- Build Rating
I've had this in near-finished state for probably months now. First I was missing the trim pots, then I simply worked on other projects while it sat waiting to be finished. And what a mistake that was, this thing rips! After I finished assembly, I powered it up on the bench, adjusted the transistor bias (which @Robert thoughtfully made delightfully easy with those test pads). Then I took it to the amp for a test drive. First, I got no sound - well, that makes sense, both preamp volumes were all the way down. I put them both at noon, hit a few notes, and really had to catch my breath. That's admittedly a bit hyperbolic, but I really like the tones coming out of this. Maybe a wee too much bass, but with the normal preamp down most of the way, and the tone around noon and the treble preamp at noon or above, the bass is easily tamed.
I used a Madbean Softie2 relay bypass (I bought several of these a while ago). Everything works as expected, but I didn't think through where the actual relay would go in relation to the foot switch. I like to put my footswitch down as low as possible (to maximize the distance from the knobs). But here that was a mistake, because it prohibits the relay PCB from sitting nicely on top of the switch. So, as you can see, it basically just gets shoved in there. Kind of ruins an otherwise clean build.
I got the multi-turn trim pots for this - those things are infinitely better than the more common single turn 3362P-style trimmers. I always feel like a hard glance is enough to knock those single-turn trimmers out of whack. Multi-turn FTW, the DIY PCB world should standardize on these.
I used a Madbean Softie2 relay bypass (I bought several of these a while ago). Everything works as expected, but I didn't think through where the actual relay would go in relation to the foot switch. I like to put my footswitch down as low as possible (to maximize the distance from the knobs). But here that was a mistake, because it prohibits the relay PCB from sitting nicely on top of the switch. So, as you can see, it basically just gets shoved in there. Kind of ruins an otherwise clean build.
I got the multi-turn trim pots for this - those things are infinitely better than the more common single turn 3362P-style trimmers. I always feel like a hard glance is enough to knock those single-turn trimmers out of whack. Multi-turn FTW, the DIY PCB world should standardize on these.
