Protoboard and Crystal Drive

spi

Well-known member
Last week I finished building a Protoboard, and today got around to trying it with an actual circuit.

I was a lucky recipient of a Protoboard during PedalPCBs anniversary extravaganza contests. I wasn't sure I'd be able to acquire the parts for a while, because I had just re-upped my supply to last me through the next batch of builds. But sure enough realized I was short and needed a new Tayda order, so grabbed what I could.

I substituted a few parts (LD1117S50 -> LM1117MPX, REUF Fuse- > MF-R Fuse) that looked equivalent, and they appear to be working swell. The only part I couldn't find was the LD1117S33. While Tayda had some 3.3V voltage regulators, none had the form factor to replace it. Leaving the part out just means the 3.3V power rail isn't active, but I imagine I won't miss it. It does bother me to have a missing part though.

The 5V regulator is a surface mount, so this was my first attempt at soldering SM components. I got it OK, but did take a bit of patience and a calm hand, neither of which I have. A couple of times I knocked it out of place with the iron while trying to get the first pin down.

On first power, the voltages were all wrong (mostly around 4V). As I wondered how I could mess up such a simple build I noticed the TC1044SCPA was upside down. And it was getting super hot! Good thing I socketed it. I turned it around, hoping I didn't ruin anything, but everything worked--now all the voltages read correctly with the exception they were almost a volt lower than advertised. I was using a battery that measured close to 9V when I started, but now it was measuring close to 8V. Is it possible the few moments running with the power pump upside down drained a volt? Or maybe the battery was already getting old.

I was excited to get a circuit on it. I chose the Crystal Drive, since it's a relatively simple one to breadboard and I've been wanting to try this pedal. It's supposed to capture "the recorded sound of 70s era rock." I used 100K pots all around because that's all I had extra of, perhaps they impact the tone a bit off the stock circuit. It sounds pretty good, and really good with the Timmy pushing it. It's not too gainy, and kind of reminiscent of a DOD 250. It didn't sound radically different than the Van Pelt which I had next to it. This is a pedal I could see using, but it also overlaps a bit with others I already have.

The Protoboard is great though. It's really easy to plug it into my pedal chain with the onboard jacks, plus the bypass and power switch is useful--before I used all kinds of loose wires and it was really noisy, and I'd knock the power off, etc. Now it's seamless to play with it.


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Great job! When you start experimenting you might want to pick up some breadboard mountable switches. Either that or a socketable daughterboard to AB certain components. GuitarPCB has them for $1 I think. Just my 2 cents.
 
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