DEMO Happy Birthd(el)ay To Me!— 23 Skidoo (Modified Chalumeau)

This post contains an audio or video demo

Bricksnbeatles

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4.00 star(s)
Well, I meant to be able to get this built yesterday, on my actual birthday, but I had a few quick snags (and a busy rush to finish up my final project for the semester) that made me need to spend an hour finishing it up today.

For years I’ve planned on building a really wonky pt2399-based effect on my 23rd birthday to call the “23 Skidoo”, and after a few months of deliberation, the Chalumeau seemed like the perfect candidate, with come caveats: I wanted to be able to clean it up a bit; I wanted to have a switchable feedback path to make it a slightly more standard delay, and I wanted to put a boost on the input to get it a bit more active even when the LM386’s gain is down lower, or to drive the 386 harder when it’s fuzzed up. How often does someone born in ‘99 get yo build a 2399-based pedal with a pun-y name on their 23rd birthday? Gotta take advantage of that opportunity!

Few blunders here and there— the first LPB circuit I put together accidentally got wrecked when I turned the heat gun up too much when I was shrink tubing it— melted all the solder into a single blob trapped inside of a shrink tube.

Plugged it in for the first time about 20 minutes and played around for about 5 minutes before I had to abandon it to get back to my final projects, but everything worked as far as I can tell.

Few things:
- I brain farted and accidentally got my wires crossed on the LPB’s level pot (input knob on the pedal) so it’s action is reversed until I can get in and swap it around.
- the gain control (which controls the gain of the 386— I cut the trace between pins 1 and 8, and omitted the 100r resistor to ground, instead using the non-grounded pin of that resistor footprint to connect a 1K linear (log would work better, but linear actually has a pretty smooth sweep in this application as well) pot to connect back to pin 1, providing continuous gain range from 40 to 200) doesn’t clean up nearly as much as I’d hoped— certainly not as clean as the non-fuzz Clari(not) , but I’m content enough to leave it be
-I used a switched c50k pot for the feedback control so I wouldn’t need another switch on the face to disable feedback. It works fine, but it has a 270° rotation range, so max feedback is 30° closer to noon than the max rotation of any other control. Not an issue, but from a visual standpoint, it may be a bit confusing for someone other than myself.
- didn’t have any diffused LEDs on hand, so I scuffed up a yellow water clear LED to use for the time. Probably isn’t ideal, but it’s good enough for now.
-offboard wiring is a mess, I know. Everything is secure and works though, so who cares? That’s what happens when you have pots where pots shouldn’t be and a bunch of off-board mods. Lol
-1 or 2 of the knobs are slightly off-center, so it looks like I mis-drilled, but the pot shafts are all dead even to a straight edge, so ha! I’m no drill press slouch, and I’m a fiend with a center-punch (In all seriousness, I’ll just swap those two knobs out when I have more time to rewire the input pot and swap out the envelope LED. Probably will audition different LDRs too at some point).






Edit: here’s a quick run through of some random settings. No talking, just wiggly guitar noises.
 
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Happy Birthday man! (23 was a looooong time ago for me:)
Thanks mate! Life feels like a 33 1/3 rpm record at 78rpm— too fast, and a little bit funny!
23.

Oh to be young again. Turned 37 this year!
37 is young by my standards ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Of course… I may just have bad standards 😅
Happy Birthday! Pedal looks great! 23 years, man I'm close to 3 times that
Thanks on both counts Barry! Just think— if you’re close to 3x my age, it won’t be long until you can make a 69 (nice!) fuzz pedal or something 😂
 
Best birthday wishes BNB! That is a very fun and well-designed enclosure. I had my 3rd 22nd birthday a few months ago. Not sure it was 3 times better than the first one, but no complaints. Hope your semester wraps up to your satisfaction too.
 
HOPPY BEERDAY! 🍻

If you're a straight edge or simply don't drink beer, then HOPPY BIRDY!
Here's a pair of bouncing tits to mark the occasion:

IDrHOut.gif



GREAT pedal name, and well-executed build with the BEST foresight!

Congrats on your birthday and your birthday-build, sir!

Have you planned similar builds for your Thirty-Something, Lordy I'm Forty or Double-Nickles etc?
 
Happy birthday Nick! Glad not only to see the end product but also to hear it as well. I'm glad to see you sticking to your birthday resolutions, I promised myself a Telecaster for my 40th, but February came and went without NGD occurring. Hoping for later this year, if the family budget allows.
 
Here's a quick demo track I threw together of some of the ways I like to use it.

First Solo (Neil Young-ish) is with a medium length delay rate, the balance at 50/50, and the envelope settings sorta on the medium-light side.

the second solo (St Vincent-ish) is the same setting but with the balance 100% wet, time shifted to be back in time with the track.

the third solo and outdo left side (Adrian Belew-ish) is a shorter delay time and much more extreme envelope settings, again 100% wet and time shifted to align back with the track.

the right side of the outro (I can't think of a comparison) is back to the 50/50 balance, with the most extreme envelope controls and longest delay time, which overloads the 2399 or something like that such that it essentially becomes a chorused unison instead of having an actual delay time.


no Feedback on any of the tracks. varying combinations of gain, input, and output settings, but gain is past noon on all of them, and the input is set pretty high to get a pretty fuzzy tone when the gain is closer to noon.

 
Thanks for the demo and inspiration...

I think I need to give myself a pedal build for my birthday this year... Might be the Chalumeau build.
 
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