chris.knudson
Well-known member
- Build Rating
So this was probably the most challenging pedal I've built so far. It's been on my workbench for at least a couple of months.
My first challenge was assembling the optoculper. I had some vactrols in my stash, and I contemplated building this with a VTL5C4, but @DGWVI convinced me that I should use a 9203 LDR. I was having trouble finding one, but I did find one at Small Bear, which turned out to be the right call. I'm always nervous when I put together optos because I don't have a lot of experience with them, and I know they are critical to these kinds of builds.
The second challenge I had was getting a drill template -- I couldn't find any build documentation, and I knew that drilling the hole for the expression pedal input would be critical. I did find a drill template that @cozycam was kind enough to share, so I used the coordinates to make an illustrator file as a drill template. But knowing that no two enclosures are exactly alike, I was nervous about that too. But, I held my breath and drilled the hole. It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough for me to proceed.
The next challenge I had was trying to get the pots soldered to the board and get the board in the enclosure with the expression jack sticking off the side of the board. This led to hours of frustration. I figured I could put the pots in, and drop the PCB on them and solder them in the enclosure. After four or five hours of trying everything I could think of, I decided to off board wire 9mm pots, which I could get in the enclosure with enough play to finally get the board in. (If you have a trick to do this -- please share it, because I don't know how you can do it otherwise).
Ok, so I got all of that figured out and decided to use a file-free waterslide decal for the graphics. This was from my first batch of film-free waterslides, and if you have seen any of my other build reports, you know how that went. Since I wasn't really that excited about the graphics for this one, I just decided this one was good enough - and at this point I just wanted to be done.
So I box it all up, and it works. However, I noticed that the Level control had no impact on the effect, except in bypass mode. After a quick troubleshooting with @DGWVI and @Robert, they pointed out to me that I had used the wrong 3PDT breakout board, and @Robert was kind enough to publish the build docs. Normally none of this would have been a major problem, but on this build, I had decided to use pin headers to hook up the foot switch. SO after a bunch of cursing, cutting pin headers, and desoldering the mess I had made, I finally got this thing back together tonight.
So what do I think: As frustrating as this thing was to build, this is a really fun pedal. I do recommend that if you build one, you build it with the expression pedal input and you use the 9203 LDR. I've only played with it a little bit so far, and I know there's a lot more to explore, but I will say that it was worth all of the frustration.
My first challenge was assembling the optoculper. I had some vactrols in my stash, and I contemplated building this with a VTL5C4, but @DGWVI convinced me that I should use a 9203 LDR. I was having trouble finding one, but I did find one at Small Bear, which turned out to be the right call. I'm always nervous when I put together optos because I don't have a lot of experience with them, and I know they are critical to these kinds of builds.
The second challenge I had was getting a drill template -- I couldn't find any build documentation, and I knew that drilling the hole for the expression pedal input would be critical. I did find a drill template that @cozycam was kind enough to share, so I used the coordinates to make an illustrator file as a drill template. But knowing that no two enclosures are exactly alike, I was nervous about that too. But, I held my breath and drilled the hole. It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough for me to proceed.
The next challenge I had was trying to get the pots soldered to the board and get the board in the enclosure with the expression jack sticking off the side of the board. This led to hours of frustration. I figured I could put the pots in, and drop the PCB on them and solder them in the enclosure. After four or five hours of trying everything I could think of, I decided to off board wire 9mm pots, which I could get in the enclosure with enough play to finally get the board in. (If you have a trick to do this -- please share it, because I don't know how you can do it otherwise).
Ok, so I got all of that figured out and decided to use a file-free waterslide decal for the graphics. This was from my first batch of film-free waterslides, and if you have seen any of my other build reports, you know how that went. Since I wasn't really that excited about the graphics for this one, I just decided this one was good enough - and at this point I just wanted to be done.
So I box it all up, and it works. However, I noticed that the Level control had no impact on the effect, except in bypass mode. After a quick troubleshooting with @DGWVI and @Robert, they pointed out to me that I had used the wrong 3PDT breakout board, and @Robert was kind enough to publish the build docs. Normally none of this would have been a major problem, but on this build, I had decided to use pin headers to hook up the foot switch. SO after a bunch of cursing, cutting pin headers, and desoldering the mess I had made, I finally got this thing back together tonight.
So what do I think: As frustrating as this thing was to build, this is a really fun pedal. I do recommend that if you build one, you build it with the expression pedal input and you use the 9203 LDR. I've only played with it a little bit so far, and I know there's a lot more to explore, but I will say that it was worth all of the frustration.
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