What's on the workbench?

MichaelW said:
I think for me I'm a bit paranoid about cold solder joints. There was a point (maybe 40 pedals ago hahaha) that I was reflowing every joint on the board by default just to ensure no cold joints. And this was because of a pedal I built early on that didn't work, then after reflowing all the joints it worked. Never did track down which joint the problem was. I've gotten a lot better at doing a good solder joint to begin with and have a lot more confidence in my inspection capabilities and knowing what I'm looking for, but I still like to see a little flow through, then I KNOW it's got a solid molecular bond to the pad.
Click to expand...
The first time I got into building pedals was back in 2004/5. I was buying boards from Tonepad and they are etched with the trace on one side of the board. I feel like on those boards it was much easier to get cold joints or accidentally bridge two pads. The boards like PPCB makes are much easier to work with in my experience. With my bad eyesight I sometimes I wish the pads were a little bigger or not so tight but I never have a problem. They can also withstand a reasonable amount of desoldering and part removal when required.

Sometimes I might reflow some joints if they "look ugly" but I almost never attack the front side. It takes a lot of patience for me to try and not make things "perfect" and I find that when I start second guessing my work I end up actually creating a problem! I have no idea if my soldering technique is good but I've built so many pedals at this point I need to trust myself.
 
I don't solder both sides, but I do solder some components from the top side. I almost always solder pots from the top since there's no other components to get in the way.

Soldering both sides looks nice but it sure makes removing a component a lot more difficult.
 
MichaelW said:
I think for me I'm a bit paranoid about cold solder joints. There was a point (maybe 40 pedals ago hahaha) that I was reflowing every joint on the board by default just to ensure no cold joints. And this was because of a pedal I built early on that didn't work, then after reflowing all the joints it worked. Never did track down which joint the problem was. I've gotten a lot better at doing a good solder joint to begin with and have a lot more confidence in my inspection capabilities and knowing what I'm looking for, but I still like to see a little flow through, then I KNOW it's got a solid molecular bond to the pad.
Click to expand...
It doesn't seem to be slowing you down ;). You go gurl!
 
I didn't want to build another Klon but I supposed I'm forced to. I see accommodations for the Bones' bass version (which I recently built, it's fantastic), are there any other changes besides the knobs and footswitch layout?
 
Roberman said:
are there any other changes besides the knobs and footswitch layout?
Click to expand...

Nothing major or audio related, although I decided to improve the polarity protection in this one since it's a "Special Edition" ... The standard configuration has always haunted me.

We still have the usual 12V zener overvoltage protection for the charge pump, but I decided to add a series diode and current limiting resistor so the zener doesn't self-destruct in reverse polarity or overvoltage conditions.

1667441441786.png

I did make sure the box cap footprints were large enough for the Boneyard mod. :)
 
swyse said:
Reminds me of this klone I quite like the look of. Is there a story behind the dinosaur?
Click to expand...
Ahh, yep! That looks sharp, love it!

I can't take full credit for the control layout, a friend of mine has recently gotten into Klones and showed me a picture of one, it very well could have been that one. I told him I'd build him one similar and I really liked the KTR-style layout (although despise the actual KTR) so wanted one for myself as well.

As for the dinosaur... I botched the first batch of PCBs... It was a full panel with breakout board, but I spaced the knobs too far apart so the pointers hung over the edge of the enclosure slightly. I couldn't live with that so I reworked the layout... Rather than have a second batch of bad PCBs I decided to get a small prototype run this time, without the panelized breakout boards, just to make sure everything was OK. I had to fill that space with something, and I knew @Fingolfen liked dinosaurs, so that's what I put on there with the intentions of sending the extras to him.
 
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