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-

Wave Machine

Hello again!
     I finished one of the many projects sitting on my bench. This is a clone of the Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe. This was used most commonly by Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Hendrix. This thing is a BEAST. Tons of options and controls. I'll go through them briefly.

Speed:
This controls the speed of the modulation. There is an internal trim pot that can adjust the max speed and there is also an option to have an external expression pedal jack wired up. I opted to not have this.

Range:
This is a 6 position rotary switch. It goes from "classic" to "pulse". There are 3 positions for each mode. They resemble Soft, Medium, and Hard. They also increase with the turn of the switch.

Effect:
This simply changes from Chorus, Vibrato, and Tremolo

Symmetry:
This changes the sweep of the modulation across the sign waves.

Intensity:
I feel this is a little self explanatory...it sets the intensity of the effect.

Vol:
This sets the output volume of the effect.

Bias:
This alters the center of the sweep frequency and in tremolo mode sets the depth of the sign wave. It almost acts like a blend knob.

Mod:
This is a voicing mod. It is a 3 position rotary switch that changes capacitor sets within the effect. This give you the option to have a multitude of tones for each effect.


The PCB was designed by Brenja on the Madbeans forum. He also designed the Mod board. I acid etched and painted the Enclosure and did the artwork too. This pedal is a modulation monster and I plan on holding onto one of the 2 I have built. This was tons of fun and despite its size it was fairly easy. It fired right up and worked the first time.

Any ways here are some pictures. I'll try and get a video up soon. Thanks for reading!

Previous Pedal Boards

Hey guys, My wife and I are in the process of buying a house and I don't have a ton of time to build right now. Plus all my stuff is in a box buried among the chaos right now. I thought it would be fun to give you a "filler" post. I am going to post all my different pedal boards over the years (past 6 or 7 years I think). This isn't the first but it's the oldest the I can find a picture of.

Version 1
This was a crappy guitar case I cut in half and put split hinges on. The pedals are as follows.

Top (left to right)
Line 6 Otto Filter, Boss FZ5 Planet Waves PW40.

Bottom (left to right)
Dunlop High Gain Volume, MXR Phase 90, Electro Harmonics Memory Toy, Boss CH1, Boss BF2, Hand Built AB switch (built by me)

Version 1.1

Top (left to right)

MXR Phase 90, Line 6 Otto Filter, Boss FZ 5 Planet Waves PW40. 

Bottom (left to right)

Dunlop High Gain Volume, AKAI Head Rush II, Electro Harmonics Memory Toy, Boss CH1, Boss BF2, Hand Built AB switch (built by me)

Version 2.1

Top (left to right)

AKAI Head Rush II,Boss FZ5, Line 6 Otto Filter, Planet Waves PW40. Hand Built AB switch (built by me)

Bottom (left to right)

Dunlop High Gain Volume, MXR Phase 90, Boss CH1, Boss BF2,  Electro Harmonics Memory Toy, Peavey Amp Switch

Version 2.2

Top (left to right)

AKAI Head Rush II, Line 6 FM4 Filter Modler, Boss FZ5, TC Electronics Poly Tune

Bottom (left to right)

Dunlop High Gain Volume, Boss CH1, MXR Phase 90, Boss BF2, DeltaLab Rock Distortion, Peavey Amp Switch

Version 3.1

Top (left to right) 

Line 6 DL4 Delay Modler, Signal Flex Power Supply,  Line 6 FM4 Filter Modler, 

Middle (left to right) 

Behringer Reverb/delay, Boss NS2, Boss FZ5, ElectroHarmonics #1 Echo, Custom Amp switch

Bottom (left to right)

Dunlop High Gain Volume, MXR Phase 90, Boss BF2, Boss CE5, DeltaLab Rock Distortion, TC Electronics Poly Tune

Version 3.2

Top (left to right) 

Behringer Pitch Shifter, Boss RC2, Boss PS3 Pitch Shifter/Delay, Line 6 DL4 Delay Modler,

Bottom (left to right)

Dunlop High Gain Volume, DeltaLab DD1, Boss CE5, Boss BF2, MXR Phase 90, DeltaLab Rock Distortion, TC Electronics Poly Tune

Version 3.3

Top (left to right) 

Peavey Amp Switch, Behringer Pitch Shifter, Line 6 DL4 Delay Modler,

Bottom (left to right)

Dunlop High Gain Volume, DeltaLab DD1, Boss CE5, Boss BF2, MXR Phase 90, DeltaLab Rock Distortion, TC Electronics Poly Tune

Version 3.3

Top (left to right) 

Ibanez DE7, Behringer Vintage Phaser, Boss DS1

Bottom (left to right)

Ernie Ball Volume, Peavey Amp Switch, TC Electronics Poly Tune

Version 3.4 (Current)

Top (left to right) 

Ibanez DE7, Custom Built Phase 45 Clone (built by me), Boss DS1

Bottom (left to right)

Ernie Ball Volume, Peavey Amp Switch, Custom Built signal buffer (built by me) TC Electronics Poly Tune

Well there you go guys, hope you enjoyed the show!

-Mike-

Ampersand

Here is a build I've done twice now. One for Mark Mckellar of Age of End and one for a friend in the area. This was a very difficult build. There were a few challenges and snags in the process of it. First was the layout it self. The first 2 I tried didn't work at all. even after hours of debugging. The 3rd worked but was ticking. This is common for this pedal because the "clock" (IC chip) and the BBD (modulation control chip) generate noise that could come through the OP AMP and create a faint ticking. I was able to eradicate the ticking buy using different OP AMPS and shielded wire. The pedal sounds great and is a nice lush, thick chorus. I used the layout from sabrotone and fit it into a 125B enclosure. The art and graphics are my own. Well Hope you like it.

Ampersand #1

Ampersand #2

Here is a demo I put up on YouTube