Topics

I just took this on a trade. It's the cleanest guitar of this age I've had. Very few nics or scuffs outside of Gibson's early go at relicing. It's a 1980 LP 'Firebrand' which is a "The Paul" in mahogany and with the logo branded instead of printed. Same T-top pickups as the Custom but about half the weight. I'm still stoked about it even though I don't really need an LP right now. She's going to the auction block.

   My wife texted a photo of this thing to me from a thrift store asking if I wanted it. The answer was of course yes, and then what the hell is it? I hadn't seen one before. It's a proto station. Plugs into a wall outlet and then delivers a variable + and - 15V DC, 'I measured about 22V max. dc', as well as a dedicated 5V DC. There's a function generator. The settings are for three wave shapes, .1 Hz to 100K Hz in six ranges. There is an 8 ohm speaker, a few switches, logic switches, pots and some other bits.
    Not at all something I even knew existed much less find at a thrift store. I tested everything I knew how to test and it works great. I don't know much about digital at this point but this is an extra motivator to learn more. Now I just need time to use it

Couldn't find any info on it but this looks like an interesting direction for stompbox's to go in.

I'll start my savings today...

Short break in school so I managed to get a couple of builds done. This one's a Pharaoh 'Supreme' I called Ra, aka... Hawk Cawk. This is Ivlark's strip board layout and I added a rotary, daughter clipping board and a 500k pot for the variable input impedance.



This one's a gift for a friend. It's a circuit I've been messing with that has basically turned into two silicon fuzz faces running back to back with a filter in between and lots of negative feedback. The greenish knobs came off an old 60's tube radio and where the original idea for the pedal but I couldn't get them to work out so I switched to the stove top types I got off ebay from some old equipment.

This is a clip from a campy old movie from 1940 that demonstrates the predecessor to the talk box. The Sonovox. In some ways it is way cooler than the talk box in it's ability to interact with all kinds of sound sources. Any one made one? Looks like ridiculous fun.

It's a Fire Fly. Stock build of the version 4 board. Cabinet is pine stained and waxed. Already traded for an Orange Tiny Terror which I love but is marked for another trade once I get a cab built for it. Any one in the market for a Mesa Boogie Nomad 45 combo? I'm looking for more amp building money!

Here is an all in one build of Ivlark's vero layouts of the Grind Customs DeProfundis Delay, Tenebrion Reverb and daughter modulation board. It's all stuffed into a 1590 BB. Very fun pedal and great sounding circuits.

Gut shot before the lid squishing.


One of the colors I used had a little metal flake in it that reflects in the sun in the dark swirl parts. Hard to capture in a photo though.




Demo

An A/B/Y selector/splitter. No gut shot, just a simple wiring deal. Some Virgil Finlay love.

My wife took over the photo dept. and started putting the demos together as well as making the knobs for our pedals. This is all a big improvement. I'm still working on getting a decent recording set-up together. I hope you enjoy the giant fireball at the beginning of the demos as much as I do. Which is a lot The website referenced at the end of the videos isn't up yet.

This is Culture Jam's Box of Hall with a volume knob and a fancy mica washer at the stomp switch. I've forgotten where the giant knob came from but the small tri-point knobs came from H8mtv. I can't find the gut shot on this one.

This is Mad Bean's Pork Barrel with Tone Pad mods. MN3007. Switches between the Boss CE-2 guitar chorus and the CE-2B Bass Chorus. Blend control as well as vibe, depth and rate LED mods. Made this for a Bassist friend. My wife made the knobs.

Messy guts



This is a circuit I've been hacking on for a little bit now. It's the Colorsound Overdriver re-biased with an added gain stage, feed back loop and gain control as well as larger in/out caps. It has one great sound and that's with everything maxed out Sounds like a CSOD with more clarity and punch. I have some ideas to improve on it. My wife made the knobs and a friend made the CAD design for the box and made me a couple freebies. Since the pedal has a slightly 50's ish look I tried playing some 50's ish riffs in the demo but I think it just came out sounding like George Thorogood  I really couldn't get a decent recording of it. I need to go with a dynamic mic next time.

guts

Here's CJ's Box of Hall on vero with a long brick 1H, sans the dampen pot.






Now with volume and tone added as well as a pretty new powder coat from my new powder coat set-up. I am in love with this color! Oh, and a sploded old Mallory because it was sitting there from a recap on this SF Deluxe Reverb.




The BOH was a trade build for this early eighties Morley Deluxe Flanger.


Great sounding flanger, here's some guts.

I am bread boarding a circuit and getting .66 VDC back to the guitar. I've tried caps in all kinds of arrangements at the input but no luck. Is there a typical way of blocking DC like this? What might I be doing that's causing this? Thanks!

Thanks to jkokura for the great Eagle tutorials! This first one started out with Kaycee's John Hornby Skewe's Treble Booster schematic. I found the JHSkewe's Selectatone which is about the same but with a few different values and selectable output caps so I did a mash up of the two. Selectable input and output caps with a BC108. Kinda goes from transistor radio sounding to treble boost to a more full and nasally rawk sound. Purple sparkle paint from PPP. UV led to finish the whole purple thing.



This is a Fuzz Face. One trimmer per transistor so it can dial in some different sounds and take whatever kind of transistors. Board mount pots. The board was made for a 1590a but this is for a trade and the guy wanted a battery option. The finish is some kind of semi-transparent paper with a design on it I got from a hobby store. Not thrilled with it but worth an experiment. Bc108's in this one too and it sounds pretty damn good.  I called the board Silly Face cause of the bc108's and all and then realized Runoffgroove had already used that name and it wasn't even all that appropriate since you could just as easily use ge's if you wanted.

I've been bread boarding silicon Fuzz Faces with BC108's trying to dial in something decent. I finally found a pretty good sound and got rid of most of the noise/laser sounds/oscillation I had going on by messing with all of the resistor values but every version I've made just about has had this issue.. when I roll off the guitar volume the voltage at the collector of Q2 spikes. The voltage goes up with less than a quarter turn CCW on the volume knob to around 5.7v, resulting in a rapid volume drop instead of a smooth roll off. It then heads back down in voltage with continued CCW turning of the volume knob. At full CW the collector voltage is 4.5-ish. This happens with two different guitars that don't do this with the effect off.
I have the voltages at all the transistor pins about were they should be according to the silicon version voltages I've found online. I have found it necessary to bias both collector resistors and lower the value of the feedback resistor just to get to where I am. Not one of the versions I built although having similar part values worked without major tweaking. I'm using the lowest gain Bc108's I can find, around 170 hfe. I'm building this for a friend who specifically asked for Bc108's so I'm trying to stick with them. Any help would be great, thanks!

This is CJ's 'Ersatz Verben'.  It's a fun circuit for those who haven't tried it. Quick to build and is kind of a reverb/echo/delay based on the Crap Fi Delay circuit and the PT2399. A luthier friend gave me some sheets of random veneers we couldn't positively id. This is my first go at mrein's style of wood veneer with border and laquer. I have some ideas for making my results better next time which is good since I have several big sheets of this stuff.




This is the Heliotrope/Robot I posted before but I got it back to paint swirl and add knobs. Swirl is a bit sloppy due to about 5 or 6 dips to get a decent pattern not to run too much.




And if your into poorly done demo's with lots of racket and blinding led's then this shows some of the noise this pedal does. Some of the nuances/noise are lost to the recording but you get the idea.

Here is the classic one knob fuzz built to Ritual specs except transistors. The 2p2222a's were too loud and oscillating and so were BC108's. I had AC176's at around 90 hfe that sound great and got rid of the racket so it's a Ge Ritual. My first 1590a and swirl too. The swirl turned out great but the clear coat f'd it up some.



This is Catilinbread's Heliotrope and Death By Audio's Robot in a box together. The Heliotrope has a pretty good straight fuzz and several cool octave up tones. The Robot has weird arpeggiation, octaves up and down, robot sounds and there's  a lot of fun interplay between the two circuits. Mostly this is a knob turning, synth fun kind of noise box. This was built as a trade for an artist friend who is going to finish the box or have me do a swirl after he gets to play with it for a while. My knobs are bunched up too close to the foot switches.

This is a pedal I built for a trade. The guy wanted a metal muff type distortion and a phase 90 together so this is Tagboard's layout for Wampler's Triple Wreck and Sabro's layout for the Phase 90. I eliminated the script/block switch on the MXR because it didn't seem to make much difference. This was my first go at vero besides a Jawari to learn the ropes. The Triple Wreck is a beast and probably not something I would have built for myself but now that I have I hate to give it up. The pics aren't that great and don't do the finish justice. Oh well, at least I got to break out my metal thesaurus for the knob labelling 

Some new builds for me...

Mad Bean's Cherry Bomb. BC109's. My finish is not what I hoped for and the guts are a mess but it sounds great!



Guitar PCB's Pro Co Rat. Led/diode clipping option on all or half of the signal. Great sounding pedal and an improvement over the original I sold to start this hobby.



A GGG Fuzz Face I refinished and finally got the bias resistor issue worked out with Midwayfair's help. Germanium transistors.

My first build was a GE PNP Fuzz Face by GGG. I never really got it working right and now I have decided to make it work before I allow myself to move to another project. The problem is that I get fuzz on the lower end strings for a few seconds before it fades or clips out. The high E string doesn't even register unless I pluck hard. I have removed every part that isn't absolutely necessary to the circuit and still I have the same problem. I've tried every pinout configuration so I don't think that is the issue. I have read that this could be a biasing issue? This pedal has a bias pot but that doesn't fix the issue. It also had a bias trimpot inside that did not fix it and I took it out and jumpered it. There just isn't that much to this circuit so what could it be? Bad trannies from Small Bear? I couldn't find the values for their resistor substitutes but I think they are correct. I've reflowed the solder and completely rewired the thing. The board is beat at this point since it was my first build and I have messed with it so much since. It sounds great for the few seconds it works. Any help is appreciated, I want to move on!!

This is a GGG Big Muff Pi Ram's Head. Great sounding circuit and I found this great pic of a Jacob's ram skull. Hidden LED for extra creep!

So here's build number three! A 2in1 phaser/tremolo with two Mad Bean PCB's. The phaser is a Smoothie based on the MXR 45 and the second is the Double Flush Tremolo. I built this as a wedding gift for some friends who are in a band together. The photo is one they took last fall on a romantic stroll through the park I suppose. So here's one for love! Engraving with the Dremel tool is something that must take practice 'cause my hand writing looks worse than usual.