mybud
Well-known member
- Build Rating
TL;DR 
My first build report for 2025 and it's the ElectroVibe mini, as you see. I took quite some time putting it together, building each board separately and then checking for alignment and any glaring problems before they got too far out of control to be fixed (above pic). Finally fired it up yesterday before final assembly and housing and glad to say it works as intended.
I've had some experience building stacked boards for modular synths (and @Robert's Byzantium flanger) and drew from the EV mini drill template he posted on Tayda's site for layout and drilling guidance. Still, it's a complex enough build and I didn't quite get the footswitch alignment correct (more of which to follow).
TMM it's a marvel of engineering to design this to fit a 125B-sized enclosure (hats off to our leader indeed).
I did the suggested gain mod (please see especially @Big Monk's posts re R2 and R4 and @MichaelW's and others' posts regarding this). It works like a charm and obviates the gain staging problems of the original, which, while 'authentic,' apparently reduces the pedal's overall output level by 1/3 or so. Not great for live, I'd surmise. The mods obviate this problem and help it to play nicely on your pedalboard setup.
I had intended to adapt the B250k pot I used for want of a 100k by bridging a 180k resistor across lugs 1 and 3 but forgot to do this. So there's not much boost but no evident loss either so that's ok.
When it came to final assembly, I drilled the footswitch hole too close to the board and had to ream it out a bit to fit it all together. Entirely my bad, not entirely hidden by the silver washer, but again it works. If it really disturbs me, I'll either rehouse it after a more careful measuring job or try to fill in the offending portion with JB-Weld or some such.
The verdict (and if you've got this far, a VC and bar are on their way):
Fantastic, unique, vintage-sounding circuit and I understand why they fetch such high prices elsewhere. The incandescent lamp technology does make a big difference and I'm tickled by the fact that it's essentially a kind of IC in reverse (again, if I understand @Big Monk's reading correctly). I find it fab for bass and the vibrato option almost sounds like double-tracking, so very usable for my purposes.
Over at Kevin's, there are detailed instructions for biasing which I may or may not try since it already sounds fab with my less than systematic biasing.
A final caveat: it's essential to heed the height requirements for elcaps and so forth. I only just managed it to fit the whole assembly into the housing with very little clearance to spare. But by all means build it; it's really worth the effort.
Thanks for reading and may the pedal gods smile on your endeavours in 2025.
My first build report for 2025 and it's the ElectroVibe mini, as you see. I took quite some time putting it together, building each board separately and then checking for alignment and any glaring problems before they got too far out of control to be fixed (above pic). Finally fired it up yesterday before final assembly and housing and glad to say it works as intended.
I've had some experience building stacked boards for modular synths (and @Robert's Byzantium flanger) and drew from the EV mini drill template he posted on Tayda's site for layout and drilling guidance. Still, it's a complex enough build and I didn't quite get the footswitch alignment correct (more of which to follow).
TMM it's a marvel of engineering to design this to fit a 125B-sized enclosure (hats off to our leader indeed).
I did the suggested gain mod (please see especially @Big Monk's posts re R2 and R4 and @MichaelW's and others' posts regarding this). It works like a charm and obviates the gain staging problems of the original, which, while 'authentic,' apparently reduces the pedal's overall output level by 1/3 or so. Not great for live, I'd surmise. The mods obviate this problem and help it to play nicely on your pedalboard setup.
I had intended to adapt the B250k pot I used for want of a 100k by bridging a 180k resistor across lugs 1 and 3 but forgot to do this. So there's not much boost but no evident loss either so that's ok.
When it came to final assembly, I drilled the footswitch hole too close to the board and had to ream it out a bit to fit it all together. Entirely my bad, not entirely hidden by the silver washer, but again it works. If it really disturbs me, I'll either rehouse it after a more careful measuring job or try to fill in the offending portion with JB-Weld or some such.
The verdict (and if you've got this far, a VC and bar are on their way):
Fantastic, unique, vintage-sounding circuit and I understand why they fetch such high prices elsewhere. The incandescent lamp technology does make a big difference and I'm tickled by the fact that it's essentially a kind of IC in reverse (again, if I understand @Big Monk's reading correctly). I find it fab for bass and the vibrato option almost sounds like double-tracking, so very usable for my purposes.
Over at Kevin's, there are detailed instructions for biasing which I may or may not try since it already sounds fab with my less than systematic biasing.
A final caveat: it's essential to heed the height requirements for elcaps and so forth. I only just managed it to fit the whole assembly into the housing with very little clearance to spare. But by all means build it; it's really worth the effort.
Thanks for reading and may the pedal gods smile on your endeavours in 2025.
