bobbass4k

Added some new builds to my dirt section - Brief annotations of the DIY ones - 1 - EQD Ghost Echo clone (Reverb) 2 - Madbean Dreamtime, FV-1 delay in a teeny tiny package - granular and tremolo modes in partiular are very useful. 3 - EQD Sea Machine Clone (Chorus) 4 - EQD Data Corrupter Clone with mods (Harmonizer/Synth Fuzz?) 5 - EQD Life Pedal Clone with mods - Octave Up into a Rat with a MOSFET boost at the end (boost can be switched off or used on it's own) 6 - Darkglass Microtubes clone with substantial mods (Overdrive). Took me a long time to get on board with this one but wit the right mods (and run at 18V) it can really sparkle. 7 - Catalinbread SFT clone with mods (itself an attempt to capture the SVT Vibe) - I've added a switch to lower the gain and the option to rub at 18V - makes a really good clean preamp at low gain. 8 - Lovetone Big Cheese Clone - Slightly modded to make the silly super gated mode even sillier. 9 - Moosapotamus Dirty Bird - Ridiculous chirping, quacky fuzz - kind of like a prunes and custard but waaaaaaaay weirder. 17 - Phase inverter 10 - DBA Echo Dream Clone - substantially modded to make it actually work properly.... 11 - Frostwave Funk-A-Duck Clone - Absolutely mad envelope filter, designed for synths I think. Takes a lot of patience, a lot of the knob settings will make no sound but if you treat it right... like no other filter I've ever had. 12 - DBA Space Ring Clone with mods (Ring Mod) - Built from the deadendfx PCB which makes a lot of useful improvements. 13 - Schalltechnik Pumpernickel Compressor 14 - Lovetone Doppelganger clone (Phaser/Vibe) - All the bells and whistles - had a smaller form factor clone of this but I sold it and missed it so much I didn't care that the only PCB i could get was for this masive version. 15 - Mid-Fi Pitch Pirate Deluxe Clone (Super Extreme Chorus) 16 - Step Sequencer - Puts out sequenced CV via 3.5mm cables to the control the pedals modded to take it, replacing their internal LFOs (Pitch Pirate and Doppelganger on this board)

Is there any blending happening amp side? If the sound is vanishing almost completely it sounds like a phase issue to me, but I'm not familiar enough with the amps to advise specifically.

I don't think a disregard for the rules and conventions neccesarily implies a lack of skill or knowledge, and to assume that the unique appeal of her appeals was essentially accidental seems a little unfair. After all, you can't break the rules if you don't know what they are... I know that was just a specific example but I've seen other designs with series/parallel caps, and there can be valid reasons for it. At the time she was around, the majority of boutique builders were regurgitating the same designs with token tweaks or gimmicky features, I don't really see how there's anymore skill or experience in changing a few caps in a big muff and calling it something else... For better or worse, her pedals stood out a mile at the time.

Effector 13 was the original name Devi used back in the early/mid 2000's. I think there was a brief period of crossover and maybe she kept the effector 13 name in Japan (where pedals are known as effectors) but she settled on the Devi Ever name in the late 2000's. Things get very complicated from there as she hit some financial trouble (that's a whoooooole other story) and licensed a lot of her more popular names and designs out to other companies - Dwarfcraft, INFANEM (who did a version of the improbability drive) and a couple of others I think. I didn't fully keep up with the rest but at some point she tried to get her names and designs back and had a public spat with Dwarfcraft, and got some but not all back. She started selling her own pedals again under the Fuzz Goddess name, but many without their original names. She can be a divisive figure in the pedal world - there's still a lot of animosity around the aformentioned financial trouble (it's a very long story but basically she took a lot of money for a kickstarter and didn't deliver) and if you asked this question over on talkbass you may get a very different explanation. Perosnally I think her designs were unique and sounded horrible in that very special way - others think she was an untrained hack who made abominations.

Enough filters for you? That thing´s a beast - how´s the wombtone, don´t see a lot of them around. I only had 10 minutes with a warped vinyl once but it was absolutely magical.

Farnell don't stock a big range of the right angle PCB pin ones unfortunately - a point of contention I raised with the guy responsible for them when I worked there, but to no avail... They're mainly of interest to the hobbyist (pedal hobbyists specifically) so they're hard to find at the big boys.

Has anyone got a good source of the right angled PCB pin 16mm pots? I never buy huge quantities so I usually just get them from bitsbox but I'm looking to stock up. They're cheap at rapid but they only have half the values I need. Can anyone vouch for an ebay seller?

He's looping everything through Ableton so the actual answer could be any number of very specific plugins. There's definitley an envelope filter and octave effects (up and down, maybe 2 down 1 up?) but yeah I also hear a pitch effect - sounds maybe like he's trying to emulate a fretless?

None more black. I like it.

An extremely rough phone clip I accidently recorded - some silly textural guitar stuff I was messing about with trying to find sounds that work through an amp. The phone clip is actually useful cos you can hear the guitar acoustically too. 20200809_012404.m4a

Tarred and feathered is probably one of their more straightforward Tunes - A good thing to remember is that Tim played some of the basslines on the records (though Jim always reproduced them live), or especially on Sing to God there's a lot of programmed synths that weave in and out of the basslines. Have a crack at Insect Hoofs on Lassie or Horse's Tail if you fancy some fun.

Very nice work - I've spent the week going back trying to learn some of the basslines I gave up on years ago and good GOD was Jim an underrated bassist. I know the whole Cardiacs story is one of criminal under-appreciation but Jim (JIM!) is maybe the biggest victim.

I'm still working on it - sounding like a swarm of horny space whales having a laser orgy may be of debatable usefulness, but it IS a lot of fun.

Peppered with the DIY fruits of lockdown labour -

Yeah, I tend to think of it as alternating 4/4 and 7/8, but 15/8 is probably neater. There's a couple of bars of 7/4 here and there if I remember correctly too. They do the same thing the other way round in different people (the main riff) - alternating 7/8 and 4/4. As much as I love vertigo/infinity land Biffy, I am very glad they're still peddling weird rock in stadiums and festival main stages.

It's likely exceeding the current capacity of the supply, a cursory google says the donner has a max draw of 140mA. Not sure which Joyo supply you're using but on most of them most of the outputs are 100mA max. You'll need to figure out which output has a higher current capacity (probably 500mA) and try it on that one.

They're not very common at all, madbean does a kit that does it (the dreamtime delay) but the tremolo isn't controllable beyond the speed. If you fancy building a kit that'd be a good option but it's a difficult one. Edit: I've got one and I absolutely love it, apart from tremolo it does regular modulation and an almost ring mod kind of sound.

I'd probably just treat it all as 4/4 (except for the banjo bit obviously - 6/8). They're shifting the feel around about a bit, extending it by a couple of beats here and there, technically it's probably a mix of 4 and 2, it's generally easier to just treat those as straight 4.

What always works for me - look at what you could get with the money and draw up a shortlist. Make it a real, direct connection in your head rather than an abstract. I get very attached to gear and don't like to let anything go, but as soon as I start looking at stuff I've wanted for a while, that pedal i haven't used for ages start to look like £150 rather than a pedal I might maybe possibly use someday.

It's pretty stark to hear them AB'd like that - there's maybe a little more trebly twang on the boss, but £150's worth? I was blown away by my thunderstorm (flanger from the same TC range) - got it on a complete whim and I was blown away. Pretty much the same circuit that all the boutique flangers will be using - complete with reissue Bucket Brigade ICs. How they're doing this range for £30 I have no idea. Good video BTW, I wish more people would use that format - especially in A/B tests, I don't want to hear how fast you can play pentatonic scales or how quickly you can jump octaves - I want to hear the same, normal riff played 100 times.

It's always nice to see some StT love - how they weren't huge I'll never understand - x-french tee shirt is a masterpiece (anthemic sing along ending over a single chord? Mad genius). I could list songs and bands all day long that you've most likely never heard of, but based on your original ideas I think you're looking for things more ensconced in the bosom of popularity. Building on Mountains - a lot of the newer Biffy stuff still uses odd time sigs - Different people (main riff is a 15/8 feel), Spanish Radio (5/4), Bubbles (ends in 7/4) and a lot of the older stuff (Glitter and Trauma, now the action, jaggy snake etc...) Deftones sneak a few in every now and then - Poltergeist (Very fun 7/4 bass riff), DIamond eyes (11/8 feel chorus), Leathers (11/4 feel verses) Radiohead of course - 2 + 2 =5 (in 7/8 not 5, oddly), 15 step (again 5/4, not 15...) Obligatory plug for my favourite band Oceansize, especially tempting bait to a drummer - maybe a bit on the proggy side for some people but very musical and melodic -

Mostly just patience, I marked the labels and the boxes with the mid points then peeled the back off just a tiny bit of the corner, i found that way i could align the bulk of the label with the midpoints then press the corner down, then you can pull the back off and it'll stick itself, smoothing it as you go. Not all mine are completely straight but they're close enough. One annoyance I did find is that the clearcoat I use (plastikote gloss) took a full day and a half to dry on the labels, as opposed to overnight for the painted bits. I just got some inkjet gloss label paper from amazon, with a decent clearcoating it should hold up just fine. I think you can get some thicker, fancier stuff from specialist places but it's expensive. Oh and a final tip, you'll notice the stargate one (bottom right) looks quite dark and blue saturated, because the clearcoat has soaked through on to the dark blue of the enclosure. I couldn't be bothered redoing it but I learned my lesson for the phaser - i put that label on to another plain white label first to give an extra backing and the results are much better.

Ooops sorry haven't been on in a while. It'd definitely be a massive help if you had one knocking about, I'd only need it for a few days (assuming I could figure it out in that time...), I'd massively appreicate it. On a different note, the fruits of lockdown - I've finally got into label printed graphics (waaaaay better than transparent waterslide decals) and I apologise for nothing. Top - EQD Ghost echo clone, lovetone doppelganer clone (phaser), madbean dreamtime (an amazing FV-1 delay in a 1590a) Bottom - Frostwave funk-a-duck clone (absolutely mad envelope filter), DBA space ring with improvements (deadendfx wurmloch, ring mod) Rate LEDs on the phaser are tempoerarily a bit rough because the 10mm LED bezels I thought I had were actually 8mm, so they're bezel-less for now

To be fair, a fresh resistor going open on it's own is pretty rare, you've been very unlucky there. I would say routinely checking all your parts pre-soldering is waaay overkill. A common cause of opens is mechanical stress on the leads, make sure you're not bending them too sharply, some people do it with pliers which can be fine but its easy to overdo it.

I've never seen one with a 30V out I'm afraid, it's not a standard voltage - the rusty box is the only pedal I know of that takes 30V DC in (a lot of other pedals run n 30V but they take 9V or 18V in and step it up internally). You could get one with 2 x 15V outputs and use a series cable to combine them into a 30V (has to be an isolated output brick for that to work).