Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Utility Pedals

Hey All,
      So this will be a quick one. These are a couple of utility pedals that a past customer had asked me for. He was looking for a signal buffer and an A / B switch. He needed the A / B switch to switch between the volume and wah out put of his expression pedal. He wanted a buffer because...well he needed a buffer in he circuit. That is all. Well here they are there is no demo video only because...its kind of pointless. I acid etched the enclosures. Thanks for reading.







Thursday, July 13, 2017

Auto Tron

Hello All,
     Sorry for the length in between posts, I've been super busy plus my kids Daycare has been closed for the past 2 weeks (vacation). So, I haven't had a whole lot of time. But I was able to finish this one up for a customer. It is a clone of the Mutron III. There are a couple of mods done to the circuit to make it a bit more "buildable". The Original pedal worked off of 24 volts and used the VTL5c3/2. The VTL is a vactrol with 3 legs on the resistor side (one is common). These have been discontinued and are expensive. This uses 2 of the more standard vactrols. This also has a charge pump built into the circuit so the power is now a standard 9 volt power supply. The last mod is a volume mod. The original does not have a volume control. This does.

     I did the art layout and paint on this enclosure. It isn't actually paint, It's alcohol ink. This was fun to work with. I put a bunch of drops of different colors on the pedal and blended them with a Q-tip. then before it dried, I lit it on fire. Yup thats right, the alcohol caught and created a smother blend. Then I clear coated the enclosure to create and even surface for the decal and applied it. Then clear coated again and drilled and assembled. Here are a few pictures of the finished product.






Thanks for reading!

-Mike-

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Twin Peaks

Hello all,
      Last night I put the finishing touches on a Twin Peaks Tremolo. This was designed by David Rolo. It is a Tap Tempo Tremolo with four different modes, There is a rotary switch to select the desired mode.They are as follows

Normal - Bass and treble are both modulated "in phase"
Harmonic - Bass and treble are modulated "out Phase"
Bass - Bass is modulated with a fixed treble
Treble - Bass is fixed and treble modulates

      There ate also 6 potentiates that help dial in the tone / effect you are looking for. These controls are listed below.

Symmetry - Changes the ratio between the upper and lower wave of the LFO signal. For
example, when using the square wave, you can set whether the “off” or the “on” periods are the
longest.

Rate - This is a manual adjust ment as opposed to the tap. you can also use it to "fine tune" the rate of modulation

Depth This sets the how deep the modulation is

Tone - This adjust how much treble or bass is in the effect.

Shape - This is used to select between one of the 8 modulation wave shapes

Multiplier - This is used to select the multiplier that will be applied to the tapped tempo

      So as you can see there are a TON of controls on this thing. It is a super fun pedal to play around with and the possibilities are endless. I did an etched face plate for this. I did use pretty basic art work but it came out pretty good. I didn't get a chance to do a demo for this be fore i shipped it out. Here are a couple pictures though. Thanks for reading.

-Mike-







Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Eye Ball Delay

Hello Gang,
       Last night I was able to wrap up yet another build. This one is a Madbeans Cave dweller "dub edition". What the dub edition means is that there are 2 of the PT2399 chips incorporated in this design. This (almost) doubles the available delay time.In this version two controls are combined (dwell and echo) and a "Mix" pot is added for extra texture. There are limitations with any PT2399 delay but this one certainly pushes those boundaries. One of the reasons I like this delay is, It's DARK! It almost resembles an older Boss DM2. Yes, I know, "Mike, no PT delay will ever sound as good as a DM2". Calm down, I said resembles. Anyways, This was Boxed in an enclosure that Dan Minner did for me...He likes eye balls. Which is cool with me, cause I like it weird! HAHA!, Well, here are some pictures. I'll get a video of it up soon. Thanks for reading.









Wednesday, April 5, 2017

WTF(uzz)

Hello Readers,
        I did a multi build a while back and realized that I really loved the fuzz that I put into it. It isn't a super complicated build buy any means but this thing is BRUTAL! I love the tone and minimal options on it. There are 2 toggles and 1 knob. The toggle on the right controls the wave and the toggle on the left is an intensity boost. The knob controls the overall output of the fuzz, This is by far one of my favorites. I might just do a Fabbed PCB for it. It is a DBA Harmonic Transformer clone. The enclosure art was done by Dan at A.D.D Effects. Here are some pictures for you. I'll try to get a video up soon. Thanks guys.









Monday, March 13, 2017

Mimic Delay for Evan

Hello all,
     Long story short I started collecting comic books again and a friend (old co working for the music store) of mine offered me some Spawn action figures. I said i'd build him a pedal of his choosing for them. He wanted a delay. One of my favorite (might just be my very favorite) builds is the Hamlet Delay but Jon Patton. His use of the charge pump to boost the signal before the chip is genius, It's one of the best sounding PT2399 delays out there, I recommend it to all who haven't built one. This time I used effectslayouts version. I love Jon's layout but i wanted the external tone pot. I also wired the volume as a trimmer and mounted it to the base plate via a piece of vero board and stand offs. I also did a "Slam" mod to it. This is a momentary switch with a 22k resistor soldered to the lugs 2 and 3 of the "Repeats" pot. What this mod does is a ramping oscillation. As long as your foot is depressing the switch it will continue to oscillate. It's a pretty easy / awesome mod. Anyways, here are a few pictures for you. I'll do a demo tonight and post it asap.







Thanks for reading guys!. Hit me up with comments and questions if needed.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

D-Verb rehoused

Hello all,
      Lets start with the easiest. A long time ago I build a mini reverb for my friend Darren (see LINK). He texted me and said that it was acting weird. It turns out that one of the jacks came loose and the threads got stripped. So I grabbed the pedal from him and decided to do a new enclosure for it. The paint was chipping on the old one and it needed a face lift. you'll see all that in the pictures. The circuit is a 1776 Rub-A-Dub reverb. The PCB layout was done by Jon Patton and etched by me. If you are planning to attempt this build BUY MORE THAN ONE ENCLOSURE. I can a;most guarantee you will screw up on the first one (if you're a dummy like me haha!).here are a couple pictures.








Monday, January 23, 2017

Wave Machine #2

Hello All,
      This is the second Wave Machine I have built. Here is the first. The guts on these are the same. The only difference between the two is I used heat shrink tubing on the LED / LDR s that control the Tremolo / Chorus / Vibrato effect. I thought that there wouldn't be a huge difference but there is. There seems to be less bleed of the effect and it seems to be overall prominent. I'll have to open up the other unit and do the same to it, Since it is the same electronically I'll just post some pictures for your eyeball's pleasure!!

Here is what I did with the enclosure. First I acid etched the enclosure with ferric chloride. Second, I painted it with flat black primer. Last, I sanded the areas where i had acid etched the lettering and graphics. This took a while, primer is A LOT thicker than I thought. My goal was to make it look like waves in the ocean had warn down the paint to reveal the lettering. Eh...kind of a failure but it still looks cool.




















Thanks for looking guys. I'll try to get a video up soon!

-Mike-