Vh drive pedal changes to original design

[paulig174]

Im in the process of building the vh140c pedal from aion(vh drive pedal). But im bullilding it onto a custom case.
My first question is
.. can i bring wires from the pots to the board.. so i can move the pots to the front the case rather soldering directly to the board (as it is in instructions) or will it cause cross talk or volume /gain drop? what gauge wire should i used if i can to this?
Next question if i want the footswitch to be on a sperate pedal(via a 1/4" jack and cable to the floor rather than soldering the switch directly to the board would this work or would the long calbe also cause problems?

 

[jwin615]

1) you can off board wire the pots but yes, it may cause issues
2) using a relay bypass would be the easiest way to do this. Then you just send the 5v trigger out on the jack. Take care to use isolated jacks so not to ground the 5v signal.
Since this has the overly complicated Aion daughter board, it will take a bit more effort than typical.

Are you top mounting the pots? They look really close together if that's what the 5 dilled holes are for. Unless you're planning on 9mm pots, even then , pretty cramped.

 

[paulig174]

1) you can off board wire the pots but yes, it may cause issues
2) using a relay bypass would be the easiest way to do this. Then you just send the 5v trigger out on the jack. Take care to use isolated jacks so not to ground the 5v signal.
Since this has the overly complicated Aion daughter board, it will take a bit more effort than typical.

Are you top mounting the pots? They look really close together if that's what the 5 dilled holes are for. Unless you're planning on 9mm pots, even then , pretty cramped.

Oh yeah the pots are 9mm are they big enough? What gauge of wire could i use to off board the pots?i might not do bypass switch mod so.. ill just put the switch on the back of the box.

 

[pricklyrobot]

I’ve off-board wired the majority of pedals that I’ve built.
A.) because it was the norm on older stuff
and
B.) because I frequently don’t like other people’s default layouts
I’ve never had any problems with it.

And as far as I know, the main reason for PCB-mounted pots is so you don’t have to use standoffs or some other way of securing your PCB inside your enclosure (something you might need to consider here, btw), not for any electrical/signal quality advantage it’s supposed to confer.

9mm pots should work fine. They can be tricky to solder though, due to their compactness. I’ve only ever seen them with the ‘straight pin/PCB’ style lugs (as opposed to actual round solder lugs). So if I’m using them, I carefully bend the lugs into loops using some small round-nosed pliers. Center lug bent one direction, two outside lugs the opposite way, to reduce crowding. Then heat shrink over each when I’m done.

24 or 22 AWG should be fine for any pedal wiring.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

Depending on the circuit, wire length and routing can be critical. Using pots and switches to support the board has both mechanical and electrical advantages, provided the board is routed properly.

I agree that relay switching is the preferred method for adding a remote stomp switch. Better to not run the input and output signals in a common cable.

 

[Feral Feline]

I've done the 9mm pot and curling-up-the-pins thing, which has its merits. I like the trick of bending the outer legs one way, opposite direction of the middle — that's a new-to-me trick, so thanks for that PricklyRobot.



Here's another option that also has merits (horses for courses)...

9mm Pot vs 16mm Pot

The best use of VERO ever, I swear. I prefer building on PCBs, and then PERF — building on vero not so much, but for soldering 9mm pots... I've found it tremendously helpful to have a scrap of 3x2 vero to solder to the pot and then you have a place to solder the wires as well.


I love 9mm pots for mods, they easily fit in so many places — and then with some Davies 1900-style knobs, just about any mod can be squeezed in somewhere and the control interface still usable.



Where do you plan on drilling the jacks, power, bypass?

 

[lowpitch]

I've built a couple of these over the past few months and you have to be careful with how you lay out your wiring. Running the input wire too close to some parts of the circuits can introduce crosstalk. Shielded wire helps and is a must in my opinion for the ins and outs of this circuit. Off-board wiring the pots could make it worse but it doesn't have to. I'd just wire it up and give it a listen. If crosstalk/noise is fine, good, if not, move the wires around a little and see if it gets better. Also, every single one of my builds tended to oscillate at high volume and high gain settings. A buffer before the pedal does short work of that. Since you have some extra space in the box, you could throw in a small input buffer board if oscillations are an issue. Could even tap into the +/- 15V of the circuit and do a very simple unity gain op amp buffer with minimal parts on vero or perf.