Long time, no build reports. Here is what I just finished up this weekend. This is a continuation of my pedalboard in a 1590DD series.
This is the Purple Reign. As you can probably tell, this is inspired by Prince. More specifically, this is inspired by his board that he used around the 1999/Purple Reign time period. According to
http://guitarcloud.org/era/1999, his board was: SD-1 -> DM-2 -> BF-2 -> OC-2 -> VB-2. Since these are all known DIY projects, I decided to make my take on it.
I had the idea for this board for a while, but I had to do some thinking on how to implement it. I had two main concerns in my head: 1) with 3 clocks and 4 BBD's in this box, would I have a problem with heterodyning and 2) how do I get around the 500 pin limit in Diptrace? To get around the 500 pin Diptrace limit (without spending the money on the upgraded version), I split this into 4 separate boards. The first set of boards has the SD-1, DM-2 and BF-2 on it, while the second set has the OC-2 and VB-2. I'm not sure if this was the case, but I like to think that splitting these two boards up helped avoid any heterodyning and clock noise between the two circuits. I was actually surprised when I fired up the first half that there was no issue with the DM-2 and BF-2.
All circuits are stock to what you would get if you built any of the DIY projects floating around for these circuits. The BBD's are V3207's for the Flanger and Vibe, and a set of V3208's for the Delay (about 300ms of delay). I added a stereo switch to select if the stereo out is coming from the VB-2 signal, or if it comes from before the VB-2 circuit, allowing some pseudo-chorus sounds when running in stereo.
How does it sound? I think it sounds pretty good. The BF-2 is good for that Purple Rain sound, and combining the SD-1 and Delay gives some really huge sounds. All in all, its a pretty good and versatile board. Personally, I would probably have something other than the OC-2 there, but Prince never asked me when setting up his pedalboard
