STOP - AMZ Q&D Compressor 2

[mcasemo]

I wanted to make a noise gate to possibly use with the ROG Thunderbird, then a friend suggested the octagon/stop sign would be funny as a noise gate.  So looking for noise gates and found the AMZ Q&D 2, which is a compressor as well and still fits the stop sign joke and has a mute function.

It uses a SSM2166, which is for mic preamps or something, seems to work well.   Handing over to a friend to test out with ambient slide stuff and to test the noise gate (i have no noisy pedals around that work).   "Ratio" should be "Rotate" or "Threshold".  I got confused.

This is my first SMD soldering attempt, chip to adapter board, to stripboard layout.  Not sure i was built for SMD, haha

cheers

[Leevibe]

Haha! That is genius! Best use of the octo enclosure I've seen.

[Invertiguy]

That's a brilliant idea, I love it! Nice work!

[mjg]

Very cool.

And your SMD soldering isn't *that* bad. 

[EBK]

SMD soldering cleans up nicely with a bit of copper desoldering  braid. You don't really need steady hands or fantastic eyesight to solder these, so you are probably built just fine for the task.   

Others may do things differently, but to solder a chip like that, I'd apply some flux to the pads on the board, line up the chip, then drag a large molten blob of solder across each side, not caring the slightest whether I was shorting any pins together.  Then, I'd suck up the excess solder with the copper braid, clean up the flux with some alcohol and be done.

This chip still has some lint from the cotton swab I used to clean it with (some blu tack would clean up the lint), but the joints are decent and took less than a minute (maybe):

[mcasemo]

Oh cool, that's a really good tip.   I did get some flux in a syringe, but did not have any magnification.   I got a usb microscope now and also the ring light/magnifying things, which i should have got years ago.

[alanp]

For SMD work, I usually get a spare enclosure (1590B, 125B or something), stick some blu-tack on top, and then stick the board on. It's a lot easier to work with the board, then.

Very nice, and I like the creativity with the shape and art!