MichaelW
Well-known member
So this build was way outside my comfort zone having not yet built a BBD analog device.
Also, seems like there's a disproportionate amount of troubleshooting threads for this pedal. I've been somewhat hesitant to even start it, there was always an excuse to build something else in my queue Plus the chips were pricey and hard to find and blah blah blah......(I have a lot more excuses if you want to hear them)
Anyway, with a bit of encouragement and advice from my pedal sensei @fig I finally decided to dig into it and see if anything I've learned since starting my pedal building journey could be applied.
I got the BBD and Clock chips from Cabintech so I was pretty confident that I had legit CoolAudio chips. I didn't have enough 2N5088's so I substituted 2N5089's.
I also followed @PedalPCB's suggestion and replaced the red led's with 2u2 MLCC's.
Triple and quadruple checked all my component values before stuffing. Otherwise I just followed my usual workflow. Despite the dense parts count it all went together pretty quickly. The only thing I goofed on was not accounting for the height of one of the film caps when I was dry fitting the pcb into the enclosure. It would not allow me to seat the 3PDT board. If I were doing it over again I would have mounted that cap on the reverse side. I wound up angling the 3PDT board and "just" had enough solder lugs showing for the pin header and foot switch to make a solid mechanical solder connection.
My recent builds have become reliable enough that I don't bother rocking before boxing, and I decided what the hey, may as well roll with it on this one too, so I boxed it up and even installed the knobs before firing it up. Of course this time it kinda bit me in the butt
When I started biasing I was able to get a very faint chorus effect but something was definitely not right. I had spent that last few weeks reading all the troubleshooting threads I could find on this pedal so I knew it was going to be a very narrow range on the trimpot when the effect comes alive, but all I was able to get was a very faint chorusing effect. If I turned the LAG knob I could manually make it chorus but otherwise there was only extremely faint chorusing if I hit the right spot on the trimmer.
So as my heart started to sink and I was resigning myself to breaking out the audio probe, I literally visualized a post from @Chuck D. Bones saying:
"Have you performed a thorough visual inspection?"
Heh, so I started just taking a real close look at what I could see without removing the board from the box and started wiggling components, and sure enough one of the 2N5089's was loose in the socket. Pretty much fell right out when I tipped it upside down. So I pulled a fresh one out and put a bit more bend in the legs so it would hold tighter. Fired up the pedal and BAM, lush chorus sounds started filling the room, the sky opened and angelic beings were carrying a gilded litter with @Chuck D. Bones reclining on it and smiling benevolently down on me.....(ok not really but it COULD have happened.....
Definitely an awesome sounding chorus pedal. I really like the "Blend" knob but I did have to go look up on the Walrus Audio website how it worked. Once I figured that part out I was able to dial in a lot of different cool "subtle movement" sounds with the blend knob between 9 o clock and noon.
I'm not a huge Chorus user, but I've had the classic TC Electronics chorus pedal as well as a Boss CE-2 pedal and back in the day when everyone was using rack gear (me included) there was always some digital chorus patch. This Caesar really sounds better than all of them (but I am going from memory).
I'm probably not going to be using it a whole lot but there are a couple of guitar parts that call for a chorus in my recording project list (that I can never seem to get to).
Very glad I built this! Now I have a few more sets of V3207/V3102's that I need to find something to build around, so any suggestions would be welcomed!
I recorded a simple short clip on my Strat with no backing. Just guitar pedal into my interface and clean amp model. The settings in the recording clip are as shown in the first pic below. All around 10 o'clock with the toggle on the "triangle" setting.
Also, seems like there's a disproportionate amount of troubleshooting threads for this pedal. I've been somewhat hesitant to even start it, there was always an excuse to build something else in my queue Plus the chips were pricey and hard to find and blah blah blah......(I have a lot more excuses if you want to hear them)
Anyway, with a bit of encouragement and advice from my pedal sensei @fig I finally decided to dig into it and see if anything I've learned since starting my pedal building journey could be applied.
I got the BBD and Clock chips from Cabintech so I was pretty confident that I had legit CoolAudio chips. I didn't have enough 2N5088's so I substituted 2N5089's.
I also followed @PedalPCB's suggestion and replaced the red led's with 2u2 MLCC's.
Triple and quadruple checked all my component values before stuffing. Otherwise I just followed my usual workflow. Despite the dense parts count it all went together pretty quickly. The only thing I goofed on was not accounting for the height of one of the film caps when I was dry fitting the pcb into the enclosure. It would not allow me to seat the 3PDT board. If I were doing it over again I would have mounted that cap on the reverse side. I wound up angling the 3PDT board and "just" had enough solder lugs showing for the pin header and foot switch to make a solid mechanical solder connection.
My recent builds have become reliable enough that I don't bother rocking before boxing, and I decided what the hey, may as well roll with it on this one too, so I boxed it up and even installed the knobs before firing it up. Of course this time it kinda bit me in the butt
When I started biasing I was able to get a very faint chorus effect but something was definitely not right. I had spent that last few weeks reading all the troubleshooting threads I could find on this pedal so I knew it was going to be a very narrow range on the trimpot when the effect comes alive, but all I was able to get was a very faint chorusing effect. If I turned the LAG knob I could manually make it chorus but otherwise there was only extremely faint chorusing if I hit the right spot on the trimmer.
So as my heart started to sink and I was resigning myself to breaking out the audio probe, I literally visualized a post from @Chuck D. Bones saying:
"Have you performed a thorough visual inspection?"
Heh, so I started just taking a real close look at what I could see without removing the board from the box and started wiggling components, and sure enough one of the 2N5089's was loose in the socket. Pretty much fell right out when I tipped it upside down. So I pulled a fresh one out and put a bit more bend in the legs so it would hold tighter. Fired up the pedal and BAM, lush chorus sounds started filling the room, the sky opened and angelic beings were carrying a gilded litter with @Chuck D. Bones reclining on it and smiling benevolently down on me.....(ok not really but it COULD have happened.....
Definitely an awesome sounding chorus pedal. I really like the "Blend" knob but I did have to go look up on the Walrus Audio website how it worked. Once I figured that part out I was able to dial in a lot of different cool "subtle movement" sounds with the blend knob between 9 o clock and noon.
I'm not a huge Chorus user, but I've had the classic TC Electronics chorus pedal as well as a Boss CE-2 pedal and back in the day when everyone was using rack gear (me included) there was always some digital chorus patch. This Caesar really sounds better than all of them (but I am going from memory).
I'm probably not going to be using it a whole lot but there are a couple of guitar parts that call for a chorus in my recording project list (that I can never seem to get to).
Very glad I built this! Now I have a few more sets of V3207/V3102's that I need to find something to build around, so any suggestions would be welcomed!
I recorded a simple short clip on my Strat with no backing. Just guitar pedal into my interface and clean amp model. The settings in the recording clip are as shown in the first pic below. All around 10 o'clock with the toggle on the "triangle" setting.