DIY Effects

[tauzero]

7 hours ago, Alfie said:

But here is the latest evolution of my homemade collection.

 

 

L-R: Mini Booster, LPB1, Valvecaster, Bazz, BBOD, Woolly Mammoth, Tubescreamer, SHO, Orange Squeezer.

 

 

 

You, er, like big knobs, don't you?

[disssa]

Original and Copy:

[LukeFRC]

On 22/12/2022 at 20:24, disssa said:

Original and Copy:

Normally I get a notification of replies in this thread and equivalent on talkbass - so when the house of disssa posts something I see it twice 

this however, perhaps wisely given the fanaticism, has not appeared on TB

[LukeFRC]

Meanwhile this evening

 

My task…. measure the Idss on a couple of handful of J201

 

oh except that’s not it, they are MMBFJ201 surface mount in a SOT23 package - which basically translates too - flipping tiny and painful things to try and get in the right place to get a reading in my homemade tester … 

[Passinwind]

16 hours ago, LukeFRC said:

Normally I get a notification of replies in this thread and equivalent on talkbass - so when the house of disssa posts something I see it twice 

this however, perhaps wisely given the fanaticism, has not appeared on TB

Making non commercial pedal clones for yourself shouldn't really matter a whit to anyone IMO. There's a huge DIY clone building culture these days, think a few heads would explode over this for instance: https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb553/  ? 😉

[Passinwind]

Always on fixed frequency 4th order high pass filter prototype:

 

 

Coming soon to my open source utility EFX library. Might have to reconfigure the PCB a little for a variable one in the 1590A box, but I'm sure that could be done.

 

Fdeck told me he has a spiffy new one coming out soon as well, which will also be fully open source.

[LukeFRC]

15 minutes ago, Passinwind said:

Making non commercial pedal clones for yourself shouldn't really matter a whit to anyone IMO. There's a huge DIY clone building culture these days, think a few heads would explode over this for instance: https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb553/  ? 😉

Oh I agree, but for every supportive collaborative open source friendly bit of the internet and forums, you also get the other side.

 

[Passinwind]

18 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

Oh I agree, but for every supportive collaborative open source friendly bit of the internet and forums, you also get the other side.

 

Certainly true, but Josh Broughton at least used to contribute a lot of DIY oriented content over there.

[KingBollock]

39 minutes ago, Passinwind said:

Always on fixed frequency 4th order high pass filter prototype:

 

 

Coming soon to my open source utility EFX library. Might have to reconfigure the PCB a little for a variable one in the 1590A box, but I'm sure that could be done.

 

Fdeck told me he has a spiffy new one coming out soon as well, which will also be fully open source.

I am very interested in this. I’ve been wanting to build a HPF for ages. I have put together some pedals, but I am not part of a community, so I don’t know if it’s proper to ask this, but… Will there be a circuit diagram or, even better, a diagram for building it on strip-board?

 

I prefer using strip-board. I don’t know why but it feels like using a PCB is like a Lego kit compared to a strip-board Airfix kit (point to point would be like scratch-building, I suppose). And I don’t mean that in anyway derogatorily, it’s more that Lego kits cost more. I’ve seen some very cool Lego kits but I have also seen the prices!

[LukeFRC]

27 minutes ago, KingBollock said:

I am very interested in this. I’ve been wanting to build a HPF for ages. I have put together some pedals, but I am not part of a community, so I don’t know if it’s proper to ask this, but… Will there be a circuit diagram or, even better, a diagram for building it on strip-board?

 

I prefer using strip-board. I don’t know why but it feels like using a PCB is like a Lego kit compared to a strip-board Airfix kit (point to point would be like scratch-building, I suppose). And I don’t mean that in anyway derogatorily, it’s more that Lego kits cost more. I’ve seen some very cool Lego kits but I have also seen the prices!

The pedal pcb version of a broughton HPF and LPF has the schematic - would laying out your own vero layout be like mecano? 

[Passinwind]

23 hours ago, KingBollock said:

I am very interested in this. I’ve been wanting to build a HPF for ages. I have put together some pedals, but I am not part of a community, so I don’t know if it’s proper to ask this, but… Will there be a circuit diagram or, even better, a diagram for building it on strip-board?

 

I prefer using strip-board. I don’t know why but it feels like using a PCB is like a Lego kit compared to a strip-board Airfix kit (point to point would be like scratch-building, I suppose). And I don’t mean that in anyway derogatorily, it’s more that Lego kits cost more. I’ve seen some very cool Lego kits but I have also seen the prices!

 

Yes, all my open source projects provide a schematic and an easy way to buy printed circuit boards from a premier US vendor. In this case three boards would cost about $10 USD with shipping included to virtually anywhere in the world. I have no commercial involvement with that, I just share the PCB layout to the vendor's extensive free share list, the end user clicks "buy", and the boards ship about ten days later, typically. There's also a bill of materials on share at Mouser.com, again meant to speed up the ordering process considerably. I have friends in the UK and various other countries who may be able to help with parts sourcing over there, but this is just too much for me to take on myself at this point.

 

Strip board is not a great option in this case because all the the preferred opamps are surface mount format. Additionally, I feel that if you want the DIY experience of using stripboard you might as well DIY the layout yourself too. And it would make more work on my side, because I don't use breadboards, stripboards, or anything else but PCBs very often at all, even for prototyping. But many of my friends in the DIY community want to build now, today.  Nothing at all wrong with that, and as long as people properly credit the design source I have no objections to anything they do non- or semi-commercially. 😉

 

For the moment I'm using Talkbass as the repository for this stuff, but when I retire in a few months and move on to other things I will probably put it on Github or somewhere similar where I won't need to babysit it. Here's the TB link: https://www.talkbass.com/wiki/pw3b-lpf-open-source-onboard-preamp/

 

The new HPF design will be going live any day now, I'm just vetting a few options for use with other instruments by this point. Pedals are kind of a new diversion for me, so I welcome any and all input into what I can do to better help DIYers. This is the current format of the HPF board, which is probably going to be more or less the final version:

 

 

 

BTW, I'm pretty sure there's at least one stripboard layout out there for the Fdeck v2, which is optimized more for upright bass and is "only" second order, but still works fine for bass guitar as well. Francis Deck posts schematics for many of his designs on his own website as well. Hope this helps!

Edited December 29, 2022 by Passinwind

[disssa]

23 hours ago, Passinwind said:

Making non commercial pedal clones for yourself shouldn't really matter a whit to anyone IMO. There's a huge DIY clone building culture these days, think a few heads would explode over this for instance: https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb553/  ? 😉

I traced a lot of Broughton Pedals. I noticed that well-known circuits have been modified a little bit. Not more. I traced also a lot of other pedals. Most pedals are based on well-known circuits. I build the pedals for myself. I also don't publish schematics from traced pedals. At most from pedals that are only a 1:1 copy themselves.

Edited December 29, 2022 by disssa

[Passinwind]

1 hour ago, disssa said:

I traced a lot of Broughton Pedals. I noticed that well-known circuits have been modified a little bit. Not more. I traced also a lot of other pedals. Most pedals are based on well-known circuits. I build the pedals for myself. I also don't publish schematics from traced pedals. At most from pedals that are only a 1:1 copy themselves.

Yeah, although I very rarely trace anything or do overt clones I still find I end up reinventing the wheel with standard issue cookbook circuits quite a bit of the time.

[LukeFRC]

1 hour ago, disssa said:

I traced a lot of Broughton Pedals. I noticed that well-known circuits have been modified a little bit. Not more. I traced also a lot of other pedals. Most pedals are based on well-known circuits. I build the pedals for myself. I also don't publish schematics from traced pedals. At most from pedals that are only a 1:1 copy themselves.

I find the interesting thing how much of pedals seem based on hype and sometimes carefully chosen components … like one Klon clone gets raved about, the next one not so much and the £30 Chinese version rubbished… and electronically there’s not much between them. 
sometime price correlates to “better” components, other times not.

[Bassybert]

1 hour ago, LukeFRC said:

I find the interesting thing how much of pedals seem based on hype and sometimes carefully chosen components … like one Klon clone gets raved about, the next one not so much and the £30 Chinese version rubbished… and electronically there’s not much between them. 
sometime price correlates to “better” components, other times not.

I’m sure there’s some variance in using certain components over others, but a lot of it seems like pure snake oil = marketing speak and hype to inflate prices. 
 

In blind tests these holy pedals are never far away from their clones/copies in tone or performance, and in a live situation these differences hardly matter anyway. 

[paul_5]

51 minutes ago, Bassybert said:

I’m sure there’s some variance in using certain components over others, but a lot of it seems like pure snake oil = marketing speak and hype to inflate prices. 
 

In blind tests these holy pedals are never far away from their clones/copies in tone or performance, and in a live situation these differences hardly matter anyway. 

This. There are very few components that are 'crucial' to the sound of a pedal - certain opamps (e.g. LM308 for RATs etc...)are sought after for their characteristics, often the same characteristics that made them obsolete in the first place (slew rate, noise etc...) and all the gunk about germanium transistors is a moot point, as they tend to be so leaky and susceptible to external factors (temperature variations etc) that it's a real crap shoot, and trying to build two identical devices with these components is like chasing smoke.

[paul_5]

On 28/12/2022 at 16:56, LukeFRC said:

The pedal pcb version of a broughton HPF and LPF has the schematic - would laying out your own vero layout be like mecano? 

The only difference between PCB and veroboard is that often a PCB can be made smaller - either electrons flow or they don't. 

The majority of my gigging board is done on veroboard, the only one that isn't is my Lovetone Meatball clone, and that's only because I couldn't be bothered with the masses of off-board wiring - four rotary switches and six pots (plus eight TRS sockets) was a bit too much for my patience...

Edited December 29, 2022 by paul_5

[disssa]

No new invention, but again just a copy: Trace Elliot V-Type Preamp as a pedal

 

[LukeFRC]

1 hour ago, paul_5 said:

The only difference between PCB and veroboard is that often a PCB can be made smaller - either electrons flow or they don't. 

The majority of my gigging board is done on veroboard, the only one that isn't is my Lovetone Meatball clone, and that's only because I couldn't be bothered with the masses of off-board wiring - four rotary switches and six pots (plus eight TRS sockets) was a bit too much for my patience...

I was thinking about this while driving tons of holes for the next two builds... PCB, designed well, can have the pots mounted on it and make both the install easier with less off board wiring, and also it is mounted into a fixed position. Last time I did Vero I didn't plan how to mount it and it was suspended on it's own rats nest of off boards wiring... 

[paul_5]

21 minutes ago, disssa said:

No new invention, but again just a copy: Trace Elliot V-Type Preamp as a pedal

 

Nice. 555 as a charge pump?

 

edit: just looked at the outside with two tubes sticking out of it. Durrrr 😞

Edited December 29, 2022 by paul_5

[JPJ]

20 minutes ago, disssa said:

No new invention, but again just a copy: Trace Elliot V-Type Preamp as a pedal

 

Funnily enough, this just came up on an SWR lovers Facebook group earlier today - why someone hasn’t done this with the SWR Grand Prix preamp. I know I’d buy one if somebody did 😎

[tauzero]

On 28/12/2022 at 17:17, Passinwind said:

Strip board is not a great option in this case because all the the preferred opamps are surface mount format.

 

Are there no DIP equivalents? I'm incompetent enough at soldering .1" spacing (I probably bridge strips 10% of the time), I'd have no chance with spacing half that.

[Passinwind]

4 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

Are there no DIP equivalents? 

Nope, not really, and DIP format opamps are already mostly a legacy thing by now. But there are still decent enough DIP alternatives, just not true equivalents as I see it. I went with the biggest practical SMD resistor size, 1206, and the biggest of the common SMD opamp sizes, SOIC-8. The DIP-8 opamps I'd typically recommend are crazy expensive, and as with many others have pretty much gone missing for the last few years.

 

Lots of people just blob solder SMD opamps and fix the bridging with solder braid, IME the main thing is just to use a small enough soldering iron tip. I'm nearly 70 and I can still do this stuff without using a magnifier,  but I can certainly stil relate to wanting to keep it simple!

 

But in any case, it's an open source design and I'd be more than happy to see someone take on a stripboard layout, it just won't be me. 😉

[KingBollock]

I like to socket ICs, so I had a quick look to see if it is possible to socket SMD ICs, and it is. It’s possible to convert SMD to DIP. I was kind of hoping that there was a way of making using SMD ICs easier, maybe some kind of clamp system, or something. I don’t know. I have never used SMD stuff before, I don’t think. But, anyway, at least it appears that I can use SMD ICs (I don’t know about other components, I didn’t look) on vero-board.

 

I have narrow soldering iron tips. One comes to a 1mm wide flat tip and another comes to a point. So I should be alright there.

 

I’m a bit of a dinosaur with this stuff. Most of my electronics experience comes from college (including work placements) from 1991 to 1993. And I’ve forgotten most of it.

[disssa]

12 hours ago, JPJ said:

Funnily enough, this just came up on an SWR lovers Facebook group earlier today - why someone hasn’t done this with the SWR Grand Prix preamp. I know I’d buy one if somebody did 😎

I can't find any schematics for the Grand Prix...