The Total Recall took me some time to figure out. I bought the first board too early in my DIY career, destroyed it, bought this second one, built it, and took then ages until I figured out how to bias it. Biasing it is a bitch, nothing else to say. I tried all the methods, coming back to the instructions one, and paying attention to this forum about the end of the process, which has a little quack in the instructions.
Now it’s working perfectly, 550ms of delay, it sounds really beautiful and my son loves it. It does have some MODs: it‘s full bypass, and carries the two MODs proposed in the building instructions, one resistor change for humbucker friendliness and the audio blend pot. I changed the cap of the clock (C40) to 287pF (nominal) to adjust the clock period (132us) as per D. Morrin’s calibration instructions. I also did the opamp mods proposed by Matt Weed from Electronic States and replaced the opamps as following: IC1 = OPA1642; IC3 = JCR4558DD; IC4 = TL072; IC5 = OPA1642; IC9 = TL022. To understand what it does, check Matt‘s article on his post which is much better than anything I could write myself here. (
https://atomiumamps.tumblr.com/post/185732560726/vintage-deluxe-memory-man-clone)
The Bolsonaro/Joker art is from Brazilian tatoo artist Bruno Mello (personal usage only). The background represents the assassination of Brazil by its current president, pictured as Joker. The same president is represented in the name of the pedal, Psycho Retard... well, this being an analogue and vintage delay, there are several connexions... I let you imagine...
I hope you like it this build, which became very close to my heart. I built is for my guitar player son, and after such a painful processes for building and biasing it, I just ordered another board and will build one for my bass player son. I don‘t think this is a one-pedal endeavor...
Zoot
