Fingolfen
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Today's pedal is a bit more my speed. Don't get me wrong, fun modulation effects are awesome, I just see a lot more potential to use this pedal on a regular basis. I'd had a request for a dinosaur version of the Precision Drive, so I went in search of a good schematic or board and went from there.
Fortunately PedalPCB has a board for this project, the Dwarven Hammer (which is an awesome name!). Because of the circuit design, the Precision Drive has a very interesting mix of components. If you look at the overall resistor count, it's fairly low, but there is almost a dizzying number of film capacitors. Of course, I then realized that eight of them were tied directly to the 8-way switch, and the unusual ratio of components suddenly made a lot more sense. For this build I'm using all 1/4W metal film resistors and mostly WIMA metal film capacitors (though there are a couple of oddballs thrown in for values I didn't have WIMA ones which meant I couldn't get the full red chiclet effect). There are a couple of diodes (1N4148) as well as a couple of transistors (2N3904). The one integrated circuit is socketed per my normal build practice. Getting the board populated was very straightforward as the PCB is well marked and laid out.
The next step of the process was a little trickier, but not too bad. Seating the potentiometers was easy, but the through-hold locations for the 1P8T switch are very close to the drive potentiometer, so you have to be very careful soldering it in to prevent jumping between the pads. This is also an earlier PedalPCB board, so the +9V pad isn't marked as it is with more recent boards. It was very easy to tell which one should be the +9V and which one should be ground just by looking at the board itself, but having the additional visual cue is always appreciated. I went ahead and grounded all of the jacks to the board, and all of the connections to the audio and power jacks are insulated with heat shrink tubing.
I had a lot of fun getting the enclosure together for this one. Since this is a more "metal" pedal, I wanted art that sort of fit the theme. So I went with a simple white raptor with a cool background also in white on a black enclosure. In early testing with my Boss Katana, the pedal is sounding amazing as well. Once I get some time in the house to myself, I'm going to hook this up to my Bat Cat, pull out SG or Dunable and see what it will really do!
Orignal blog entry: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/08/dropping-hammer-cloning-precision-drive.html
Fortunately PedalPCB has a board for this project, the Dwarven Hammer (which is an awesome name!). Because of the circuit design, the Precision Drive has a very interesting mix of components. If you look at the overall resistor count, it's fairly low, but there is almost a dizzying number of film capacitors. Of course, I then realized that eight of them were tied directly to the 8-way switch, and the unusual ratio of components suddenly made a lot more sense. For this build I'm using all 1/4W metal film resistors and mostly WIMA metal film capacitors (though there are a couple of oddballs thrown in for values I didn't have WIMA ones which meant I couldn't get the full red chiclet effect). There are a couple of diodes (1N4148) as well as a couple of transistors (2N3904). The one integrated circuit is socketed per my normal build practice. Getting the board populated was very straightforward as the PCB is well marked and laid out.
The next step of the process was a little trickier, but not too bad. Seating the potentiometers was easy, but the through-hold locations for the 1P8T switch are very close to the drive potentiometer, so you have to be very careful soldering it in to prevent jumping between the pads. This is also an earlier PedalPCB board, so the +9V pad isn't marked as it is with more recent boards. It was very easy to tell which one should be the +9V and which one should be ground just by looking at the board itself, but having the additional visual cue is always appreciated. I went ahead and grounded all of the jacks to the board, and all of the connections to the audio and power jacks are insulated with heat shrink tubing.
I had a lot of fun getting the enclosure together for this one. Since this is a more "metal" pedal, I wanted art that sort of fit the theme. So I went with a simple white raptor with a cool background also in white on a black enclosure. In early testing with my Boss Katana, the pedal is sounding amazing as well. Once I get some time in the house to myself, I'm going to hook this up to my Bat Cat, pull out SG or Dunable and see what it will really do!
Orignal blog entry: https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/08/dropping-hammer-cloning-precision-drive.html
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