[NPD] A BitQuest, CSP026, Tone Job, Ojai R30s, and lots of patch cable - done? ...

JEPBLEP

A couple of additions after some great advice from you guys - starting of with plugging the final gap on the board with a BitQuest by Dr. Scientist. It's super early days and will need more time to play with this, but first impressions are a lot of fun and surprisingly subtle effects when dialled in so.

Also replaced the TU-3 with a Polytune 3. Needed the True Bypass to make the fuzzes play nice - they didn't like being fed a buffered signal unfortunately.  

 

Customs finally released my Analogman order - a modded CSP026. It's the classic hand wired Phase 90 vintage tones by MXR, but with the convenience of a 9V input and a pretty little green light to stop the guessing game of seeing if it's on (looking at you Mr. RAT).  

 

Last new pedal addition is another replacement - out with the Boss GE-7 and in with an EQD Tone Job. With all this pedal malarkey things have the chance of getting a tiny bit noisy and unfortunately the GE-7 magnified that above unity. Toyed around with the idea of modding the GE-7, but managed to get a good deal on this Tone Job and with all the buttons and toggles on the board, it's nice to add some simplicity. Still playing around with dialling it in, but it does what it says on the tin! 

 

So with new pedals comes a new –and final– layout. A lot of procrastination over late nights, sketches, mock-shifting around on the board, and changing my mind. But ended up with this - the numbers are the signal chain order (full list below), plain block for input, hatched block for output. It's not the most efficient in terms of shortage of patch cable, but the most ergonomic.

There's a Cinco Cinco patch bay (awesome by the way, for what it is) attached on the bottom of the Pedaltrain that connects directly to the first and last pedal in the chain and links to the Lehle so I can easily patch in the Space Echo tape delay - no external wires in the middle of the board and with a stomp the board still provides pass through of signal with the RE-201 turned off.

 

Ka-chow! A lot of pealing of dual lock and 23 various lengths of Evidence Audio SIS cable later...

 

Seen a lot of the boards on here with intricate railing of power lines beneath the board - the daisy-chain ability of the Zuma and Ojais allow for a spread of plugs, which helps, but admittedly mine is not quite at the same level, but inspired this pseudo-tidy approach. In a way it's a shame they're tucked underneath as Strymon did wicked job with these PSUs - light, easy to work with, pretty, and most importantly - all beautifully quiet.

On a super anal note: not sure why the Zuma ships with straight to right-angled cables and the Ojai with right-angled to right-angled...

 

Lastly - a little gratuitous glamour shot. Oh nearly forgot - added a black pick guard to the strat - here's a better look.

Full chain: [Guitar] > Cinco Cinco PB > Polytune 3 (TB) > Spaceman Sputnik > Shin’s Music Dumbloid > Pete Cornish NG-2 > Fairfield Circuitry Barbershop > Klon Centaur > Origin Effects Cali76-TX > ’85 Proco RAT > Analogman King of Tone > EQD Tone Job > Hologram Dream Sequence > Hologram Infinite Jets > Dr Scientist BitQuest > Analogman MXR ’74 Phase 90 CSP026 > Roland Space Echo RE-201 (via Lehle) > OBNE Black Fountain > Strymon Big Sky > Boss Looper RC-3 > Cinco Cinco PB > [Amp]

Paul_C

Wazmeister

Bloody great board mate and stunning photos !! Congrats...

Warms me cockles on this heavy winters day

I do fancy one of the Ojai

Gadget

Nice job.

mattdavis

You do NOT want to spill your beer on that little lot! Very nice indeed and beautifully tidy. My board is embarrassingly messy in comparison 

JEPBLEP

Wazmeister said:

Bloody great board mate and stunning photos !! Congrats...

Warms me cockles on this heavy winters day

I do fancy one of the Ojai

Thanks man - the pics (un)fortunately don't do justice to the amount of twiddling of thumbs and going back and forth on pedals, placement, etc. 

Ojai is great, but full disclosure, best when combined with a Zuma - the Ojai is so compact because its power adapter is external. The Zuma has this built in (and more plugs). 

JEPBLEP

@Paul_C ;@Gadget @mattdavis - thanks guys!

VJIves

God, that whole board is disgusting in the best way imaginable. Jealous.

Gadget

JEPBLEP said:

Ojai is great, but full disclosure, best when combined with a Zuma...

Any problems with the Ojai connectors, as I've heard they can be a bit flimsy?

JEPBLEP

Gadget said:

Any problems with the Ojai connectors, as I've heard they can be a bit flimsy?

None - surprised to hear that to be honest - the build quality of the whole thing is typically Strymon. The cables themselves are the neatest I've seen compared to other PSU supplies and the connectors are pretty much standardised compared to most PSUs I've seen.
The only thing I can imagine being a bit less convenient is if you use the Ojai as your main PSU and having the power adapter sit separately from the board, as mentioned above. The 24V cable between the power adapter and the Ojai unit is thicker than a standard pedal power cable, but is admittedly not as thick as a standard power cable. Best fix is to stick the power adapter under the board as well so there's no stretch on that particular cable. Better alternative is a Zuma and add Ojais if you need more outputs - they now do a Zuma R300 that is more compact for flat boards - it sucks a tad as it only has 5 outputs, but it does have the integrated power adapter. 

colourofsound

Are you...gigging this? Because i’d never let that much value leave the house. Some absolute zingers on there mate; congrats!

JEPBLEP

colourofsound said:

Are you...gigging this? Because i’d never let that much value leave the house. Some absolute zingers on there mate; congrats!

Nah man, this is all just dicking around at home.

Gadget

JEPBLEP said:

Gadget said:

Any problems with the Ojai connectors, as I've heard they can be a bit flimsy?

None - surprised to hear that to be honest - the build quality of the whole thing is typically Strymon...

I just remembered reading something on TGP about the Ojai power socket failing / breaking / disappearing inside the unit, but perhaps they've sorted it now.

JEPBLEP

Gadget said:

JEPBLEP said:

Gadget said:

Any problems with the Ojai connectors, as I've heard they can be a bit flimsy?

None - surprised to hear that to be honest - the build quality of the whole thing is typically Strymon...

I just remembered reading something on TGP about the Ojai power socket failing / breaking / disappearing inside the unit, but perhaps they've sorted it now.

Oh wow. Nah, I have not experienced any flimsiness on that bit at all.

Would be pretty hard to bork that tbh... 

Gadget

JEPBLEP said:

Gadget said:

JEPBLEP said:

Gadget said:

Any problems with the Ojai connectors, as I've heard they can be a bit flimsy?

None - surprised to hear that to be honest - the build quality of the whole thing is typically Strymon...

I just remembered reading something on TGP about the Ojai power socket failing / breaking / disappearing inside the unit, but perhaps they've sorted it now.

Oh wow. Nah, I have not experienced any flimsiness on that bit at all.

Would be pretty hard to bork that tbh... 

Great. I'm thinking of swapping from my Voodoo Lab supplies, as I could save space, weight and a lot of messing around with voltage-doubling / current-doubling cables and running-out of mAs!

earwighoney

Very nice pedalboard indeed, but I think you are missing a Boss MT-2. 

JEPBLEP

Gadget said:

JEPBLEP said:

Gadget said:

JEPBLEP said:

Gadget said:

Any problems with the Ojai connectors, as I've heard they can be a bit flimsy?

None - surprised to hear that to be honest - the build quality of the whole thing is typically Strymon...

I just remembered reading something on TGP about the Ojai power socket failing / breaking / disappearing inside the unit, but perhaps they've sorted it now.

Oh wow. Nah, I have not experienced any flimsiness on that bit at all.

Would be pretty hard to bork that tbh... 

Great. I'm thinking of swapping from my Voodoo Lab supplies, as I could save space, weight and a lot of messing around with voltage-doubling / current-doubling cables and running-out of mAs!

It's one of the wonderful things about these units - plenty of power headroom on each output. 500 mA standard per output and two outputs that are switchable between 9V, 12V and 18V (on the Zuma and Ojai R30s, not on the standard Ojai).

The units actually come with a daisy-chain cable as well that should be able to easily power a couple analog pedals on one output. But imho that's kinda beside the point in that if you're going to splash out on these kind of units in the first place, you probably want all of your pedals fully isolated anyway...

JEPBLEP

earwighoney said:

Very nice pedalboard indeed, but I think you are missing a Boss MT-2. 

I'm not worthy.

Wazmeister

My fave pics/board of the year...

Gadget

JEPBLEP said:

It's one of the wonderful things about these units - plenty of power headroom on each output. 500 mA standard per output and two outputs that are switchable between 9V, 12V and 18V (on the Zuma and Ojai R30s, not on the standard Ojai).

The units actually come with a daisy-chain cable as well that should be able to easily power a couple analog pedals on one output. But imho that's kinda beside the point in that if you're going to splash out on these kind of units in the first place, you probably want all of your pedals fully isolated anyway...

Yeah, I don't daisy-chain anything.

At the mo I have a PP2, PP2+, PP AC and a PP Digital and I still struggle for enough juice.

I'd still need to keep my PP AC, but I'm def going to look at the Strymons for DC.

earwighoney

JEPBLEP said:

earwighoney said:

Very nice pedalboard indeed, but I think you are missing a Boss MT-2. 

I'm not worthy.

In that case I hope you have the pedalboard plugged into a Line6 Spider on the Insane channel cranked up.