MichaelW
Well-known member
Without a doubt the most complex build I've attempted yet.
I've been wanting a Deluxe Memory Man for a while now and was looking pretty closely at the J. Rockett Clockwork pedal before I started the DIY pedal thing.
Looking at the original MadBeans "Total Recall" DMM clone was intimidating as hell so I decided to wait until I got better at building.
When MBP released the 125B version, the "Tourbus", @thewintersoldier encouraged me to give it a try and I'm grateful for the nudge from him to take it on.
Thanks Chris!
Having said that, it still sat in my pile of boards for a couple months, 27 pages of build documentation gave me a headache just thinking about building it!
I've been slowly collecting all the bits and pieces for the build so it wouldn't feel like such an upfront investment, which in turn would have put even more pressure on me. And the whole point of building pedals for me is pressure relief, not added pressure hahah. But this isn't an inexpensive build, there's some pricey components in it, namely the MN3005 BBD chips.
Anyway, I'm on PTO this week and had the time to focus without a lot of distractions. I mentioned in another thread this really isn't the kind of build I can whip out in bits and pieces between meetings and work like I usually do. It takes a bit of concentration.
I slowed down my process for this build and probably have a solid 8 hours into it (not counting trouble shooting) spread out over 2 days. Which is a lot of time for me in a single build. I highly recommend taking the time to read through the documentation before starting, there's like 3 pages dedicated just to biasing and setting the trimmers (more on that in a sec). There's some quirks to the pedal by design in order to make it all fit into a 125B and it's a brilliant bit of kit. (9mm pots, Positive Ground topology, etc).
Once I got started on it, it really wasn't as bad a I had imagined, it's just a lot of components and lots of parts to it all. The few MBP boards I've built have all been well laid out and despite the density of the build, there's really plenty of room to work. Pads are arranged nicely so it's not like walking a tightrope and super clean soldering is not strictly required. (Although it's always helpful).
There's also enough density of components that I tossed my typical build process, which is by height of components (resistors first, then diodes, etc) but rather approached it by sections so I would have room to navigate the forest of leads sticking up.
This was also my first double decker PCB build, and finding the low profile components took me a while. I wound up with a mix of low profile electrolytic caps that I found at Electronic Goldmine, and subbed either tantalums where I could not find a low pro E- caps and even subbed MLCC's in a couple of spots.
After I got it all together, the recommendation in the build docs is to methodically test for voltages before boxing and adding IC's one at a time testing for voltages along the way. Of course, I did not have a breadboard set up like in the docs to do this so I went ahead and boxed it and started testing the first board in the box. This is the first positive ground circuit I've ever built and it be honest it confused me a bit. (Still confusing me hahah) but it didn't seem like I was getting the right voltages. I was getting them in all the right spots but they were all too high. I went ahead and added the IC's, stacked the second board and fired it up just to see what it would do, which was a lot of nothing.
I had bypass but it would not power on let alone give me any effect. I DM'd @thewintersoldier crying and he pointed me towards where the problem might be.
By that point I had to step away for a bit, I was getting a little frustrated and disappointed. I went to get a hair cut and some groceries, and there I was sitting in Great Clips looking at pictures of my build on my phone and noticed a mistake, I had installed the 1N5817 backwards, but that would not account for the symptoms I was having. Giving it some more thought whilst getting my eyebrows trimmed I had a plan to try when I got home.
So turns out it was a bad voltage regulator, now how often does that happen? I dunno, never had a bad one before and I have no way to even check them.
I got the L7915CV from Tayda and they say ST Micro on them. I have no way of knowing if they're legit or not, but it's a freaking voltage regulator, not much to them right?
Then I thought hmmm, maybe the "CV" designation wasn't the right part (BOM called for L(M)7915). But anyway I had a couple extras so I swapped it out, swapped the 1N5817 the right way and voila, VOLTAGE!
My LED came on, so I boxed it up and fired it up and have lovely modulated delay!
So back to setting the trimmers, I had set them all to noon, with the intention of coming back to follow the extensive instructions on how to dial them in.
Well, the pedal sounds fantastic with them all at noon. Plenty of gain, no noise, no distortion, lots of range in the modulation, depth and level. So I'm like, hmmm....do I even WANT to mess with it? I'm not putting the screws in the box quite yet but I'm planning to play it for a few days as is, I may just leave it.
So how does it sound? In a word fabulous. It sounds better to me than a real Deluxe Memory Man (although it's been a few years since I played through one).
It's quieter, no hiss, no noise, no weird crackling sounds. No goofy power supply (it does need 18v though). I'm super pleased with it.
With the modulation down low, it's a great sounding analog delay. With the modulation set higher you get the classic DMM chorusey thing going on.
I did the CH/VIB toggle mod and put it on a pot so that I don't have to choose one or the other but can get all the in between sounds.
There's a clipping indicator LED along with the status LED. I used a clear LED for the clipping indicator and if I were to do it again, I'd pick a different color. Dang thing is bright as all get out and flashes at you.
Super happy with how it all turned out, although not my cleanest off board wiring since I had to take it out of the box to make the fixes.
I can see this becoming my main delay and I'm toying with the idea of building a second one for a stereo dual delay setup so I can get the sounds I'm currently using my Hydra for. (The Andy Timmons dotted 1/8th into a quarter note thing). I wired It for True Bypass since it will be sitting my buffered loop.
Very cool pedal and highly recommend it if you're looking for a DMM sound in a compact package without all the baggage of a real DMM.
I've been wanting a Deluxe Memory Man for a while now and was looking pretty closely at the J. Rockett Clockwork pedal before I started the DIY pedal thing.
Looking at the original MadBeans "Total Recall" DMM clone was intimidating as hell so I decided to wait until I got better at building.
When MBP released the 125B version, the "Tourbus", @thewintersoldier encouraged me to give it a try and I'm grateful for the nudge from him to take it on.
Thanks Chris!
Having said that, it still sat in my pile of boards for a couple months, 27 pages of build documentation gave me a headache just thinking about building it!
I've been slowly collecting all the bits and pieces for the build so it wouldn't feel like such an upfront investment, which in turn would have put even more pressure on me. And the whole point of building pedals for me is pressure relief, not added pressure hahah. But this isn't an inexpensive build, there's some pricey components in it, namely the MN3005 BBD chips.
Anyway, I'm on PTO this week and had the time to focus without a lot of distractions. I mentioned in another thread this really isn't the kind of build I can whip out in bits and pieces between meetings and work like I usually do. It takes a bit of concentration.
I slowed down my process for this build and probably have a solid 8 hours into it (not counting trouble shooting) spread out over 2 days. Which is a lot of time for me in a single build. I highly recommend taking the time to read through the documentation before starting, there's like 3 pages dedicated just to biasing and setting the trimmers (more on that in a sec). There's some quirks to the pedal by design in order to make it all fit into a 125B and it's a brilliant bit of kit. (9mm pots, Positive Ground topology, etc).
Once I got started on it, it really wasn't as bad a I had imagined, it's just a lot of components and lots of parts to it all. The few MBP boards I've built have all been well laid out and despite the density of the build, there's really plenty of room to work. Pads are arranged nicely so it's not like walking a tightrope and super clean soldering is not strictly required. (Although it's always helpful).
There's also enough density of components that I tossed my typical build process, which is by height of components (resistors first, then diodes, etc) but rather approached it by sections so I would have room to navigate the forest of leads sticking up.
This was also my first double decker PCB build, and finding the low profile components took me a while. I wound up with a mix of low profile electrolytic caps that I found at Electronic Goldmine, and subbed either tantalums where I could not find a low pro E- caps and even subbed MLCC's in a couple of spots.
After I got it all together, the recommendation in the build docs is to methodically test for voltages before boxing and adding IC's one at a time testing for voltages along the way. Of course, I did not have a breadboard set up like in the docs to do this so I went ahead and boxed it and started testing the first board in the box. This is the first positive ground circuit I've ever built and it be honest it confused me a bit. (Still confusing me hahah) but it didn't seem like I was getting the right voltages. I was getting them in all the right spots but they were all too high. I went ahead and added the IC's, stacked the second board and fired it up just to see what it would do, which was a lot of nothing.
I had bypass but it would not power on let alone give me any effect. I DM'd @thewintersoldier crying and he pointed me towards where the problem might be.
By that point I had to step away for a bit, I was getting a little frustrated and disappointed. I went to get a hair cut and some groceries, and there I was sitting in Great Clips looking at pictures of my build on my phone and noticed a mistake, I had installed the 1N5817 backwards, but that would not account for the symptoms I was having. Giving it some more thought whilst getting my eyebrows trimmed I had a plan to try when I got home.
So turns out it was a bad voltage regulator, now how often does that happen? I dunno, never had a bad one before and I have no way to even check them.
I got the L7915CV from Tayda and they say ST Micro on them. I have no way of knowing if they're legit or not, but it's a freaking voltage regulator, not much to them right?
Then I thought hmmm, maybe the "CV" designation wasn't the right part (BOM called for L(M)7915). But anyway I had a couple extras so I swapped it out, swapped the 1N5817 the right way and voila, VOLTAGE!
My LED came on, so I boxed it up and fired it up and have lovely modulated delay!
So back to setting the trimmers, I had set them all to noon, with the intention of coming back to follow the extensive instructions on how to dial them in.
Well, the pedal sounds fantastic with them all at noon. Plenty of gain, no noise, no distortion, lots of range in the modulation, depth and level. So I'm like, hmmm....do I even WANT to mess with it? I'm not putting the screws in the box quite yet but I'm planning to play it for a few days as is, I may just leave it.
So how does it sound? In a word fabulous. It sounds better to me than a real Deluxe Memory Man (although it's been a few years since I played through one).
It's quieter, no hiss, no noise, no weird crackling sounds. No goofy power supply (it does need 18v though). I'm super pleased with it.
With the modulation down low, it's a great sounding analog delay. With the modulation set higher you get the classic DMM chorusey thing going on.
I did the CH/VIB toggle mod and put it on a pot so that I don't have to choose one or the other but can get all the in between sounds.
There's a clipping indicator LED along with the status LED. I used a clear LED for the clipping indicator and if I were to do it again, I'd pick a different color. Dang thing is bright as all get out and flashes at you.
Super happy with how it all turned out, although not my cleanest off board wiring since I had to take it out of the box to make the fixes.
I can see this becoming my main delay and I'm toying with the idea of building a second one for a stereo dual delay setup so I can get the sounds I'm currently using my Hydra for. (The Andy Timmons dotted 1/8th into a quarter note thing). I wired It for True Bypass since it will be sitting my buffered loop.
Very cool pedal and highly recommend it if you're looking for a DMM sound in a compact package without all the baggage of a real DMM.
.
