Bring out yer Diptrace

Grubb

Grubb

Well-known member
Inspired by @JamieJ and others on here rolling their own PCBs, I thought it would be fun to have a place on the forum where people share the cool stuff they're working on in Diptrace. Other PCB programs are more than welcome, I would love to see what circuits you're cooking up and how you're going about implementing them on a PCB.


I'll happily go first. Here's an *unverified* layout for the Mark IV preamp section, one I hope to test build sometime this year:
M4 Preamp.png
I decided just to roll with the punches and spec SMD J201s, as I have plenty of them and no TH varieties. It's probably not the best routing I've ever done and the board feels like it has a lot of extra/wasted space on it because of how I placed the hardware on my mock-up. Still, the symmetry is pleasing to me.

So with the first entry out of the way, it's time for you to
Bring out yer Diptrace.jpg
 
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Hey thanks for the cool designs and responses, I look forward to seeing more!

Big Monk said:
I need to start using the schematic then autoroute function.

I’ve been doing everything manually right in PCB creation and I feel I could get cleaner routes and do things quicker if I use the program like its intended.
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I do find the schematic to PCB workflow helpful, but I don't find autoroute that useful unless I'm running out of ideas on a particular trace. If I do use autoroute, I'm more likely to use it to route one net at a time in the order I prefer (power paths first, then larger nets or inescapable longer traces). I will usually have to adjust most auto-routed traces to be shorter or have better shape. I also enforce manhattan routing on them as I get better results when I do it on more complex circuits.

Bricksnbeatles said:
For what it’s worth, DipTrace just has a notoriously shitty system for importing and converting libraries, even though they’re the only PCB cad
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I fight with the library system every time I use the program. It is not intuitive. However, the rest of the program is amazing.

Here's another circuit I brewed up over the last few months. It's the preamp section of the Green Matamp 120 in pedal format, based on schematics I found. This one is verified.
Lime Fatamp.png

I will probably go back and add SMD mounts for the J201s and such. Bugg has ruined me for needing symmetry haha, I have been spoiled by buying and using his boards.
 
Not to spam the thread, but I worked on this today and feel pretty happy with the outcome. It's a Boss DS-1 circuit, but with the Wampler JCM mods baked in, which is mostly capacitor value changes that thicken the tone. BW gives two suggested gain options for his mod, both of which are available on this circuit via the Gain switch. And then I've added the ability to also select between symmetrical or asymmetrical for the hard-clipping diodes. I've called it the Goldfish both because of the original pedal's colour and also how common they are.

Goldfish Distortion.png

Of course, I could just mod a real DS-1, but that's not as much fun for me as home-brewing a PCB.
 
Pretty pcbs here ! I'm hijacking the thread to know if you guys have a printed pcb provider that you would recommend ? (i'm from canada). Thanks !
 
I tried OSH Park to begin with - awesome quality but a little more expensive. Located on your continent, I believe. But like the others, I mostly use JLCPCB. Cheap, but still good quality. Postage to Australia is also pretty slow, but I choose the cheapest postage option, so that's probably on me.
 
Big Monk said:
Revised Forum Fuzz. I took the opportunity to add some more features "under the hood":
View attachment 24893
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Looks good @Big Monk . Just wondering though if you have traces running the same path on opposite sides of the board just to the left of the Gain pot? I've been told that it's best to avoid that if possible.

What are the baked-in features? I would love to hear more about this circuit!
 
Due to the bad influence of others on this forum, pushing me to explore this more, here is something I finished up today. It is a 2 BBD delay, giving 600ms of delay time in a 1590A. This has a charge pump to drive the BBD's at 15V, and I added a switch to tap into the first BBD, hopefully giving a sort of rhythmic delay.
Hologram 2_0.jpg
 
Alright, I'm too proud of this to not share. It's not Diptrace, but it's still a PCB :P It's a custom build for a friend, so it has a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't normally do.
  • two-channel solid-state bass preamp
  • 27V from charge pump
  • D.I. transformer with balanced XLR out
  • 1/4" dry passthrough
  • IR loader (only holds 1 IR at this point, but I'm working on it) with IR bypass switch
If my model is to be trusted it will fit in a 1590XX. The boards are going to be stupid expensive (relatively speaking) so fingers crossed this one works.

top.JPG
bottom.JPG
 
dan.schumaker said:
Due to the bad influence of others on this forum, pushing me to explore this more, here is something I finished up today. It is a 2 BBD delay, giving 600ms of delay time in a 1590A. This has a charge pump to drive the BBD's at 15V, and I added a switch to tap into the first BBD, hopefully giving a sort of rhythmic delay.
View attachment 24988
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how you implemented the switch, but it might be cool to use a 3008 in one of the positions, if that's possible. It would cut your max delay time down to 450 ms, but with the switch you would get waltz like repeats similar to the Sagan.
 
Bio77 said:
I'm not sure how you implemented the switch, but it might be cool to use a 3008 in one of the positions, if that's possible. It would cut your max delay time down to 450 ms, but with the switch you would get waltz like repeats similar to the Sagan.
Click to expand...
Thats a really cool idea! I think I have an extra 3008 around here, I might have to check that out when they get here.
 
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