card tables.  You know, Keith over at that other forum did some sleuthing and discovered how the schem for all the "wanna-be-built-on-a-card-table" pedals was wrong. 

So I'm looking for that post to show what components need to be changed in an upcoming build of one of those "wanna-be-built-on-a-card-table" pedals.  Thanks and...carry on. 

I've been a little out of pocket recently as I've taken some time away from building to actually, you know, play guitar and do some reading.

I recently called a buddy of mine looking for a Les Paul, since I've never owned one. He had several, but most were collectables and out of my price range. In the midst of us talking he brought out a Melancon P90 Artist which I pretty much immediately fell in love with.

The neck is really nice and this thing plays like a dream. He let me take it home, along with the LP, to try out. Needless to say, I broke the news to him that he's not getting the Melancon back.  It's number 283, dating to somewhere in '99-00.

What a great axe. There's a mini-toggle to run the p90's either split/parallel/series. Makes for a wide variety of tones.

Alas, buying this one means I have to sell my custom G&L Comanche which is also a great axe. I've got it up on the bay here, if you're interested:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/231287613075


Pics!!







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Hey guys,
looks like the only thing I'm missing from finishing up a Cosmo build is a 1kB pot.  Can I strap a resistor across the pins of a 2kB to get what I need?  If so, and looking specifically at the Cosmo, how would I go about doing that?  Many thanks!

Here's a Green Bean build.  Sounds great.  I've got BAT 41's in the Asym clipping spot and I think I put 1n914's in the symmetric side.  This was a comedy of errors on my part, all having to do with the pot labeling.  I forgot to rearrange them for how the PCB was set up after copying them in.  You'll notice that they correspond directly to Klone pots.   

Anyway, this is going to a friend, which I'm sure will dig it.  Nice easy build to come back from vacation to. 


TS808 clone by Jonathan Payne, on Flickr

TS808 clone by Jonathan Payne, on Flickr

So I'm finishing up some builds after being on vacation a bit and I made some stupid design mistakes. On the Zendrive I didn't accommodate for the LED and on the Cosmo I didn't change the labels to the correct ones after just copying them in. So it looks line my Cosmo has 3 Vol controls. Doh. Looks line I need to remove some decals and redo. Sheesh. That's what you get for not paying attention.






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So yeah, I've had a lot of requests for these from guys at church and friends I play with.  I'm happy to oblige.  I built three of these with the same finish, but the other two are out the door.  This one is actually replacing the one on my board, partly because I wanted top mount jacks and partly because a buddy at church bought the other one off my board.  Works for me. 

Anyway, I posted a while back, when I was painting these enclosures, how much I hate painting enclosures because of all the paint mishaps.  For these three enclosures the paint wrinkled on the second coat and really ticked me off.  So I figured, why not go with it and do a Rej distress look to 'em.  That's just what happened and I'm pleased with how they turned out.  I can't wait for my buddy in Birmingham to receive his, I think this is right up his alley. 

At any rate, just another klone.  Blah blah blah. 

I'm going to put this out there not because I want one, but because I think it's a phenomenal chorus and offers another flavor from your typical CE-2.  Incorporating the Vibe Mod and running it with some better quality components makes for an incredible chorus.  As of yet, I don't think anyone has done a project, vero or otherwise for this.

Schem is here:  http://www.freeinfosociety.com/electronics/schemview.php?id=2292

I admit, I didn't prime the enclosure and I didn't put them in the oven. However, it's not too cold and everything is in the garage at the same temp. This was me going for the standard second coat. Fart.




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...when you're waiting on a Tayda order for the last few pieces for several builds and you forgot to change your Tayda address to your new address until after it shipped and the USPS doesn't heed your forwarding instructions and the package gets to your local post office, within a couple miles, and then gets turned around and heads back to Thailand?

Yeah...me too.