Bring out yer Diptrace

Harry Klippton said:
I have the Madbean library for kicad but I'm not sure if there's a diptrace one. There is a Madbean eagle library too though
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That must have been what I was thinking of. I remember hearing there was another big pedal component library for DipTrace, now I can't remember whose it would have been. I've been the unofficial keeper of the Rullywow library for a few years now, not sure what happened to whoever I got it from :P
 
vigilante398 said:
That must have been what I was thinking of. I remember hearing there was another big pedal component library for DipTrace, now I can't remember whose it would have been. I've been the unofficial keeper of the Rullywow library for a few years now, not sure what happened to whoever I got it from :p
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Well thanks for that! It wasn't on the rullywow site that I could find
 
You can convert Eagle libraries to DipTrace format. It requires a little manual labor after the fact (pin names are weird and things like that) but 90% of the heavy lifting is done.
 
More KiCAD jobs on the way:

Variable resonance variable frequency LPF for bass, mandolin, and acoustic guitar applications, both onboard and in pedals:

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Matching Bass/Mids board:

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Shipped from JLCPCB a few days ago, should be here next week. Both these layouts are well vetted, unlike most of the ones I've had done at JLC. These are meant for hand soldering, hence all the through hole caps. A byproduct of that is capability of running on 18V if desired, whereas many of the SMD film caps I use are only rated at 16V. Both boards measure 1.56" x 1.16", which allows vertical mounting in Jazz Basses and the like.
 
Not sure how I missed this thread! I am wild addicted to Diptrace lately, trace routing is more fun to me than a lot of games.

I have a board for JC Maillet's "Super Full-Wave Octaver" showing up soon. Fell in love after breadboarding it.

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I don't have any decent build photos but I did a few Escobedo circuits last month too that ruled. Tripple Fuzz, Digital Octaver, Octup Blender. Wish the last two layouts were a bit cleaner but c'est la vie. Also just caught that one of the 5817s is labeled 1N5817 and one is just labeled 5817 on the blender 🤦‍♂️

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vigilante398 said:
Yuck, I hate hand soldering.
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I hear you man. It's taken me several years to figure out how to minimize the pain and if I only do a couple of boards a week it's no big deal anymore. Before his shop fire my luthier buddy was going to put a reflow oven and pick and place machine in his new shop, but I'm not holding my breath on that action now.
 
Anyone have suggestions on how to make this layout a little more polished? This is for an Ampeg Scrambler. I've done like 3 or 4 iterations and orders of this board that all sound great but I still am not satisfied with the layout. VCC is highlighted, ground plane is hidden. Trace overlap on the topmost pad of the trimpot was fixed after the screenshot

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Big Monk said:
I’m starting this one next to pass the time before parts for “The Fuzz” come in. I’ll play around a bit.

Are you using the Aion schematic?
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More or less, yeah. Maybe a couple of different values. The unused diodes are removed - especially because it's one of the trickier sections to lay out. I also removed the boost switch so it's just always on - I get that he did that for authenticity's sake but imo there's no reason to turn it off. The extra emitter pads for the Darlington's like he did is an absolute necessity, I have every conceivable pinout of MPSA13/14 laying around somehow.

I've toyed with the idea of breaking the Darlington's out to individual transistors to play around more with transistor options - and as I'm writing that I think that'll be fun a thing to do today

Robert said:
Here's what I've been working on.... I'm tired, time to go wait for DHL.
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You're a fucking artist
 
Big Monk said:
I've got the schematic whipped up. I have it on good authority from research that the extra diodes are in fact part of the sound and that making discrete Darlingtons out of BC series or 2N5088 transistors is better for biasing, more options, etc.

I'll post what I come up with
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I vaguely remember liking it better without the unused diodes populated but while I'm getting more wild with this revision it looks like I may as well throw them back in.

Trying to research the circuit came up pretty scant for me, do you have any sources you'd be willing to share? It and the Super Fuzz are probably my favorite effect circuits I've ever encountered.

I've talked with a few people who worked for Ampeg when it was owned by St. Louis Music (1985-2005) and did manufacturing here but they weren't doing the Scrambler then AFAIK. I only even recently put it together that Dan Armstrong actually worked for Ampeg, even though I knew the Green Ringer was his teardown of the Scrambler.
 
Big Monk said:
I certainly don't have any insider information but the various forum postings i researched on it had many people agreeing that the extra diodes affect the tone with the Texture turned up.

As far as discrete transistors vs. Darlingtons, it seems many people reported less extreme gating in the stock circuit with discrete pairs instead. I'm gonna throw trim pots on all the collector connections that connect directly to VA just to have that flexibility.
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Has anyone ever told you that you're a bad influence lmao and this doesn't even show the two on the first darlington pair

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