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-

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-

2 in 1

  Not what you think. HAHA! I finished 2 pedals in one night! These have been waiting to be boxed for a while. The first is the Wormhole. This is a deadaustronaut Tremshifter. The layout was done by perfboardlayouts. The enclosure was etched by Dan at ADD effects.. It was an enclosure that he wasn't going to have built so I bought it off him. I etched the board and did all the wiring, and boy was there A LOT of wiring.
     The Effect is an optical tremolo with a envelope filter in front of it. There are two rate and depth knobs, one for the tremolo and one for the envelope filter. The output knob is a "master volume" for the effect. You will also notice the 3 switch. They are Shape, Filter, and Tone. The Tone Switch switches caps to brighten or darken your guitar tone. The Filter switch turns the envelope filter on and off, and the shape filter changes the shape of the optical tremolo.
     Over all, this is a very fun pedal. It will certainly make its way onto my board. Here are some pictures. I'll get a video up soon.

Next we have my third prototype of the HUNTER FUZZ! This is a Shoegazer clone that I did the PCB layout for. This one I built for my friend Matt. The left side is the "Torn's Peaker" and the right is the "Soda Meizer". Each has it's own stomp switch and Volume and Texture knob. Not much else to say except beware of nightmares...

I will try to get videos for both of these up soon. Thanks for reading.

-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!

Time to play "Catch Up"

Alright, so after the mahem of the lats build I took about a week and a half off from building. Now I'm gonna box up a few projects that I have sitting on my bench. Pretty sure I have 5 or 6 projects that are ready to be boxed. I remember building a bunch before Matt (the crazy multi build I just did) got in touch with me. I think I even have artwork for some of them too. Here is the list of stuff waiting to be completed.

Tap Tempo Tremolo
Analog Delay (DM 2 work a like)
Voodoo Vibe clone,
Dead Astrnaught TremShifter
Shoe Gazer clones (2 of them)
Fuzz Factory Clone
Wampler Pinnacle Clone

So as you can see I have my hands pretty full for a couple weeks. I should blow through these pretty quick though. Most of them have been built and tested, They just need an enclosure and some art work. I might try and do a couple of face plates for the "fancier" builds (analog delay and voodoo vibe). Or maybe and etched enclosure here and there. We shall see. Thanks for reading!

-Mike-

Let the Madness Ensue...

Hello Again,
     Now let me first say that this was probably the most complicated build that I have ever done. There are 3 effects plus a order switch and an FX / blend option in this. It was very hard to wrap my head around but in the end I nailed it!! Here is the breakdown of the pedal.

**Main Circuit**

The main tone of this is based on the DBA Sound Saw. What this is, is a two channel frequency filter circuit. The bypass switch turns it on and the filter switch switches between the two channels. Channel one high lights the lows and allows more of a bass-y boost. Channel two accents the highs and mids giving the tone a cutting edge. There is a volume and filter knob for each channel.

**Fuzz Tone**

The fuzz section of this is modeled after the DBA Harmonic Transformer. This fuzz is EVIL! I love it. It is controlled by 1 knob and 2 toggle switches. In this built you'll notice that there are 3 toggle switches for the fuzz, the 3rd switch is simply an on / off option. The knob controls the over all fuzz volume. The switch on the left is the on / off, the switch in the middle is the sign wave switch (changes from triangle to square wave), and the switch on the right is an intensity switch. 

**Delay / Reverb Tone**

This is one of my favorite delay / reverb designs, the circuit is a Madbeans Moodring. This reverb is great and the delay is simple and easy to dial in. This has no on / off switch but the "Ring" knob essentially acts like an on / off. all the way to tho the left is off and all the way to the right is "muffin maker"! 

**Extra Options**

-Blend-

You'll notice that there are 2 extra jacks on the side of the enclosure. These allow you to add another effect and blend it into this circuit. The top jack is the send and the bottom is the return. The blend is panned from left to right. Left is no added effect and right is full effect volume (set on external effect) added to this circuit. 

-Order Toggle Switch-

There is also an effect order switch built into this as well. What this does is puts the fuzz in front or behind the reverb. This gives you a multitude of options. putting the fuzz in front of the effect will give you the "wall of sound" type of effect that a lot of guitarists go for.

So needless to say there was a lot to take in to consideration when building this. The enclosure was designed and etch by Dan at ADD Effects. He and I have worked together on several builds now and I don't see us stopping any time soon. Well that's all I have for now. Here are some pictures for you. I will get the videos posted soon. Thanks for reading.

Videos are coming soon!!!

-Mike-

VIDEO TIME!!!

Stomptown Tremolo

Hello All,
     Here is, believe it or not, my first tremolo build. This is a Stomptown Lycanthrope board. I received this over a year ago and thought I lost it. Then I opened this enclosure up, for another build, and found this board tapped to the inside of it. So, I built it up and boxed in this blue sparkle enclosure. I must say kudos to Jon @ Stomptown. This board is beautifully laid out and is a very easy to build. It fired right up, no issues or troubleshooting needed. Plus the rate LED flashing when the pedal is on is cool.
     The tremolo its self is super smooth and very musical. The controls are responsive and well laid out. Like most Tremolos this uses an LDR (light dependant resistor). The LDR requires a light source to create the tremolo effect. There is an LED on the other side of the LDR creating that light source. Many people "roll their own" I used a Vactrol on this build. This is a pre-rolled LDR made by Silonex. The part is NSL-7053, these are supposed to be pretty comparable to the Excelitas VTL5C1. I don't have any of the VTL5C1 s to A / B it against but this Trem sounds great.
    I didn't do any art on this build on purpose. I got this enclosure from Pedal Parts Plus as a missdrill. I loved the blue sparkle and didn't want to cover it up. So I used a silver paint pen and just threw the logo on it. Here are a couple pictures. Thanks for reading.

-Mike-

I'll try and do a demo for this soon. Thanks again.