Post-Lockdown pedal building

roberty

Couple more here too, I've just been adding decals and reboxing, they look way better. I'm not going to mess with spray paint again, for the time and effort involved I'd much rather track down some powder coated enclosures.  Gonna give it a rest now and try to focus on writing for a bit

andy_k

kossofffan said:

I genuinely had not seen this thread till after completing my first pedal kit yesterday and am properly impressed by all your amazing skills in here! Makes my effort seem very amateur indeed, however I'll upload my efforts to show a beginners first attempt

I liked the look of this, BC DALLAS Treblebooster, and it doesn't sound too bad in the demo either,
But did you notice in the build instructions, the pots are described in reverse?
I don't think it is a problem to just follow the very clear photos, but I have messaged him to see whet he says- I am thinking of trying to get a 9v battery to fit , and I was looking at what I would need to change, I think it just a case of getting a different input jack so that power is disconnected when not plugged in, but I am not 100% sure,I am a bit of a pedal virgin,(building) I am cross referencing some Fuzzdog circuits and he is using a different DC adaptor plug, 3 poles instead of the 2 pole supplied in the kit.
Can anyone give me some info Ta.
cheers 
andy k

andy_k

I posted earlier about my latest creation, the BC Dallas Treble Booster by GMR Sound Research.

I was looking for a clean boost, for solos, and thought this might fit the bill.

It is a bit different because it is built on a tagboard instead of vero or circuitboard, not a bad little kit really.

If I knew more about building, and my eyes were a bit better, and my hands steadier, I think I could get into it, but to date I have only done a couple of Fuzzdog Noisy Crickets, and made a mess of quite a few guitar circuits.

I wanted to see if I could do it as neat as possible, and also want to modify the circuit to accept a 9v battery, it is going to be on it’s own, so seems a bit pointless to have to use a DC adapter all the time.

While I was looking at the instructions, I realised he had made a few errors with the description of the wiring, so I got in touch with him. He agreed and said to just follow the pics.

It was a piece of pie to follow, and I tried to be a bit more minimalist with his wiring colours, so I ended up with a nice supply of spare wire.

I worked out that to get a 9v in there, I would have to shift the board slightly over, and I will have to drill out the bottom right screw post to make room-it is tight, but it will just go in.The baseplate will be fine with 3 screws.

I don’t have a switchable input jack here, so I thought I would crack on and get it done, to see if it works ok.

I am happy with the way it turned out, and will have a go at rehearsals to see if it does what I want it to, I also picked up a Timmy clone here the other day-which will do the same job, but is a bit more complex than I need for the gig.

Hope the pics work, and the T is for TROUBLE, which is what happens when I start my solo usually.

Paint curing.........

Logo applied..........

Out of focus, how it looks when I solder.......

Just enough room bottom right for a smaller 9v, IF I drill out the screw hole and lose the corner, a Duracell doesn't fit.....

It does work, honest......

Can anyone explain to me, simply, what I need to do to  splice in a 9v battery here, otherwise it will be trial and error on my part.

Cheers

Andy k

rsvmark

@andy_k I think you need a different 9v socket if you want to pop a battery in there. The stuff I have seen show a socket with 3 lugs on it ready for various connections. The photo above shows a simple 2 lug jobbie. Hell what do I know- take a look fuzzdog site- all instructions are on there ready to download so you you might be able to get what you need there

rsvmark

Evening all.

New fuzzdog kit arrived so I have been designing a label.... well 4 design concepts. The kit is a Sea Machine EQD clone. So it comes a C Machine. Design homage to one of my favorite bands of teenage years - Magazine - with the double triangles nicked from their logo but they double as the in and out indicators. Currently undecided... any suggestions to nail one of them?

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177074508_5cf99a7550_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177610811_cbe3c66978_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177610766_bf10ed0c23_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177863297_39245a2974_h.jpg ;

Alex2678

rsvmark said:

Evening all.

New fuzzdog kit arrived so I have been designing a label.... well 4 design concepts. The kit is a Sea Machine EQD clone. So it comes a C Machine. Design homage to one of my favorite bands of teenage years - Magazine - with the double triangles nicked from their logo but they double as the in and out indicators. Currently undecided... any suggestions to nail one of them?

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177074508_5cf99a7550_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177610811_cbe3c66978_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177610766_bf10ed0c23_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177863297_39245a2974_h.jpg ;

The last one is my favourite 

roberty

Alex2678 said:

rsvmark said:

Evening all.

New fuzzdog kit arrived so I have been designing a label.... well 4 design concepts. The kit is a Sea Machine EQD clone. So it comes a C Machine. Design homage to one of my favorite bands of teenage years - Magazine - with the double triangles nicked from their logo but they double as the in and out indicators. Currently undecided... any suggestions to nail one of them?

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177074508_5cf99a7550_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177610811_cbe3c66978_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177610766_bf10ed0c23_h.jpg ;

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50177863297_39245a2974_h.jpg ;

The last one is my favourite 

Same :-)

roberty

rsvmark said:

@andy_k I think you need a different 9v socket if you want to pop a battery in there. The stuff I have seen show a socket with 3 lugs on it ready for various connections. The photo above shows a simple 2 lug jobbie. Hell what do I know- take a look fuzzdog site- all instructions are on there ready to download so you you might be able to get what you need there

Yes check out page 7 here http://pedalparts.co.uk/docs/FoxxTave-V2.pdf 

With a TRS socket you can wire it up in such a way that the battery is disconnected when there is no jack inserted. The ground part of a mono jack connects the ring and sleeve lugs together

andy_k

roberty said:

rsvmark said:

@andy_k I think you need a different 9v socket if you want to pop a battery in there. The stuff I have seen show a socket with 3 lugs on it ready for various connections. The photo above shows a simple 2 lug jobbie. Hell what do I know- take a look fuzzdog site- all instructions are on there ready to download so you you might be able to get what you need there

Yes check out page 7 here http://pedalparts.co.uk/docs/FoxxTave-V2.pdf 

With a TRS socket you can wire it up in such a way that the battery is disconnected when there is no jack inserted. The ground part of a mono jack connects the ring and sleeve lugs together

Thanks, I have had a look, seems simple enough, and I have the parts ordered. I have a bit of confusion, as the Fuzzdog docs show a mono jack in the testing phase, but a stereo jack in the final wiring. I have built a few of their kits, so I think I can work it out. You want the battery disconnected both when using DC power AND when a jack isn't present.
Electricity scares me, even 9v DC, and it seems I have damaged one of my Noisy crickets by trying to use an arduino battery box as an external power supply. I bought a couple of cheap ones-thinking they should be useful for emergency power to a (v pedal, it is a small box which takes a 9v battery, and has a 2.1 mm jack, I tried it on one of my builds-which now doesn't work-so I'm not sure. It was working on a battery, but now it doesn't-after trying the box, so I think the polarity may be wrong with the battery box.
I need to check them somehow before I try it on another 9v pedal.

markblack

jed's peds - Axis Fuzz - Roger Mayer

Simply little fuzz to build.

roberty

markblack said:

jed's peds - Axis Fuzz - Roger Mayer

Simply little fuzz to build.

Nice! It's such a good circuit. I had the red rocket version and it was bloody amazing. Preferred it to any other fuzz face style I've played.

roberty

Couldn't help myself and built another fuzz. This is definitely an addiction now

It's my own take on the Foxx Tone Machine / Ultimate Octave circuit on a Fuzz Dog PCB. I used LED clipping diodes and changed some resistor values to control the extra volume.  Also had a mess with the tone stack and input cap to get the voicing I wanted

It has a LOT of mids and a lot of highs too.  I'm hoping it works in the band.  The switch moves the emphasis from the high mids to the mid-mids I'd say.  The octave section is a bit too pronounced for me, not sure how to tame it other than with the tone control

rsvmark

Sorry about this. Noob question- if the build instructions are to ‘jumper the pads’ I am assuming you simply connect a wire across the 2 pads and solder it. Correct?

what do use to do this? A small length of insulated wire or perhaps an off cut from a resistor once that’s been soldered in?

roberty

rsvmark said:

Sorry about this. Noob question- if the build instructions are to ‘jumper the pads’ I am assuming you simply connect a wire across the 2 pads and solder it. Correct?

what do use to do this? A small length of insulated wire or perhaps an off cut from a resistor once that’s been soldered in?

Yep jumper is just straight wire. Use a piece of wire or a cut off component leg. The 1N4001 polarity protection diodes have nice fat legs for this :-) 

andy_k

Bat Box saga.

So I posted earlier about my DC Dallas build, and my power supply problems.

I tested the pedal out at a rehearsal,with  DC brick, and it didn’t really do what I wanted, but it did sound pretty good.

The parts I ordered came, so I had a go at fixing it.

When the pedal came as a kit, it only had DC adaptor power, and I shifted things about a bit to allow a 9v battery to fit, it’s tight, but it fits.

I followed advice to use Fuzzdog wiring as an example, and ordered a stereo input jack, and a 3 pole 9v DC jack.

It was a bit of a pain fitting the new DC jack, as the hole needed was larger, so I reamed out the existing, I re did the wiring as per Fuzzdog diagram, seemed pretty straight forward.

It worked, on battery power, and despite one of the tone switch caps being a bit flaky, it seemed ok. I re flowed the cap solder to fix that problem.

At the same time, I had ordered these small battery boxes, which take a 9v, and have a 2.1mm DC jack output, thinking they might be a nice solution, for powering mini pedals, or just as an emergency supply. They have no polarity marked, and I think they are centre positive, which is why I fried one of my Noisy Crickets testing one.

I swapped out the chip in the Noisy Cricket, which fixed things there.

Anyhoo, I checked continuity on the bat box lead, and sure enough, centre pole was to positive battery clip, I thought it would be simple to reverse the plug, so that’s what I did, with proper heat shrink and everything.

Tried it out on the DC Dallas, no worky?.

Tried a DC adapter on DC Dallas, no worky?

Tried Bat box on a Marshall Guvner with no battery in, WORKS.

Tried DC adapter in same Guvner, WORKS.

Seems, somehow, DC socket on DC Dallas pedal is not good?

Bat Box, seems to work ok, can’t really see why it wouldn’t.

Can’t understand what I did wrong, but at least now I have a battery powered DC Dalla pedal, which is what I wanted in the first place, but I can’t use my emergency measure, or a DC brick to power it, lesson is, careful what you wish for.

Just posting in case anybody else tries my stupid experiment.

stickyfiddle

@andy_k I can't see 100% from those pics and I don't have a fuzz dog manual in front of me, but I would guess you have your red & blue backwards on the DC socket (assuming black is ground!). When you don't have a DC jack plugged in they're both connected within the socket, so it doesn't matter. But when you plug a DC plug in it disconnects the battery (both so the battery lasts longer and so the pedal gets 9V, not 18V). 

You can check by plugging in a DC plug that doesn't have any power to it - your battery box would be ideal without a battery in it, obvs. If the pedal still works it means the internal battery is still connected, which means switching red & blue will fix it. 

andy_k

stickyfiddle said:

@andy_k I can't see 100% from those pics and I don't have a fuzz dog manual in front of me, but I would guess you have your red & blue backwards on the DC socket (assuming black is ground!). When you don't have a DC jack plugged in they're both connected within the socket, so it doesn't matter. But when you plug a DC plug in it disconnects the battery (both so the battery lasts longer and so the pedal gets 9V, not 18V). 

You can check by plugging in a DC plug that doesn't have any power to it - your battery box would be ideal without a battery in it, obvs. If the pedal still works it means the internal battery is still connected, which means switching red & blue will fix it. 

Thanks, I was going by orientation on the Fuzzdog pics, I will use your method to check, That was the bit that was confusing me-but the internal connections in the socket make a bit of sense, I think it is pure luck the thing works at all for me.

andy_k

Nope, bat box (with no battery) connected, pedal doesn't work. ( battery is still inside pedal )
???

Winny_Pooh

You may have to switch red and blue. Grab a meter and when you have a pedalboard dc cable plugged in, the dc sleeve should have no resistance to the blue wire. 

stickyfiddle

andy_k said:

Nope, bat box (with no battery) connected, pedal doesn't work. ( battery is still inside pedal )
???

Hmm. ok. Suggests the DC socket is most likely wired correctly at least. 

It's safe to assume the bat box itself is ok if it works with other pedals. 

Could be the socket itself is broken somehow. Can you check for continuity between the +ve terminal in the bat box to the terminal on the inside of the DC socket, to the point on the circuit where that leads?.