Where to start, that one gave me headaches ... that PCB is a crowded one, really tight fit of the components with sometimes little space to solder. But the soldering part was not the most challenging part. What gave me the most trouble was my stubbornness to fit a battery with that PCB in a 125B enclosure.
First, when ordering parts, I ordered pcb legged pots not having planned my design ahead, I in fact soldered them before planning my layout. That led me later to de-solder those, cut the legs, drill the legs to convert them to lug style... more on that later.
Second, after planning my layout, I realized I was missing some space, so I opted to go side jacks, I thought that the electro caps would then be too tall, so I soldered them on the pot side, that left me just enough space to clear the jacks.
Third, I also ordered two awfully big capacitors for it, à had to leave long leads and push them out of the way.
When I plugged that thing, it was awful sounding, everything seemed just not right, so I ended up
1. Replacing the CD4027BE, I had ordered two from Tayda. The second one was sounding much better than the first.
2. I redid the input/output wiring using shielded wire as I had read that it could help in that design.
The pedal was then MUCH better sounding, but I still had a buzzing that was driving me mad and that I had a lot of difficulty tracing. I ended up noticing that it would not show when my pots where maxed out or completely off. Then, I also noticed the bussing would disappear when I would apply some pressure over the OCT2 pot.
So I found a spare lug type pot, reopened the thing, put the new pot in the OCT2 place and now that pedal works as it should, or at least almost. There is still a tiny buzzing and I think I will need to replace the other two post, I just played with them a lot and must have broken them.
In final, that pedal sounds good, but I was having great expectations and feel it's not exactly what I anticipated. Well, time to build another pedal... or fine tune my unicab.
First, when ordering parts, I ordered pcb legged pots not having planned my design ahead, I in fact soldered them before planning my layout. That led me later to de-solder those, cut the legs, drill the legs to convert them to lug style... more on that later.
Second, after planning my layout, I realized I was missing some space, so I opted to go side jacks, I thought that the electro caps would then be too tall, so I soldered them on the pot side, that left me just enough space to clear the jacks.
Third, I also ordered two awfully big capacitors for it, à had to leave long leads and push them out of the way.
When I plugged that thing, it was awful sounding, everything seemed just not right, so I ended up
1. Replacing the CD4027BE, I had ordered two from Tayda. The second one was sounding much better than the first.
2. I redid the input/output wiring using shielded wire as I had read that it could help in that design.
The pedal was then MUCH better sounding, but I still had a buzzing that was driving me mad and that I had a lot of difficulty tracing. I ended up noticing that it would not show when my pots where maxed out or completely off. Then, I also noticed the bussing would disappear when I would apply some pressure over the OCT2 pot.
So I found a spare lug type pot, reopened the thing, put the new pot in the OCT2 place and now that pedal works as it should, or at least almost. There is still a tiny buzzing and I think I will need to replace the other two post, I just played with them a lot and must have broken them.
In final, that pedal sounds good, but I was having great expectations and feel it's not exactly what I anticipated. Well, time to build another pedal... or fine tune my unicab.
