Inside a Belton Brick BTDR-3

phi1

Well-known member
Just throwing these gut shots up if anyone is curious. I had a build where the reverb was really hissy when turning up the mix knob (dry through signal with mix knob down had no hiss). Replaced the brick and it works great now as it should. First issue after using many bricks.

So I decided to cut the hard rubber encasement off to get a peak. I actually thought there might be a couple pcbs in there but it’s all packed on one. Just thought others might be curious. I think there was some tracing on an older version, enough to know the concept is 3 pt2399s with some modulation on one of them. I haven’t seen any V3 gut shots. Personally I would still buy them even if the schematic were published, super handy and not a bad price. Besides I think the patent may preclude any boards sold from diy sites. So I wasn’t opening it to do a trace, just look for fun.
 

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Here’s another great thread with several insights about the bricks!


As for tracing, 1 of the caps on mine peeled off with the rubber and is gone. So anyone wanting to take a serious shot at it should start with a good one and take precaution during peeling.
 
Here’s another great thread with several insights about the bricks!


As for tracing, 1 of the caps on mine peeled off with the rubber and is gone. So anyone wanting to take a serious shot at it should start with a good one and take precaution during peeling.
Of course, it shouldn’t be too hard to sue out the function and thus the approximate value range for a single cap in a circuit like this, once it’s all traced. Then it’s just a matter of testing common values within the educated-guessing range
 
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