Joben Magooch
Well-known member
- Build Rating
So I am a big fan of the EP-style preamps and the Chase Tone/Clandestine is one of my favorites. It’s more or less an always-on and so that’s played heavily into this build.
I wanted to keep the entire top surface real estate open. More on that in a moment…
So you’ll see all controls and I/O are mounted on the sides.
Top side has input, output, and power input.
Right-hand side has the gain control, mode toggle, and bypass. I probably could’ve saved a bit of space and used a toggle switch instead of a stomp for bypass but it’s what I had on hand and it works okay.
Beyond that what I think makes this build a bit unique is the left-hand side where I’ve added a switched “audition” loop. When nothing is plugged into the loop, the Clandestine functions like normal. But when you plug something into the loop, it routes your signal through it instead, which is great if you’re someone like me who is constantly trying out new pedals but would prefer to not have to tear up and rearrange a bunch of your board every time you want to do so. The “loop” sits between the Clandestine and the output jack, so basically anything inserted in it will be directly following the Clandestine. I initially had planned on putting an additional loop between the input and Clandestine (allowing for placing a trial pedal before or after the Clandestine, or both I guess) but felt this was 1.) not likely to get that much use really and 2.) going to be a real pain to wire/cram in there - was cramped enough as-is and 3.) didn’t have enough switched jacks on hand and didn’t care to wait to acquire more. So there’s just the one loop.
On the bottom side there’s also a power pass through. You can plug power into the input and it will power the Clandestine as well as provide power to whatever pedal you’re testing too.
Now I should add that I HATE off board wiring and it’s where I always run into troubles. I tried to keep things relatively neat but it still ended up being a bit busy in there. There’s a lot of heat shrink and hot glue keeping everything in place.
Speaking of hot glue…I didn’t think ahead much about how I’d mount the PCB (as it typically would just mount on the pots/switches/etc, but not an option for this format). So I just used some dabs of glue to make “standoffs” near the corners of the PCB. Put some electrical tape on the bottom of the board just to be safe; placed the board on my homemade standoffs and dabbed a bit more glue on to keep it in place. It’s surprisingly solid and no shorts anywhere!
This was definitely a good “rock it before you box it” build cuz it’s not coming out of there. But I’m terribly impatient so I just threw it all in and hoped for the best. To my honest surprise it worked just fine first try! Biased to about 12.4v or thereabouts. Oh, and it was my first time doing anything SMD, too! So that was fun.
Overall, it’s not the neatest package ever (the white sand enclosure I got from Tayda had some chips upon arrival and was just generally fragile) and I’m sure with some more thought/planning it could’ve been cleaned up a fair bit, but on the whole I’m really rather proud of this guy. It sounds great, and accomplishes exactly what I had hoped for. The plan from here is to place it in my chain and put a bit of dual lock on top (that’s why I wanted the top surface clear) and be able to mount my temporary pedal(s) as needed. Fun and somewhat challenging project - at least a bit out of my usual comfort zone. I’m happy with it!
I wanted to keep the entire top surface real estate open. More on that in a moment…
So you’ll see all controls and I/O are mounted on the sides.
Top side has input, output, and power input.
Right-hand side has the gain control, mode toggle, and bypass. I probably could’ve saved a bit of space and used a toggle switch instead of a stomp for bypass but it’s what I had on hand and it works okay.
Beyond that what I think makes this build a bit unique is the left-hand side where I’ve added a switched “audition” loop. When nothing is plugged into the loop, the Clandestine functions like normal. But when you plug something into the loop, it routes your signal through it instead, which is great if you’re someone like me who is constantly trying out new pedals but would prefer to not have to tear up and rearrange a bunch of your board every time you want to do so. The “loop” sits between the Clandestine and the output jack, so basically anything inserted in it will be directly following the Clandestine. I initially had planned on putting an additional loop between the input and Clandestine (allowing for placing a trial pedal before or after the Clandestine, or both I guess) but felt this was 1.) not likely to get that much use really and 2.) going to be a real pain to wire/cram in there - was cramped enough as-is and 3.) didn’t have enough switched jacks on hand and didn’t care to wait to acquire more. So there’s just the one loop.
On the bottom side there’s also a power pass through. You can plug power into the input and it will power the Clandestine as well as provide power to whatever pedal you’re testing too.
Now I should add that I HATE off board wiring and it’s where I always run into troubles. I tried to keep things relatively neat but it still ended up being a bit busy in there. There’s a lot of heat shrink and hot glue keeping everything in place.
Speaking of hot glue…I didn’t think ahead much about how I’d mount the PCB (as it typically would just mount on the pots/switches/etc, but not an option for this format). So I just used some dabs of glue to make “standoffs” near the corners of the PCB. Put some electrical tape on the bottom of the board just to be safe; placed the board on my homemade standoffs and dabbed a bit more glue on to keep it in place. It’s surprisingly solid and no shorts anywhere!
This was definitely a good “rock it before you box it” build cuz it’s not coming out of there. But I’m terribly impatient so I just threw it all in and hoped for the best. To my honest surprise it worked just fine first try! Biased to about 12.4v or thereabouts. Oh, and it was my first time doing anything SMD, too! So that was fun.
Overall, it’s not the neatest package ever (the white sand enclosure I got from Tayda had some chips upon arrival and was just generally fragile) and I’m sure with some more thought/planning it could’ve been cleaned up a fair bit, but on the whole I’m really rather proud of this guy. It sounds great, and accomplishes exactly what I had hoped for. The plan from here is to place it in my chain and put a bit of dual lock on top (that’s why I wanted the top surface clear) and be able to mount my temporary pedal(s) as needed. Fun and somewhat challenging project - at least a bit out of my usual comfort zone. I’m happy with it!
