SchlegFace
Active member
Have you other pedalmaniacs ever had a build that just really kicked your butt repeatedly? That was the Paladin for me. Build wise, things went very smoothly, except I forgot to order some low-pro electros with the rest of the parts for the build (D'oh!). The SMD transistors worked out really nicely though! I only kept reminding myself to not wait until the last steps to solder them on so I would have plenty of room to get to their pads. But I remembered, so once my forgotten electros came in I was rocking and rolling! I bench tested things and boy did it sound great! So I proceeded to box things up, and was really pleased with the provided drill template, especially because of the included XLR out on the pedal. My XLR is not the same as used in the build doc, but I only had to make about a 2mm shift or so from the original spot to have the space for mine to fit perfectly. One of the smartest things I did on this build was to make a quick disconnect for the XLR jack in case I needed to ever service things, cause boy did I end up taking this thing apart over and over! The quick disconnect is just two sets of SIP sockets, one soldered into the board as usual, the other has the wires of the XLR jack soldered into the holes of the socket, so then the pins could pop in and out of the socket on the board. Once boxed up is when I started my journey of getting the build to function optimally.
I had not really noticed in my testing that the Bass control was functioning backwards, but I did once it was boxed up! After much desoldering and testing and EQ graphing I came to the conclusion that the Bass pot should be wired lug 1 to Treble lug 1, and Bass lugs 2+3 to Mid lugs 2+3. This provided a more usable range in the control and it was operating from less to more, as expected. My journey troubleshooting this can be found in the following thread. Click here!
Next thing I noticed was that this thing is LOUD!!! It gets loud quick too, like Volume control at maybe 9:00 is a bit of a boost over unity. After resolving the Bass pot issued I decided to try out different pots for the Volume control to see if I could tame it a little. After swapping several pots I decided switching from the stock B100k to an A100k was giving the best results. The control now goes to about 11:00 before it starts boosting, giving just a bit more control in finding your desired level.
With all this soldering and desoldering, I only burned one trace off of the board for the Bass pot (D'oh!). I haven't done that in years, really brought that nostalgic feeling of being an absolute newb!!! And to top it off, once I put things all back together with all of my mods, I had heated and reheated my power jack too many times and had softened the plastic around the sleeve for the jack, so my build started experiencing weird swooshy noises!!! So I thought at that point maybe I was having charge pump issues, so I read all about charge pumps and swapped through every single pump I had in all of my pedals with no change. At some point I notice the wiggle in the power jack, so I installed at temporary replacement and all was cured. Hooray!! Except I had used a mini Lumberg DC jack and was plumb out of them, so the replacement would have to be added to my next parts order. A few weeks later parts were in and finally I had this thing finished, the back plate on, and the guts sealed up hopefully for a very long long long long time.
But how does it sound, one might ask? Great I would say. It is a really clean preamp as one would expect. The tone controls are nicely tuned and work well to be able to dial in whatever you are looking for, as long as what you are looking for is clean. I actually really like what it does on bass, I use it often when I am just plugging in a quick practice rig, and not just because it is on top of the pedal pile. The only thing I cannot comment on is the XLR direct out. I have not had a chance to utilize it yet, but I assume it is great, if it sounds like the rest of the circuit.
Overall I would give this project a 9/10. The board, build docs, and drill templates are all top notch. The backwards Bass control was remedied pretty easily, the whole thing was only turned into a process because of my need to overdo everything. Most of the issues I had in this build were just due to my own circumstances and not the project itself. Even though it gave me all sorts of fits, I would definitely recommend the Paladin if you need a clean preamp or direct box or both! Oh yeah, here are the pictures.
I had not really noticed in my testing that the Bass control was functioning backwards, but I did once it was boxed up! After much desoldering and testing and EQ graphing I came to the conclusion that the Bass pot should be wired lug 1 to Treble lug 1, and Bass lugs 2+3 to Mid lugs 2+3. This provided a more usable range in the control and it was operating from less to more, as expected. My journey troubleshooting this can be found in the following thread. Click here!
Next thing I noticed was that this thing is LOUD!!! It gets loud quick too, like Volume control at maybe 9:00 is a bit of a boost over unity. After resolving the Bass pot issued I decided to try out different pots for the Volume control to see if I could tame it a little. After swapping several pots I decided switching from the stock B100k to an A100k was giving the best results. The control now goes to about 11:00 before it starts boosting, giving just a bit more control in finding your desired level.
With all this soldering and desoldering, I only burned one trace off of the board for the Bass pot (D'oh!). I haven't done that in years, really brought that nostalgic feeling of being an absolute newb!!! And to top it off, once I put things all back together with all of my mods, I had heated and reheated my power jack too many times and had softened the plastic around the sleeve for the jack, so my build started experiencing weird swooshy noises!!! So I thought at that point maybe I was having charge pump issues, so I read all about charge pumps and swapped through every single pump I had in all of my pedals with no change. At some point I notice the wiggle in the power jack, so I installed at temporary replacement and all was cured. Hooray!! Except I had used a mini Lumberg DC jack and was plumb out of them, so the replacement would have to be added to my next parts order. A few weeks later parts were in and finally I had this thing finished, the back plate on, and the guts sealed up hopefully for a very long long long long time.
But how does it sound, one might ask? Great I would say. It is a really clean preamp as one would expect. The tone controls are nicely tuned and work well to be able to dial in whatever you are looking for, as long as what you are looking for is clean. I actually really like what it does on bass, I use it often when I am just plugging in a quick practice rig, and not just because it is on top of the pedal pile. The only thing I cannot comment on is the XLR direct out. I have not had a chance to utilize it yet, but I assume it is great, if it sounds like the rest of the circuit.
Overall I would give this project a 9/10. The board, build docs, and drill templates are all top notch. The backwards Bass control was remedied pretty easily, the whole thing was only turned into a process because of my need to overdo everything. Most of the issues I had in this build were just due to my own circumstances and not the project itself. Even though it gave me all sorts of fits, I would definitely recommend the Paladin if you need a clean preamp or direct box or both! Oh yeah, here are the pictures.
