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I saw him last night in New Hampshire.  Terrific show.  He makes the impossible (or at least highly improbable) look so easy.

This is my first finished build since January.  Lots of stuff going on in my personal life, but I think it's under control so hopefully I can pick up the pace.

I had some difficulty troubleshooting this one.  I was getting nothing - bypassed or engaged (this is the buffered version).  Let me pass on what I learned to all you interested boys and girls.  Before you spend hours looking up all the component values - writing them on the layout on the build doc, then verifying that all resistors, capacitors and diodes on the board match the layout - make sure you soldered the socket for the TC1044SCPA to the PCB.  Oddly, it won't work without it.

Well, it works now, so here it is:

I finally finished (sort of) my Fuzz Monster using Digi2T's PCB (from DIYSB).  I say 'sort of' because it turns out that the only 12v AC adapter I have has a 2.5mm plug and my jack is 2.1mm.  I can fire it up, but any vibration causes the connection to go intermittent.  So I may be ordering some 2.5mm jacks and swapping this one out.

This build was a challenge to lay out in the enclosure.  It is designed with 9mm board mounted pots and board-mounted jacks (in/out & power).  I immediately decided against board mounting the power jack because I didn't want to deal with cutting a square hole in the side.  I already had to cut a square opening in the top and I figured that was enough stress.  Also, if anyone is capable of installing this board in the enclosure with board mounted in/out jacks, I bow down before you in reverence and awe.  That was a 3D puzzle I just was not able to solve.  I mounted them on the board but eventually gave up and popped them off.

That said, I'm happy with how it came out.  It sounded good on a bench test, but I'm not going to try it through my rig until I get the power situation squared away.

I made the tube port by using a step drill bit to drill a 3/4" hole at either end then cutting the sides with my Dremel using metal cutting wheels.  I clamped the enclosure to my bench with a metal straight edge lined up as a guide.  That turned out to be a little less difficult than I expected. 

I highly recommend using the optional tube LED.  Otherwise it's not obvious why there's a gaping hole in the top of the enclosure. 

Also, the decal is actually straight across the top - that white bent line is the reflection of a fluorescent light in the Envirotex.

This eBay item should do the trick.

I saw one of their basses for sale on eBay and looked up their web site.  Lots of very nice looking guitars & basses for sale at fairly low prices.  There's no "about us" link on their site, so they are a bit of a mystery.  I assume they must be sourcing them in Asia.

I'm wondering if anyone here has any 1st hand experience.

http://www.ravenwestguitar.com/

I finished my first build of 2015.  It fired up the first time (if I don't count the attempt with no LEDs/LDRs).  Sounds great , no ticking.  What I really struggled with was the enclosure.  It looks pretty good - to some extent because I was careful which photo I chose - but it was a PITA to get there.

I know the name Alter Ego belongs to a production pedal, but it was the closest English translation for doppelgänger.

New Yamaha Digital Piano Day!

Well, new to me anyway - the Yamaha PF-500 was discontinued in 2006.  I picked it up yesterday via local Craig's List.  Just what I wanted, 88 weighted action keys, nice piano sounds, and looks good enough that my wife is OK with keeping it in our living room.  Now all I need to do is learn how to play it!   

Also, I had interesting experience with the seller.  I had to drive about 50 miles to pick it up.  Chatting with the seller (who is a sax player), it turns out he is from the same town as me and lived about a half mile away, is 3 years younger than me, and knows a lot of the same people.  He was in a band with an old friend of mine.

It's done, it sounds great, and there's no ticking!  I'm really happy with this.  Thanks to several forum members for helping me when I got stuck a couple times.  I'm not able to test the Pedal or Trigger inputs, but AlanP says they work and they are wired to spec.  I hoped to enter this in the fall contest, but it turns out that my stereo recorder only records in mono.    And the whole point of this pedal is the stereo effect.  I might get a chance to bring this to a friend's home studio & record it there, so I may squeak in an entry under the wire.

I am at the troubleshooting phase, and I may be here a while.

I'm a little confused by LaceSensor's wiring diagram (below), specifically for the right jack.  I don't understand what the right black wire connects to.  I get "right output jack sleeve," but I'm confused by "and sleeve switch lug."  Is that the same as the "Right Output jack Tip Switch" which is referred to regarding the blue left output?

I finally finished my Meatshphere which I started months ago.  I had hooked it up to my test rig and it wasn't giving me much effect - and a bunch of static.  I had read that it was finicky about the IC so I thought maybe I had a bad LM1458 - maybe from Tayda.  So I ordered a couple on my next Mouser order (glad I ordered 2 because I immediately dropped on and stepped on it).  Anyhow, that didn't fix it.  Then I saw a post from LaceSensor over @ DIYSB, where he said "Nsl32 sound like ass".  As they say, truer words were never spoken.  I replaced the NSL32s with LDRs and green LEDs, and now I am a happy man.

The only thing I haven't tested yet is the effects loop, I hope to get to that tomorrow.

Now for the build from hell.

First mistake was deciding that I wanted it oriented vertically.  It wasn't until after drilling that I noticed that the board was too close to the left edge (by a really small amount) and that the jacks wouldn't fit at the top where the holes were drilled.  Crap.

So I widened the holes for the pots & switch to shift the board a little to the right, and used JB Weld to fill the holes at the top.  Because I was finishing the exterior with vinyl labels, I decided to just slap one over the patched holes and not worry about repainting.

Then I tested and boxed it, only to have the toggle switch work intermittently.  Two of the positions would sometimes not work.  I thought I had a short, so I pulled it out of the enclosure and it still misbehaved.  All the solder joints looked good under a magnifier, so I figured the toggle was NG.  Unfortunately I didn't have any more center offs, so I had to wait for my next parts order.  I painfully de-soldered and pulled the toggle, put in the new one and...  same problem.  Then I swapped out the ICs.  Same problem.  So I put it in my 'later' pile and tried to not let it bother me.

Then I read one of Jimi's posts where he couldn't get a pedal working (maybe his Sharkfin?) so he reflowed the solder joints and it worked.  I pulled this one from the 'later' pile, reflowed every solder joint, and FINALLY it worked.  There's a lesson in here about doing the most obvious things first, but I'm not sure I learned it.  We'll see when I run into this kind of build issue again.   

BTW this is a cool pedal.  The board came from Chi-boy.

I finished this one a few weeks ago, but just got to test it.  This is a strange little beast, but lots of fun to play with.  The board is one of Haberdasher's etches from the discontinued thread.  The only mod I included was the fuzz lift.

OK, I'm nuts.  But this?
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/magazine/the-brazilian-bus-magnate-whos-buying-up-all-the-worlds-vinyl-records.html?_r=0

New Epiphone Zenith Fretless Bass Day!!!  I love my new toy.   

Jelani Eddington plays the Main Title from the Star Wars Symphonic Suite at the 5/80 Sanfilippo Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ in Barrington, Illinois.

http://videosift.com/video/The-Star-Wars-theme-on-organ

I am trying to search for some parts on Mouser.  When I choose their site from my favorites (or enter www.mouser.com directly), IE redirects me to http://de.mouser.com.  The last time I was on Mouser's sites was yesterday, when I clicked on a link in one of Thomas's build documents which took me to the German site.  Now it won't let me back on the US site.

I tried clearing my cache (not my history - I hate clearing my history), then restarting IE, but that didn't work.  I sure hope someone out there knows how to fix this.

My second completion of 2014 after the long holiday hiatus.  Very cool pedal and fun build.  I actually finished last weekend, but it took me 5 or 6 sessions to get the trimmers adjusted so the S&H could be used.

As usual, I borrowed ideas from several people on this forum.  The envirotex came out pretty good (I did this and my Harbinger / Voodoo Vibe at the same time).  And I took Cortexturizer's advice and added a blend control using a Schoon Toon board.

A friend of mine is trying to get warranty service on his Fulltone OCD pedal, and he has gotten a couple of nasty e-mails from Michael Fuller.  Anyone have any experience with him or his company?  I am truly impressed by how rude he was.

I finally got back to work on some pedal projects after about 6 weeks.  First one finished - I actually started this one in September - was my Harbinger One.  The only mod is a toggle to select for 9v or 18v, with center off.  Also, this is my 2nd attempt at finishing with Envirotex and the results are much better than my first.  Thanks to juansolo for turning me on to Malleus artwork, and for his excellent tutorial on Envirotex.



The gutshot -



The side - the Envirotex here is much smoother than the first time I tried it.

I finished my Loophole last weekend, just now finding the time to post.  This was etched by Haberdasher, purchased from the discontinued PCB thread.  This is also my first attempt at Envirotex, thanks to everyone who posted their advice.  It came out pretty good, but I might start another thread to get a few questions answered.

It works pretty well, I need to spend a little more time getting the hang of it.  I also found a 90 second version of the voice recorder chip on eBay, I'm considering buying one of those.