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Hey guys.

I don't post here a lot but this site has been, pretty much, my savior this last year. I've been battling alcoholism ferociously, on and off through 2010-2014. It's been extremely difficult to say the least. This forum, it's content, the nice people that reside here... It's overwhelming how positive of an impact this place has had on me. This hobby is getting me through the hardest time in my life. Self-esteem is important once you realize it's gone you know... Of course, to top off this year, last night I found out my girlfriend of 4 years was doing the boogie-woogie with my best friend and drummer. Needless to say my insides are in knots at the moment. I've been staring at the wall behind my desk for the last 24 hours just like... WTF.

I found out I'm not eligible for student loans to get back to school (don't fuck your life up kids), so I've had to scrape every penny (sacrificing sweet builds) to barely get away with paying my way into a lame community college. I live in New Mexico where minimum wage is low, jobs are few, people are in need, and if you don't have a degree/certification you're just S.O.L. I'm embarrassingly grateful Taco Bell called me in for an interview, haha.

Anyway, enough pity party. I'm going to get my soldering certification at that lame community college here. Hopefully be moving out and moving on from this toxic relationship. I can say one thing for sure... This place has been nothing but a positive note in this grueling year for me and I'm absolutely grateful for it.

Love your family guys. Love your friends. Go get what you want/need to support the ones you love. I, for one, am pushing my hardest to be a shining light this next year.

Merry Christmas. I'm thankful for the all mighty BEAN, his forum, the builds, the people. It's silly to say, but building pedals has damn near saved my existence and well-being.

My "friends" will still be getting coal for presents though, haha!

PEACE NAMASTE LOVE PASSION DIY

-Max

Until they have a native Mac version, I won't be using Diptrace. That's one thing that Eagle does have.

Jacob

Most true, it's why I started with Eagle. It's a shame, DT is really putting people off by not having a native Mac version. X11 is just... ugh. I really should thank you for your Eagle tutorials Jacob. You've helped me and countless others get their hands dirty with making pro layouts.

Eagle is like learning to play guitar on a craigslist acoustic with horrible action, high tension strings, fingers bleeding struggling to get a good G chord. Then you learn how to make that guitar sound good with time and patience.

Diptrace, to me, was like playing my first electric guitar after I learned to play the crappy acoustic.

It's like butter. 

Anybody on OSX have diptrace working? Last time I tried to check it out it would only let me open the part editor and nothing else.

On my old Mac I was having problems too. I don't recommend it. I installed Parallels 7, a windows virtual machine, then installed the windows version of Diptrace. Basically it just runs Windows like an app, it ran much better. Eventually I installed a full Windows 7 partition on the Mac through Bootcamp. Ran excellent.

It really is a shame the Mac version is buggy. It turned me off at first, but it's not hard to install a virtual machine or go bootcamp. I did both, both worked fine.

Yeah I have an XP partition on my Mac but I was hoping I could get the Mac version to work. Oh well.

Richard

I certainly understand, I went through the same thing... but when all is said and done, just the learning curve of Eagle was hefty enough to warrant the trouble to get Diptrace on Windows. That doesn't even include developing a workflow within Eagle. I'd say it's far less trouble to get the Windows version of Diptrace. Once it's installed and you've got your workflow going in Diptrace (which to me is more efficient) it's kind of a no-brainer for me. YMMV.

If I was an employed EE with time to burn on complex and profitable projects, sure, I'd use Eagle. It's the industry "standard".

For making dirt simple projects like our little guitar pedals, playing around, having fun, etc... Diptrace wins without question.

Anybody on OSX have diptrace working? Last time I tried to check it out it would only let me open the part editor and nothing else.

On my old Mac I was having problems too. I don't recommend it. I installed Parallels 7, a windows virtual machine, then installed the windows version of Diptrace. Basically it just runs Windows like an app, it ran much better. Eventually I installed a full Windows 7 partition on the Mac through Bootcamp. Ran excellent.

It really is a shame the Mac version is buggy. It turned me off at first, but it's not hard to install a virtual machine or go bootcamp. I did both, both worked fine.

Yea, things are getting pretty weird over here. 

Guys, it's just so easy. After learning Eagle (at least good enough for what I need), I can positively say Diptrace is here to stay. I really recommend people give it a shot. It has it's ups and downs like Eagle, but ultimately Diptrace's pros far outweigh the cons in my opinion. I even imported my old Eagle SCH files into it with no problems. Making layouts is no longer a chore.

The UI is far more friendly. It just does what you want it to do (with a little patience at first). Here's a lame ROG OMEGA layout I just whipped up. The 3D option is simple and just looks darn cool. Loading the 3D library makes the previews pretty spankin' hip in my opinion.

Shout out to Chromesphere for his tutorials, although it was so straight forward I hardly needed to finish the video even. Thanks man!

Awesome! I started with Eagle and did a few boards. It took quite a while to get an efficient workflow down. It wasn't bad, but let's say it wasn't very much fun either. Then I saw your dip trace tutorial and decided to give it a go and as of now I much prefer it to Eagle, I didn't even get through your video before I was rock in' a layout! Much more intuitive interface, easily adjust pads/traces, add pictures, 3d models, its a blast! Much more "fun" than Eagle to me. I look forward to your future videos.

If you've got the balls to wrangle this in as your first build, with cool artwork to boot, we certainly look forward to seeing what you bring in the future! Looks great!

Welcome to the coolest hobby on the planet.

As I see it, we all liked to play with toy cars as youngsters. Some of us like to build model cars from scratch. You just built a level 3 model 59' Mustang, not an easy feat.

You know we want to see the engine though, guts guts guts!

Right on! I'm a movie buff and love a good flick, especially ones dealing with our human experience. I will check it out. I think my favorite forum could use a movie thread too!

Last night I crumbled and watched Mega Shark VS Mecha Shark. Lol. It is what you expect, but the production and acting was suprisingly well done. Is 'Her' on Netflix? If not I can find it.

Other recommendations - Cigarette Burns. Horror/Thriller style.
                                      YellowBrickRoad. Tense thriller style.

I'm surprised I don't see him pop up more on forums. The dude is unreal, capable of being extremely technical and creating music that flows beautifully. He's a guitar player's player and an easy listen to those who don't play which is not common in the realm of tech acoustic players. I frickin' love the guy. His newest album is great. I love is transparency in what he does, as in he'll show and teach you "how" but knows you can't do it haha. I often feel inferior watching him, but his music is so beautiful it's hard to turn it off. It's torturous.

Plus his pedal board is huge. Long live JG!

Agreed, but Juansolo has my heart <3

I read on diysb that one dude uses three ring binders with plastic sport card inserts. My old Pokemon and baseball card binders are going to be converted to holding resistors, caps, trannies and diodes on my next order. Just gotta label them. Seems like a great idea if you have a small work area and don't want to have a zillion component drawers like me.

Use graph paper. Take your time with it. Make a graph paper "shell" taped to the enclosure, mark your points for pots/switch/jacks/led, then use a hammer and nail to dent those points you made, then drill them. I use that method for every pedal I do, it always comes out even and nice. Plus if you're careful you can use the same template over and over. DIY.