Pitch Pirate-Witch w/ Green Jay

[pricklyrobot]

Here’s a PedalPCB Pitch Witch build.

Gave myself plenty of offboard wiring on this one
But otherwise no real big challenges with the build.

It features the Green Jay. A very common bird in far south Texas, but not to be seen anywhere else in the US.

Green Jay Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

A brilliant green, yellow, and blue jay of the tropics whose range barely stretches to southern Texas, the Green Jay is a noisy, colorful delight. The birds travel in conspicuous family flocks through brushlands and forests, seeking insects, small vertebrates, and fruit to eat. Like other jays...

www.allaboutbirds.org

I guess the trimpot just adjusts the overall level coming in? I just turned the Blend fully CCW and tried to match that to the bypassed level
And the Speed pot seems backwards (i.e. faster CCW and slower as you go CW). I double checked my wiring and it looks correct. Not too worried about it as long as it works.

This thing seems to have a decent range from subtle modulated delay up to wacky pitch boings. All the controls seem fairly intuitive and useful. Have to play with it a bit more to decide if it’s different enough from delays I already have to warrant keeping it around.

* Now for a bit of troubleshooting content: I noticed when I still had it open (to tweak the trimmer) that moving the PCB around into certain positions would cause the signal to cut out a bit. It seemed to be related to the Blend pot somehow. I reflowed the connections on the board and the pot, and visually inspected everything.
If anything it was worse after that. In the course of screwing around with it, I discovered that if I squeezed it, like so…

…the full strength signal came back. And some audio probing seemed to confirm a really weak signal on the wiper (except when squeezed).

So, I’m thinking some kind of mechanical defect in the pot, like the wiper(s) not making good contact.

Of course I only ordered the one B50k dual-gang pot for this. So, while I try to put together a slightly larger order (so I’m not paying $10 shipping on a $1 pot) and wait for it to show up, any ideas on something that might salvage the existing pot?
I’ll almost surely just replace it once a new one arrives, so I don’t mind experimenting/mangling in the meantime

 

[jimilee]

That’s pretty intense trouble shooting. How did you decide you need it to squeeze it with that much force?

 

[pricklyrobot]

That’s pretty intense trouble shooting. How did you decide you need it to squeeze it with that much force?

I just grabbed those channel locks cause they already had electrical tape on them (from another household project), so I wouldn’t have to worry about accidental shorting.
I’m applying significant, but still fairly minimal in terms of what the pliers can do, force

 

[eh là bas ma]

This was the first modulation circuit i built, with a pcbguitarmania board.

I still enjoy it, the only downside for me was the noisy PT2399 IC on longer delay.

If only it was possible to have some clean repeats with long delay settings, it would be among my favorite circuits.

Very warm and pleasing chorus sounds on short delay.

 

[rwl]

Love the Green Jay and your design - I saw some of those bad boys in Mexico this spring, along with the Yucatan Jay. Jays are pretty cool birds in general.

What's the red pot cover? Looks like a Babybel cheese wax.

 

[pricklyrobot]

Love the Green Jay and your design - I saw some of those bad boys in Mexico this spring, along with the Yucatan Jay. Jays are pretty cool birds in general.

What's the red pot cover? Looks like a Babybel cheese wax.

It’s a “pot condom” from GuitarPCB.com. I think he had purple ones at some point too. I cut the front of it to fit the dual-gang pot, which kinda worked (doesn’t fit super snug). Though it works better than the pot does at the moment!

Yucatán Jays are very cool. Saw a bunch when we went to Tulum and Sian Ka’an a few years ago. You’ve got to get over to the west coast of Mexico so you can see the Magpie Jays!

 

[pricklyrobot]

Swapped in the new 50k Dual pot yesterday, and that’s done the trick.

Never fun when a pedal doesn’t work 100% straight out of the gate, but it definitely feels better when it turns out to be a manufacturing glitch rather than your own

Agree that this does get a little noisy on the longer delay times, but not unusably so for my purposes. This is my first PT2399 build, but all my reading suggest some degree of noise is just inherent to this IC