genXslacker
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- Build Rating
Behold, the King of Pwn ... simultaneous nods to Mike Piera, Eric Cartman, and Andy Summers. (Sting is a douche bag. His solo music is bad, and you should feel bad if you like it.*)
It's a dual overdrive with a Mesa Grid Slammer circuit feeding a Greer Lightspeed circuit. I didn't bother with an order-flipping switch, because for my ears and go-to rig, Grid-Slammer-first is the only way.
I'm pleased overall with the way it turned out, despite the fact that I'm aware of imperfections. As always, I'd avoid some landmines if I built it again.
For starters, I wouldn't knock the Lightspeed board off of my bench when it was nearly complete. There's evidence of the rough treatment on the left corners of that board. It haunts me.
I really need to figure out how to take closeup photos and have all of the guts be in focus, not just a portion. I've also got more spaghetti in there than I'd like, but I'm leaving it for now.
The boards came from Glory to Ukraine's collection on PCBWay. He's the same guy that Barry at GuitarPCB got most, if not all, of his "Bonus" boards from last year. You don't get much in the way of documentation, but component values are silk screened on the boards, which is always nice. Not so nice is that Glory to Ukraine's resistor symbols are very close to his capacitor symbols, which led to my having to wonder why the Grid Slammer's gain wouldn't exceed unity... and having to desolder two capacitors and replace them with resistors. It's easier to blame the symbols than accept responsibility myself.
Most of my builds lately have been PedalPCB, Aion FX, and MadBean. As such, I'd gotten out of the habit of making sure my default workflow wouldn't block pads later in the process. I had to bend down both middle pots to access the off-board-wiring through holes at the tops of the boards. I really hate doing that, but it turned out fine. And I suppose that's one of the tradeoffs for compact layouts. It was worth it to get them into a BB with plenty of elbow room for switches, LEDs, and jacks.
After stamping and inking the enclosure, I sprayed the top with a matte clearcoat. I hated that and sanded (most of) it off. I might try gloss or semi-gloss in the future, but I'm not letting raw aluminum in the same room as matte clearcoat ever again.
*Mostly kidding, you do you.
It's a dual overdrive with a Mesa Grid Slammer circuit feeding a Greer Lightspeed circuit. I didn't bother with an order-flipping switch, because for my ears and go-to rig, Grid-Slammer-first is the only way.
I'm pleased overall with the way it turned out, despite the fact that I'm aware of imperfections. As always, I'd avoid some landmines if I built it again.
For starters, I wouldn't knock the Lightspeed board off of my bench when it was nearly complete. There's evidence of the rough treatment on the left corners of that board. It haunts me.
I really need to figure out how to take closeup photos and have all of the guts be in focus, not just a portion. I've also got more spaghetti in there than I'd like, but I'm leaving it for now.
The boards came from Glory to Ukraine's collection on PCBWay. He's the same guy that Barry at GuitarPCB got most, if not all, of his "Bonus" boards from last year. You don't get much in the way of documentation, but component values are silk screened on the boards, which is always nice. Not so nice is that Glory to Ukraine's resistor symbols are very close to his capacitor symbols, which led to my having to wonder why the Grid Slammer's gain wouldn't exceed unity... and having to desolder two capacitors and replace them with resistors. It's easier to blame the symbols than accept responsibility myself.
Most of my builds lately have been PedalPCB, Aion FX, and MadBean. As such, I'd gotten out of the habit of making sure my default workflow wouldn't block pads later in the process. I had to bend down both middle pots to access the off-board-wiring through holes at the tops of the boards. I really hate doing that, but it turned out fine. And I suppose that's one of the tradeoffs for compact layouts. It was worth it to get them into a BB with plenty of elbow room for switches, LEDs, and jacks.
After stamping and inking the enclosure, I sprayed the top with a matte clearcoat. I hated that and sanded (most of) it off. I might try gloss or semi-gloss in the future, but I'm not letting raw aluminum in the same room as matte clearcoat ever again.
*Mostly kidding, you do you.
shooting further away then cropping is the way to go for sure. I have a recent iPhone pro and don’t even need to go the raw route this way. Though I’d like to explore some other software to tone down the heavy handed processing.