I have a bunch of these completed and a bunch WIP, so I'm just gonna use this one thread to collect them and update it as I go.
First up is this Madbean Donut- based on the LPB-1. The LPB-1 is second pedal I ever built so it was cool to circle back and build another one now. This one is in a cute pink enclosure and I drew this little donut on it to go with the donut-shaped PCB. A friend already bought this so there's no demo, but you probably have an idea what it does.
Next is the Madbean Dreamtime. This one has been a long time coming. This is a project from 2018 that's no longer available. It's an FV-1 delay and reverb in a 1590a. The pots are on a separate board and they're stacked under the main board. Low profile electrolytics were a must, as well as a low profile dip 8 socket, which I didn't realize even existed. The low pro socket is less than half the height of a regular dip 8 socket.
Populating the board was a piece of cake, and I tested it before even having an enclosure. No big. I have soldered the surface mount components.
The drill template was frustratingly off. There was no way to make the jacks fit without touching, so I kept widening and widening, until I had a huge channel dug out that I filled with JB weld. Can't win em all I guess. Lesson learned, double check the drill specs before actually drilling.
Sound wise, this is a weird pedal. I'm not one for a lot of modulation on delays, and I'm not really into delays period. The first half or so sweep of the modulation knob gives some pretty standard modulation, after that, there's a ring mod effect on the repeats, and the last quarter turn or so, there's a fast and then a slow tremolo to the repeats. On the one hand, this creates an interesting glitchy effect, but I don't find it to be very musical I guess.
The reverb side is using one of the internal algorithms of the fv-1. There's a sort of doubling and chorusy effect that quite frankly I find irritating. I can almost dial it out but not quite.
Why did I choose this project? Great question. It's not because of the features or sounds, it wasn't the 1590a form factor. This PCB came with a surface mount practice board and I thought that was really cool. Unfortunately, I ended up doing many other surface mount projects before I ever got to this one.
This was very challenging to box. I wanted to quit several times but I persevered.
There's a quick knob turn demo below where I attempt to show what this pedal does. I'm never looking for oddball sounds and effects so this really isn't for me.
You might want to get some 24g wire for these builds. I use 22 for everything but bought a few sample bags of 24 fro SB to have on hand for 1590A builds. They're different type of challenge.
I've got one more done for now. It's the Madbean dust bunny, a silicon mkii style bender. Really simple build, no weird parts. The build doc says to bias q2 to 4.5vDC, which does not sound good. I think I set this one more like 7.5vDC. demo forthcoming. I went with a simple machine tag style design on this one, and many of the subsequent pedals you'll see later in this thread
Looking good! For things like the Dreamtime and Dust Bunny where Brian supplies the pot mounting board, I recommend using some ribbon wire to help you fold things in.
You might want to get some 24g wire for these builds. I use 22 for everything but bought a few sample bags of 24 fro SB to have on hand for 1590A builds. They're different type of challenge.
Looking good! For things like the Dreamtime and Dust Bunny where Brian supplies the pot mounting board, I recommend using some ribbon wire to help you fold things in.
Time to add to this thread with the Madbean Violenzz, which is based on the Eric Johnson fuzz face. This was a giveaway board once upon a time and I've had an enclosure drilled for it for forever. So long in fact, the enclosure came from Pedal Parts Plus as a blem before they enacted their DIY-unfriendly MOQs. I had forgotten they even existed until I wrapped up this build.
I had low expectations going into this one, but I was pleasantly surprised. I wanted to try a fuzz face with an input cap blend (girth control on the Violenzz) but I think Eric Johnson is uncool, I don't like his tone, nor his playing. However, I found some cool sounds in this pedal despite that.
As typical with 1590a builds, this one was a PITA to cram in its cramhole. Every single time without fail, I forget to put the lock washer on the footswitch before shoving it in, so I had to pull it back out. I ended up pulling this circuit out 3 times while boxing to adjust one thing or another. I recorded a demo earlier but haven't uploaded it yet. Stay tuned
Time to add to this thread with the Madbean Violenzz, which is based on the Eric Johnson fuzz face. This was a giveaway board once upon a time and I've had an enclosure drilled for it for forever. So long in fact, the enclosure came from Pedal Parts Plus as a blem before they enacted their DIY-unfriendly MOQs. I had forgotten they even existed until I wrapped up this build.
I had low expectations going into this one, but I was pleasantly surprised. I wanted to try a fuzz face with an input cap blend (girth control on the Violenzz) but I think Eric Johnson is uncool, I don't like his tone, nor his playing. However, I found some cool sounds in this pedal despite that.
As typical with 1590a builds, this one was a PITA to cram in its cramhole. Every single time without fail, I forget to put the lock washer on the footswitch before shoving it in, so I had to pull it back out. I ended up pulling this circuit out 3 times while boxing to adjust one thing or another. I recorded a demo earlier but haven't uploaded it yet. Stay tuned View attachment 57066View attachment 57067
