What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

It is new gear day for my high school Jazz Band. A Sire Marcus Miller V5 Jazz Bass and an Ibanez Artcore Semihollow just came in today. I test drove them in rehearsal this afternoon. I unboxed them right before lunch and out of the box I’m impressed. The Sire is ridiculous for the price. Other than needing a little bit of adjusting, it’s fantastic out of the box. The neck and fretwork is fantastic. Sounds great. The Ibanez needs a little more of a setup, but again for straight out of the box, very playable. The main thing it needs is a fret polish. IMG_4091.jpeg IMG_4092.jpeg
 
I've had a couple of those for years...
When GCI first started. Need to build one eventually. Hope there's a report on the way.
Rusky LED clippers?
 
Feral Feline said:
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I'm trying Fama's approach, populating a few boards at a time in stages, and currently stuffing some resistors into compressor PCBs.

Things are already out of control — ie perhaps too many boards in one sitting?
Click to expand...
I usually do the full enclosure order at a time, so 5 or 6 usually. But I don't put all the resistors and then solder them all at once, I do as many as feels doable without getting too crowded, then solder, snip the legs, and repeat.
 
jwin615 said:
I've had a couple of those for years...
When GCI first started. Need to build one eventually. Hope there's a report on the way.
Rusky LED clippers?
Click to expand...

Yep, metal can and glass. Nowhere near as bright as typical LEDs, and the forward drop is slightly lower at 1.9 (they've also got quite a bit more capacitance at around 30pf)

It's a pretty rad circuit. Kinda ratty, kinda does the brootz / djent thing. I'm slightly tweaking this one due to the LEDs, but it'll be mostly stock
And, there's definitely a report on the way😅
 
Mmmkay, well, I know why I never bought the nutekt ODS or the Ibanez nutube screamer. I don't hate it.

I don't think this thing is exactly either, but close enough.

Instead of 4558 I used RS8412 because they are happier in a single sided supply. It's just a little bit quieter and darker, far less distortion at low gain/high output volume.

Other diodes didn't do it for me, stuck with 1N914.
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Here's a little update on my Uraltone TV Reverb amp. It takes too long because I am too careful 😅 (and also because there are some things not mentioned in the building manual). All that is left is to connect all the wires from sockets and pots to the main board, wire the input jack, and install heating wires.
 
I fixed this dude today for my friend. The cymbals and high hats weren’t working and the toms had a decent hum.

It’s a Korg Rhythm 55 or KR55 drum machine.

It sounds exactly like it looks.

IMG_1689.jpeg

Opened it up and found some corrosion that had affected several joints and grounds. I even replaced an IC that was known to have been a culprit sometimes just in case. Replace a few caps that were in the corrosion and removed as much of the green stuff as I could. I had to make some wire runs to connect where the traces had been obliterated.

Main corrosion in the cymbal/high hat circuit:
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Corrosion on ground and input cap:
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My repair:
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Upper board with new IC10:
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Lower board was fine.
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I'm still not so sure about this build report thing people speak of...

I Summoned A Deofol.

This one has the mods on this thread: https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/this-week-on-the-breadboard-okko-diablo-v3.25144/

I omitted the charge pump because there's already enough of those in the room to start a riot.

That's the new Alexandrite finish from Stomp Box Parts.


It's running into a preamp I designed that uses 7587 nuvistors . ( for those who don't know from a nuvistor http://www.r-type.org/articles/art-150.htm )
It is based on Merlin Blencowe's white paper on low voltage valve circuits, more or less the last schema shown in the doc:

Guts:

IMG_20250405_191020201_HDR.jpg

shiny:
IMG_20250405_192630952_HDR.jpg
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Defies photography.

Gut shot of the preamp:
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Sockets inserted in holes drilled in the card
 
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The first guitar I ever built got a pair of gfs dream 90's. I still like the neck pu but I kind of fell out of love with the bridge pickup. Before dropping money on a pair of novak foils, I decided to throw this gfs lipstick humby in there and freshened up the rest of the guts while i had it apart. I've never had anything w lipsticks and currently have no other humbucker equipped instruments. Figured I could give it a shot for 40 bucks.

I had forgotten how much of a pain it was wiring this thing in the first place. Getting that tone pot back into place took soooo looong. There's no access other than the f holes and the large hole under the bridge pickup which i had to enlargen with a dremel to get this thing back together. The push/pull i was going to use to spilt the HB was too deep to navigate through the cavity so I had to add the mini toggle. I took some inspiration from the Jack White Triplecaster with the selector knob too.

Kind of fun to pull my very first solder joints out of there and see my slop. It's amazing this thing worked at all. Assessing the sound, I'm not sure if I consider it an improvement yet. It is still kind of weak like the dream 90 it replaced, especially in single coil mode but it sounds pretty good. I'm not sure if I'm motivated to swap to fancy goldfoils for tonal reasons or vanity but I'm only GASing harder now.

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