Sushi box SuperSonic WIP

[Paradox916]

WIPs sometimes I feel lead to project purgatory and at the risk of cursing this one I’m doing it anyway…

I was pretty excited that @vigilante398 did a full featured Uberschall project and jumped on buying the board as soon as I could, but the problems with me and pedals is they almost always live on the desk and never touch the ground or get stomped on, I play sitting down in front of a DAW with headphones and this has led me to be more and more curious about a rack rig. You don’t really see a lot of DIY projects of this nature, so I figured this would be a good one to see if I actually like the flow of a rack format.
so let’s spin the wheel…


I can start this with pics of an unpopulated and then populated PCB but I think we are past that… It took some time and digging but I found a “cheaper” 2U rack case (I say “cheaper” because even the cheapest ones I found still added a significant amount to the price of this project.) and started laying out the vent holes.. I wanted to do something a little more fancy but it’s a steel case and that’s a lot of holes by hand… so F that.. we will go with functional.

Not my best but it will work just fine.

4 tubes are going to put out some heat. And I needed to figure out how to mount this PCB


I came up with m3 standoffs and nylon washers to clamp the board and it worked out not to bad…

Because I maybe want a remote foot switch I had to think of something else and abandon the Idea of the standard 3pdt stomp daughter board so I decided the PPCB DPDT latching relay with a little out of the box wiring might work…

In to deep to quit now.. to be continued…..

 

[jcpst]

WIPs sometimes I feel lead to project purgatory and at the risk of cursing this one I’m doing it anyway…

Yeah. I made my first WIP thread, and as soon as I did that, I lost motivation and I distracted myself by starting other projects. My theory is the WIP thread gave me the same internet dopamine hit that a build report does.

But I love reading other people’s! Like this one. This is a super cool project. Do you have a plan for the power portion of the unit?

 

[Paradox916]

Yeah. I made my first WIP thread, and as soon as I did that, I lost motivation and I distracted myself by starting other projects. My theory is the WIP thread gave me the same internet dopamine hit that a build report does.

But I love reading other people’s! Like this one. This is a super cool project. Do you have a plan for the power portion of the unit?

I want to have the bells and whistles but still want to try and keep it simple as possible so I’m just going to use a 9v 2000mA power supply as would be used if this were in pedal format… I’m still brainstorming on a lot of “how am I going to do it” it’s a fluid situation and nothing is set in stone. But the idea at the moment for power interface is power on/off and bypass toggles on the front panel. If that answers your question.

 

[Paradox916]

every proper multi channel preamp obviously has channel switching indicators, and with abandoning the 3pdt switch for the Dpdt relay because I wanted the option for a remote foot switch and front panel switching (I don’t know why, I will most likely never play live again.. but you never know.) this came with how do I make the LEDs “flip flop” without the 3rd pole …here is my solution

LED 1 is from the pads on the relay board,

Simple enough and seems to work…

 

[Paradox916]

I couldn’t find any place that could uv print the front and back panels 19” is a bit to long for most machines I guess, and the front panel is too thick to roll the dice on a faceplate, that being the case now (maybe in the future I can find a different solution.) I’m going old school with the layout and hand labeling.

And everything looks like it will line up reasonably

 

[Paradox916]

Not a lot of forward movement lately but I have been slowly chipping away at the labeling, had to try a couple different way, but this ended up having the best contrast, still not sure if I want to go with a gloss clear coat or a matte, ether way I hope it doesn’t bleed the writing out.

 

[Paradox916]

Went with the matte clear after consulting the brain trust, didn’t bleed the ink! And turned out as good as I could hope for doing this by hand (hats off to @jjjimi84 he make this stuff look easy). Keeping everything lined up and proportionate is harder than it looks ( at least for me) I added some little corner embellishments in an attempt to give it more of a finished look , kind of has a little bit of a gothic sort of vibe now.

 

[jjjimi84]

That looks great! Your hand writing is much nicer than mine!

 

[Paradox916]

That looks great! Your hand writing is much nicer than mine!

. You haven’t seen my actual hand writing… even I wonder WTF it says.

 

[Paradox916]

Nothing fun, but I did find all the case panels were insulated so I spot faced a few select areas to make sure the chassis is bonded,

 

[Nostradoomus]

 

[Paradox916]

All the pots, switches, and jacks are mounted, if I get the time tomorrow night I will start wiring things up.

 

[Paradox916]

View attachment 85846

for a minute I thought I was just entertaining myself.

 

[Nostradoomus]

Nah man this is cool as hell

 

[Paradox916]

Nah man this is cool as hell

Hopefully I don’t F this up….

 

[vigilante398]

Hopefully I don’t F this up….

You've already got the main point down that I always tell people when building my stuff: take your time.

Supersonic is not an easy build, but it works. I will tell you in this case that you're going to want to be extra careful with your offboard wiring though. In high gain circuits you have to be very careful with every single trace and keeping it away from other signals that can cause problems like oscillation. That's the main reason Supersonic ended up as a 6-layer PCB instead of 4-layer.

So for the wiring step as well, just take your time, make every wire run count, and keep wire runs isolated as best you can.

You got this!

 

[Paradox916]

You've already got the main point down that I always tell people when building my stuff: take your time.

Supersonic is not an easy build, but it works. I will tell you in this case that you're going to want to be extra careful with your offboard wiring though. In high gain circuits you have to be very careful with every single trace and keeping it away from other signals that can cause problems like oscillation. That's the main reason Supersonic ended up as a 6-layer PCB instead of 4-layer.

So for the wiring step as well, just take your time, make every wire run count, and keep wire runs isolated as best you can.

You got this!

! This was my main concern, I was planning on braiding the wires of each pot in there respective group of three, would this be the best way to approach it or would this cause the exact issue I’m trying to avoid?

 

[vigilante398]

! This was my main concern, I was planning on braiding the wires of each pot in there respective group of three, would this be the best way to approach it or would this cause the exact issue I’m trying to avoid?

That's a solid plan, keep each pot's wires close together and keep those away from the wires of every other pot.

 

[Paradox916]

That's a solid plan, keep each pot's wires close together and keep those away from the wires of every other pot.

I was planning on doing the same for the bypass switch, now I think about it I wonder if having the I/Os braided together might cause a problem… storming a little more I think I know how I will go about it…

 

[vigilante398]

I was planning on doing the same for the bypass switch, now I think about it I wonder if having the I/Os braided together might cause a problem… storming a little more I think I know how I will go about it…

Yeah definitely don't do that. I would advise keeping inputs and outputs as separate as possible and shielding them. The same goes for the FX loop jacks. Most amp builders will tell you to use shielded wire for gain pot connections as well as that's going to be one of the more sensitive signals.