Mischief Machine

[JamieJ]

This is the first of a few PCBs I've had a go at putting together myself using DipTrace and JLCPCB. Massive thanks to @cooder firstly for the inspiration with his amazing builds and for helping me get my head around DipTrace.

This is a rat that uses some of Jack Ormans mods from his e-book. I wanted to have a go at building one after @thewintersoldier & @Big Monk got talking about rats. Also I loved @jimilee different clipping options on his build. This build uses a 2P4T on a breakout board to allow for soft clipping, hard clipping, LED clipping and no clipping. Hard clipping is switchable internally between symmetrical and asymmetrical. I also managed to get hold of a genuine LM308 for mojo points.

The PCB sits on top of the footswitches so I have had to use pots with the long pins. There is a JFET boost after it on the 2nd switch which is great to just push the amp into more distortion. I have used coda micro controller based relay bypass switching which was a PITA to program the PICs but after lots of failures it worked. Thanks @dan.schumaker for the hex file.

 

[cooder]

Turned out super excellent! The deep end of the pool, straight in. Few gulps but staying afloat quite nicely!

 

[chongmagic]

Super awesome, can I buy a pcb from you?

 

[DAJE]

"MAGIC"

 

[fig]

Brilliant Jamie...Great collaboration guys!

 

[Barry]

Nice job!

 

[Phil hodson]

Wow! Amazing work. Inside and out!

 

[Feral Feline]

Me Myself & I tip our collective hat to you, sir, that’s some Next Level shizzle!

+1 request for buying a board…

 

[dan.schumaker]

Looks awesome! Glad you were able to make the switching work for you!

 

[SYLV9ST9R]

Great job Jamie!

 

[jimilee]

That’s fantastic! It’s cool to see you implement the soft clipping option, too. I’ve never really seen anyone else do that outside of the roadkill rat. I like how you implemented everything as well. A 1P8T was really overkill, but it was there, and I liked how it was implemented in the Stockade.

 

[spi]

Very cool! What does soft clipping on a Rat sound like?

 

[jeffwhitfield]

Damn, son...you got skills! Noice!

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Shit dude that's amazing. I haven't been around much for the last few months but you've raised your bar a lot Jamie. I love the graphics too. Looks like a commercial pedal I'd actually buy. Good work dude

 

[Funnel]

The pedal, pcb and graphics all look great. But I have to say your photography skills are also on point! I’ve seen/taken a lot of blurry pedal photos. But these are clean and crisp. I appreciate the work you put into every part of the pedal, even the pictures to display your work.

 

[Bio77]

Super cool! Excellent work! I've been planning on diving into the soft switching for awhile, but thinking about the programing and burning of the PICs, makes me sleepy.

 

[JamieJ]

Thanks all! I’ve played it quite a bit tonight and I’m loving it. It’s so true it can do great overdrive all the way through to fuzzy tones.

@spi - it still sounds like a rat but smoother and less harsh and fuzzy/fizzy. It’s really useful to use it as an overdrive with the distortion turned down.

I’m not finding the no clipping option that useful. I might get rid of that in future and just have both asym and sym clipping available externally.

@Bio77 - that was probably the hardest part of this build! But now I have the file and the process down you can burn the file to the pic in about a minute. It’s worth the learning curve of you interested. I am a sucker for relay switching.

 

[ADAOCE]

Excellent job man! Super cool when I see people designing their own pcbs.

 

[Paradox916]

Wow man you knocked that one out of the park! well done sir!