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DIY Effects


JackLondon

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[attachment=104548:ff.jpg]heres a little monster veroboard fuzz based loosely on the famous..err, something or other fuzz thing, features 2 nos AC128 olde worlde transistors and a modern one to help out with the drive. This is a crazy beast of a fuzz with some wild matt bellamy-esque potential. Manson built one of these into Matt's custom guitar linked to a chaos pad controller. Now theres a winter bass build project if ever I heard one.

Edited by Al Heeley
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We have a project on the go here to mount a Korg nano kontrol in a box. The donor kontrol has a mini-usb socket missing from the pcb. I have a new surface-mount mini-usb socket to fit. The 4 corners of the socket are soldered onto the board, which match up the 5 contacts at the rear of the socket with the 5 tracks on the board.

My question is whether just soldering the socket in place in the 4 corners will make a sufficiently good contact with the tracks, or will it be necessary to solder the individual connectors to the tracks too. I was wondering if any of the resident gurus have any comments.

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I would think it should make decent enough contact as long as the pcb tracks have not been lacquer-coated to protect them. In this case you would need to scrape off any track coating with the sharp point of a craft knife before wielding your soldering iron. Is the socket likely to experience any mechanical streese in use, from any lead plugged into it? That would be my main concern.

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Thanks Al,

It gets worse :-( It appears that when the original USB socket got damaged, it also damaged the tracks. Not sure I'm able to repair that, so a couple of short jumper wires will be in order. Why is everything so small!!!!!

Mechanically I think it will be OK - there are two pins which locate the socket and it has a foot in each corner which is soldered to the board, so it should be fixed well enough. Once it's in it's new enclosure, I'll use a short lead to connect it to another external socket so it won't be subject to having things plugged in and unplugged out repeatedly.

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small rehousing project today, my seldom-used bassballs has its innards ripped from the derelict and dented old tin cheesebox of its original enclosure and popped into a standard sized enclosure with a sensible power socket. Smaller footprint will help it settle into the next reshuffle of the pedalboard.
Once again enclosure graphics plagued by pesky air bubbles trapped beneath the printed film.

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[quote name='Al Heeley' timestamp='1333231290' post='1599113']
[b]Bass Boost Pre-amp/overdrive pedal build[/b] - basically a tubescreamer circuit with 2nd op-amp chip driving an active treble and bass controls.
Input cap modded to select normal or phat mode for fuller bass drive, via mini toggle switch. Switch is connected to bi-colour indicator LED to show mode selected.

......

7. Finished pedal

[/quote]

Al, that looks and sounds absolutely f*cking phenomenal. I love the LED base plate, adds a really nice effect to the look, a few of those on a pedalboard would look brilliant.

Liam

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ta very much Liam, its a great OD for bass. I'm not organised enough to put all this stuff on my own website, its not a business concern just a hobby really, so most of the stuff made gets posted up on a couple of forums - this noe being the main place.
It is indeed an honour to see some of my creations sneaking their way onto kitchen appliance websites :)

Edited by Al Heeley
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Al, your pedals look awesome. I'd love to spend some time learning about electronics & how to properly read a schematic, but everytime I start googling things I just get overwhelmed! I know how to wire up lights & lighting systems & how to solder fairly decently, but I just can't get any further.

I'm wanting to make a simple version of a LPF, is it as simple as getting a 100k pot & a 0.047uf capacitor & wiring it like a bass' tone control?


Still haven't made my "footlight" yet, haven't gotten hold of a bit of perspex but I have everything else.

Edited by xgsjx
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Here's the finished mods on the rehoused Bassballs, I found some little 10k trimpots on ebay with thumb-spindles so you can tweak the low and high filter sweep ranges. It's just a case of basically desoldering the 2 mini trim pots from the original pcb, mounting them on the underside of the case, then soldering in some flyers to reconnect as before.

[url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alheeley/7097212587/"][/url]
Xgsjx: Don't need to fully understand how the circuits work, its just like following a cooking recipe really ;).
A simple passive low pass filter is just a capacitor and resistor, you can start with the above values and check out the response, or throw in an inductor. Have a look at the active filters as well, they are just a few more components.

Edited by Al Heeley
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Hi all, I figured this would be the best place to ask this...

I spent most of yesterday building a GGG tuned muff and...welll....it doesn't work. I've built 3 pedals before and all have worked first time. LED comes on, but not getting any sound both with the effect on and bypassed. I'm going to have a look at it tonight and see if there's anything obvious, but anyone got any ideas what might cause that to happen?

Cheers

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[quote name='umcoo' timestamp='1335177179' post='1626626']
Hi all, I figured this would be the best place to ask this...

I spent most of yesterday building a GGG tuned muff and...welll....it doesn't work. I've built 3 pedals before and all have worked first time. LED comes on, but not getting any sound both with the effect on and bypassed. I'm going to have a look at it tonight and see if there's anything obvious, but anyone got any ideas what might cause that to happen?

Cheers
[/quote]

From what you describe, since you aren't even getting the bypassed signal out, it sounds like you've either wired your switch or input/output jacks wrong. Other posibility is something accidentally shorted to ground.

Edited by Bigwan
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do you know how to make an audio probe to trace the signal path?
[url="http://diy-fever.com/misc/audio-probe/"]http://diy-fever.com/misc/audio-probe/[/url]
9 times out of ten theres a dry solder joint somewhere or acidental grounding, this probe will help you find it faster.
Also check all your electrolytic caps are right way round and double check any tranny legs are correct!

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[quote name='Al Heeley' timestamp='1335181566' post='1626736']
I spent 2 hours trying to debug a tubescreamer once when I realised I hadn't actually put the op amp chip in the socket.
How I laughed.
Not.
[/quote]

Ah yes, an old favourite! I too have had the good fortune to experience the rage that comes following such folly!!!

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