Cataclysm and King Tut (Rullywow)

flemming

Well-known member
I finished these off this past weekend. The Cataclysm was my first PedalPCB build, though these are only the 2nd and 3rd pedals I've ever built so it's not like I'm super late to the game.

The King Tut was designed for a 1590B w/ side mount jacks and power, but I wanted it to match the PedalPCB builds I was planning, so I opted to try to make it work with top mount jacks in a 125B. I bought a pair of Lumberg jacks since I thought that would my best option without having to move the board down too far. They fit, but it's totally dicey. There are a couple transistors right at the top that just barely clear the jacks when plugged in. With wear and tear this is probably inviting a problem, but it's fine for my usage. After I built it, I was testing it with Fuzzdog's Ultra Tester and it had a whistle to it once the volume was increased. I spent a bunch of time using the audio probe in the tester to try and figure out what was going on, but I was detecting the whistle at the Lo/Hi switch which is pretty much the first component. On a whim I tried it with a battery and surprise, surprise it went away. It turns out it was noise from the 9v adapter. I grabbed another one and problem solved. That was the first lesson learned.

The Cataclysm was pretty straight forward. Figuring out how to use the Ultra Tester with it took a little fiddling since it couldn't just connect straight across to the bottom of the PCB. I ran V+/G to the top and In/Out to the bottom of the board. The LED wasn't working but then I realized that's because the SW/GND on the board needed to be connected to each other when using the tester. Of course I only figured this out because they accidentally touched and the LED came on. I boxed it up, but unlucky for me I bought a bunch of the Alpha switches from Tayda and those are the one 3PDT that doesn't fit the PedalPCB break out board, so I had to wire it up manually. It works just fine when wired in front of the amp, but when I put it in the effects loop of my Orange Micro Dark there's a weird ticking and it doesn't sound right. I'm not quite sure what's up with that. It's the first time I've used the effects loop on that amp and with a cable going between Send/Return it's fine, so something about the pedal in combination doesn't play nice-nice. If the pedal didn't work fine in front I'd blame my construction, but since it does for now I'm blaming my lack of general knowledge about this stuff. I'm not feeling the knobs, so I'll switch them out at some point.

The graphics are all water slide decals with clear poly brushed on top. I'm not happy with the smoothness of the finish. Sanding in between coats is tricky since I've screwed up the graphics by being too aggressive. I need to figure something else out. I'm still sorting out my process and figuring out in what order I should do things to have the cleanest outcome. I'm more of a lurker type so thanks to everyone that posts frequently, you've taught me a lot already.

As a side note Tayda screwed up and swapped my order during shipping so I got a box of 15 x 1590B enclosures in different colors along with a bunch of pots and DC jacks. They took care of it and upgraded shipping so that I could get my actual order quicker. So I hope who ever got mine is happy. Now I'm sitting on a bunch of enclosures that I need to find a use for :)

Robert
 

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