Tommy III

[The Grand Wazoo]

Greetings. I completed a Tommy III build. I made some modifications to the stock build. I added a second footswitch that is taking the place of the DPDT (on-on) toggle. I used the Angry Andy coordinates to place the switches and man is that tight. You really need to drill accurately to get those right. This way you can kick in the boost (gain range) while playing.

To go with the second footswitch, I used a dual color LED. When you kick the pedal on, it will show blue. When you kick on the boost, it shows red. Kinda like the Morning Glory V4.

Another thing that i did was move the Diode switch outside. I just estimated the location by trying to scale an image of the PCB and putting it in my design doc. That worked out fairly well. I did this with a sub-mini PC mount toggle switch. Since the switch is short, I squeezed the pins just a tiny bit with a pair of mini-long-nose vise grips that I have. This allowed me to socket the switch in a SIP socket. This made the height very close to the pots (see image).

I have to say that I really thought that there would be more gain on tap. Based on demos I've seen of the Timmy V3, I don't think I'm getting the normal amount of gain in the normal channel. The boost (gain range) switch makes a huge jump. It would be nice if those two were a bit closer in gain. I like the more mid-forward quality of the boost for lead style playing. But if I have the gain set so that I get enough in the normal channel, it is just too big a jump to switch live. This is how I use my Morning Glory V4. FYI, my Tommy III as is, stacks very nicely with a Morning Glory V4.

If anyone has some insights on the gain issue, I'd love to hear them.

Here are some pics.

 

[OD is Glorious]

Damn! That female pin header under the sub-mini! Genius move!!!
I find that the Tommy III is overpowered so you might have a component issue.

 

[The Grand Wazoo]

Damn! That female pin header under the sub-mini! Genius move!!!
I find that the Tommy III is overpowered so you might have a component issue?

Would you be willing to expand on the “component issue”? Is there a suspect that I should look into first?

 

[OD is Glorious]

I was just eyeing your values and cannot see an issue, Is that a 1m under the op-amp? Also where is the op-amp from?

I imagine others may be more helpful with suggestions but maybe a cap issue or a potentiometer? I do remember that they have an noticable jolt when switched. So different volumes, maybe yours in normal? Post a vid

I have built four of these and they have headroom for days.

 

[The Grand Wazoo]

I was just eyeing your values and cannot see an issue, Is that a 1m under the op-amp? Also where is the op-amp from?

I imagine others may be more helpful with suggestions but maybe a cap issue or a potentiometer? I do remember that they have an noticable jolt when switched. So different volumes, maybe yours in normal? Post a vid

I have built four of these and they have headroom for days.

I really appreciate the feedback. I will post a video as soon as I can, The first thing I did was check values against the build doc. But I haven’t re-checked the pots because I didn’t want to disassemble the pedal again. There’s a lot of wire from relocating the DPDT switch and the dual color LED Perhaps I should put that test box I created to use!

The resistor under the op-amp is a 1M. The op-amp is from Stompbox Parts.

 

[The Grand Wazoo]

@OD is Glorious, it's time to send out the Doofus Patrol. When I opened the pedal back up today, I found that I had installed the pots backward. Most probably because I mounted everything to the outside of the enclosure to make sure everything fit. But I installed the pots as if the board were the opposite way around (even though the values are all printed on the board and were FACING ME!). Bass had an A500K, Gain had a C50K, Volume had a C50K and Treble had an A25K.

It sounds much better now. The boost is not as drastic in gain.

I would like to tone down some of the harsh highs that the boost introduces. I may play with the value of C9 which gets switched into the circuit when the boost is engaged.

Thanks chiming in and trying to help! Sadly, you couldn't fix the problem, which was me.