Kit build - Stewmac/JHS All-American

stickyfiddle

Thought I'd give a bit more detail on this one as I don't think anyone has mentioned the Stewmac kits before. I wanted to give this one a shot as I've always been a fan of Rat pedals, but never tried anything from JHS and wanted to have a go with their take on the circuit. 

First was my usual check & sort process. Anything with only one variation or clear writing gets checked and put in a new pile. Resistor and caps get sorted, double checked and stuck in place so I can't get confused later. Only takes 10 minutes on a kit this size and saves headaches later. 



Next was board-population. I didn't take any work-in-progress shots as they're not that interesting, honestly. Main challenges here were diode legs almost too wide for the holes, and one of the holes for the chip socket not being 100% clean through, forcing a bit of swearing a lot of wiggling to get that to seat correctly. 

stickyfiddle

Next was pots & mini switch. Fairly easy, but did require soldering between existing components on the other side of the board, which was a bit fiddly.



Then off-board wiring. The use of the daughter board with ribbon cable makes this very simple, as only needing 6 wires for power & I/O jacks. But again a bit of a fiddle as the board layout meant the power connections are right under one of the pots, which you've already been told to solder in at the previous stage. Not a deal breaker but a bit annoying.

stickyfiddle

Finally the full install & wire up of the off-board bits. At this point I started testing and got nothing. Nada. Zip LED was working but no signal in on or off modes... wonderful!




After taking everything out again it quickly became clear that it was a simple signal short. In fact it was just the immediate connections to the input jack shorting against the case (again I question why they felt the need to put those connections that close to the edge of the board..). Trimming those to the maximum possible I put everything back together again and it all worked fine. THANK GOD.



And with knobs on. It's not a great looking thing at the moment, as I'm planning a better case for it via pedalpartsplus at some point. But it works and it sounds really great.

stickyfiddle

Soundwise I'm very impressed. The toggle switch is "the usual" clipping diode selection (LED, wide open, Silicon), but the fourth knob is "Sweep", which seems to change the character of the dirt from a really harsh very aggressive Ratty thing, to a smoother more amp-like drive as you turn it up. It's really nice and from a brief play this afternoon it may already be my favourite Rat-alike.

So while the kit itself has a couple of things that mark it out as not as good as the average Fuzzdog, it does sounds great, and overall I'm super happy with it. 

Adam_MD

Nice the parts look pretty decent.  What kind of money do their kits run at?

I have a VFE red wolf pcb in the build pile and a NOS metal can 308 IC I keep meaning to get to which is their take on a rat and looks pretty interesting. 

stickyfiddle

Adam_MD said:

Nice the parts look pretty decent.  What kind of money do their kits run at?

I have a VFE red wolf pcb in the build pile and a NOS metal can 308 IC I keep meaning to get to which is their take on a rat and looks pretty interesting. 

It's roughly $100, which isn't spectacular value compared to a similar fuzzdog, especially if you're shipping to the UK. But I was ordering some other bits so thought I'd give it a try. 

Good pedal though. I'd highly recommend if Fuzzdog do a version. I think the BYOC one is similar in terms of the extra controls too.