MichaelW
Well-known member
Slowly working my way through the analog delays from Mad Beans. Having built the Tourbus (still my favorite) and the AquaBaby, this is my 3rd, the ManOWar Deluxe, which is based on the Maxon AD-900. The deluxe version has integrated modulation that the original AD-900 didn't (I don't think anyway).
I've mentioned this before, building non-PPCB boards always gives me an appreciation for how much effort @Robert puts into his layouts and the consistency of them. Like most complex MPB projects, this board is PACKED with some major crammage. I appreciate how Brian managed all this in a 1590BB sized project but I have to say I really don't enjoy building them. I really feel like I have to be on my toes, not for the complexity but the little idiosyncrasies in most MBP boards.
Like for instance, why do square pads indicate "+" when it comes to capacitors and LED's but for Input/OutPut jacks "square pad" means "ground" or "negative sleeve" connection? 2 MBP builds in a row now I've wired my jacks backwards initially.
Like, wtf?
Why do some 1/8 watt resistors have pads spaced for 1/4 watt? I always seem to find out AFTER I've bent the legs.....and why do these delay projects always have a couple of 1/4 watt resistors in the BOM? (Spaced for 1/8 watts btw, I had to install them standing up). Why not just make them all 1/8 watt?
I suppose these are rhetorical questions, but just some of the things that bug me. Plus there have been errors in the BOM for each of the last 3 MBP builds I've done. As extensive as the build docs are, there's always something I have to check against the pictures in the build doc and take an educated guess at what it's supposed to be because the BOM was wrong. (1uf film instead of electrolytic cap in this case)
Ok, with all my bitching out of the way, I have to say this is a FABULOUS sounding analog delay. Ironically, with all my tweaking and setting up the trimmers, I kinda wound up at the standard @Betty Wont settings of "everything at noon". She's a freaking genius. I always start that way with my trimmers but I should just forgo all the fine tuning, I always seems to wind up back sounding the best right at noon
The modulation on this project sounds more "integrated" than the AquaBaby modulation add on board. It's pretty cool and can get rather whacky. There's a toggle switch to turn it off or choose square or triangle modulation. It can be set quite intense or very subtle. I have mine currently set very low but on. Something I could not do with the AquaBaby add-on board. With the AquaBaby even at it's lowest setting, it was a lot of modulation, so I ran it turned off.
The repeats compared to the Tourbus and AquaBaby seem the cleanest, meaning the least amount of distortion. But also the warmest sounding, (not in a bad way). Just a lovely bed of analog delay. The ManOWar also has two different forms of Bypass. There's a "Tails" footswitch that allows repeats to carry over when you turn it off as well as a standard true bypass footswitch. Depending on which footswitch you stomp you can select on the fly whether to have tails for the repeats or not.
Slick little feature that I'll never use, but still slick
Compared to the Tourbus and AB, it's definitely easier to overdrive the BBD's on this pedal. I was testing it initially at the end of my (many) dirt pedals on my desk at the moment. It definitely did NOT like having any kind of high gain drive going into it, and turning on a fuzz would send it into gonzo self oscillation.
But putting it in my buffered loop with my other delays and reverbs seems to isolate that effect (although it's not true isolation....waiting for @Robert to finish designing our wishlist Swiss Things box for that hahaha....
) . But it's behaving quite nicely in the loop. Right now it has replaced the AquaBaby and I'm running it as the dotted 1/8th note delay into the Tourbus which is set for 1/4 note. Sounds fantastic. I have a slight bit of modulation on both delays turned on and it's the perfect delay setup, exactly what I've been looking for. I'm waiting for the AquaBoy Deluxe to come back in stock as I think I'd like to build the full DM-2 project without the "added on" modulation but integrated into the board like the ManOWar, I have a feeling it will sound better than the two separate boards. I believe there's at least one more BBD Analog delay project that MBP has that I want to build as well. The Tourbus (Deluxe Memory Man) is still my favorite though. I may build the full size version (Total Recall) and see if there's any difference.
The ManOWar runs at 9v or 12v but it's recommended to run it at 12v. It seems to be happy with the 12v tap off of my pedalboard powersupply, but I may wind up getting a dedicated wall wart for it.
As for the build itself, the sheer number of components can be a bit intimidating. Especially all those 1/8 watt resistors. So I tried a different approach than my normal with this build. I wound up building it in stages. I would stuff all 21x 10kr's for instance (yes, it needed 21 10k's
) then solder them, snip them, inspect, then move on to the next value. It was a lot easier to stay on top of making sure I had solid solder joints doing a few at a time. Also, I can't recall who it was that mentioned in a thread that they solder from the top of the board. So I also tried that for all the resistors on this build. That way I could just solder with the board suspended with my "Helping Hands" holder and not worry about securing the resistors by bending the legs (or in my case I use blue painters tape when I solder resistors).
The "soldering from the top" method worked out well for this build. After finishing soldering all the resistors I stopped and cleaned the flux off the top of the board before moving onto the capacitors. I did the rest of the board my conventional way of soldering from under the board. All in all, I liked this approach for these more complex high component count builds. I'm happy with how it all turned out.
VERY happy that it fired right up and worked (after I swapped the I/o jack wiring.......).
Another freaking awesome sounding analog delay!
This the first time I've used the Tayda Glimmer Brown Sugar in a 1590BB. Really pissed me off that the powder coat chipped AGAIN when I punched it. I have GOT to remember to stop center punching some of these "high build up" powder coated colors from Tayda. Seems like all the glitter ones are prone to chipping.
I had to use a custom modified washer for the toggle switch
. I hate using those washers with the anti-rotation tabs on the outside of a box. So I snipped it off and stoned the washer until it looked like a normal washer. Still I would have preferred just a nut but I had to cover up a chip. All my very carefully sized LED holes all chipped too.....but it's less noticeable.
I've mentioned this before, building non-PPCB boards always gives me an appreciation for how much effort @Robert puts into his layouts and the consistency of them. Like most complex MPB projects, this board is PACKED with some major crammage. I appreciate how Brian managed all this in a 1590BB sized project but I have to say I really don't enjoy building them. I really feel like I have to be on my toes, not for the complexity but the little idiosyncrasies in most MBP boards.
Like for instance, why do square pads indicate "+" when it comes to capacitors and LED's but for Input/OutPut jacks "square pad" means "ground" or "negative sleeve" connection? 2 MBP builds in a row now I've wired my jacks backwards initially.
Like, wtf?Why do some 1/8 watt resistors have pads spaced for 1/4 watt? I always seem to find out AFTER I've bent the legs.....and why do these delay projects always have a couple of 1/4 watt resistors in the BOM? (Spaced for 1/8 watts btw, I had to install them standing up). Why not just make them all 1/8 watt?
I suppose these are rhetorical questions, but just some of the things that bug me. Plus there have been errors in the BOM for each of the last 3 MBP builds I've done. As extensive as the build docs are, there's always something I have to check against the pictures in the build doc and take an educated guess at what it's supposed to be because the BOM was wrong. (1uf film instead of electrolytic cap in this case)
Ok, with all my bitching out of the way, I have to say this is a FABULOUS sounding analog delay. Ironically, with all my tweaking and setting up the trimmers, I kinda wound up at the standard @Betty Wont settings of "everything at noon". She's a freaking genius. I always start that way with my trimmers but I should just forgo all the fine tuning, I always seems to wind up back sounding the best right at noon
The modulation on this project sounds more "integrated" than the AquaBaby modulation add on board. It's pretty cool and can get rather whacky. There's a toggle switch to turn it off or choose square or triangle modulation. It can be set quite intense or very subtle. I have mine currently set very low but on. Something I could not do with the AquaBaby add-on board. With the AquaBaby even at it's lowest setting, it was a lot of modulation, so I ran it turned off.
The repeats compared to the Tourbus and AquaBaby seem the cleanest, meaning the least amount of distortion. But also the warmest sounding, (not in a bad way). Just a lovely bed of analog delay. The ManOWar also has two different forms of Bypass. There's a "Tails" footswitch that allows repeats to carry over when you turn it off as well as a standard true bypass footswitch. Depending on which footswitch you stomp you can select on the fly whether to have tails for the repeats or not.
Slick little feature that I'll never use, but still slick
Compared to the Tourbus and AB, it's definitely easier to overdrive the BBD's on this pedal. I was testing it initially at the end of my (many) dirt pedals on my desk at the moment. It definitely did NOT like having any kind of high gain drive going into it, and turning on a fuzz would send it into gonzo self oscillation.
But putting it in my buffered loop with my other delays and reverbs seems to isolate that effect (although it's not true isolation....waiting for @Robert to finish designing our wishlist Swiss Things box for that hahaha....
) . But it's behaving quite nicely in the loop. Right now it has replaced the AquaBaby and I'm running it as the dotted 1/8th note delay into the Tourbus which is set for 1/4 note. Sounds fantastic. I have a slight bit of modulation on both delays turned on and it's the perfect delay setup, exactly what I've been looking for. I'm waiting for the AquaBoy Deluxe to come back in stock as I think I'd like to build the full DM-2 project without the "added on" modulation but integrated into the board like the ManOWar, I have a feeling it will sound better than the two separate boards. I believe there's at least one more BBD Analog delay project that MBP has that I want to build as well. The Tourbus (Deluxe Memory Man) is still my favorite though. I may build the full size version (Total Recall) and see if there's any difference.The ManOWar runs at 9v or 12v but it's recommended to run it at 12v. It seems to be happy with the 12v tap off of my pedalboard powersupply, but I may wind up getting a dedicated wall wart for it.
As for the build itself, the sheer number of components can be a bit intimidating. Especially all those 1/8 watt resistors. So I tried a different approach than my normal with this build. I wound up building it in stages. I would stuff all 21x 10kr's for instance (yes, it needed 21 10k's
) then solder them, snip them, inspect, then move on to the next value. It was a lot easier to stay on top of making sure I had solid solder joints doing a few at a time. Also, I can't recall who it was that mentioned in a thread that they solder from the top of the board. So I also tried that for all the resistors on this build. That way I could just solder with the board suspended with my "Helping Hands" holder and not worry about securing the resistors by bending the legs (or in my case I use blue painters tape when I solder resistors).The "soldering from the top" method worked out well for this build. After finishing soldering all the resistors I stopped and cleaned the flux off the top of the board before moving onto the capacitors. I did the rest of the board my conventional way of soldering from under the board. All in all, I liked this approach for these more complex high component count builds. I'm happy with how it all turned out.
VERY happy that it fired right up and worked (after I swapped the I/o jack wiring.......
).Another freaking awesome sounding analog delay!
This the first time I've used the Tayda Glimmer Brown Sugar in a 1590BB. Really pissed me off that the powder coat chipped AGAIN when I punched it. I have GOT to remember to stop center punching some of these "high build up" powder coated colors from Tayda. Seems like all the glitter ones are prone to chipping.
I had to use a custom modified washer for the toggle switch
. I hate using those washers with the anti-rotation tabs on the outside of a box. So I snipped it off and stoned the washer until it looked like a normal washer. Still I would have preferred just a nut but I had to cover up a chip. All my very carefully sized LED holes all chipped too.....but it's less noticeable.
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