apc42069
Well-known member
aka TON RAJA!
*long sigh* finally.
Like many, or at least a few, of you - my impetus to start building anything, was to play a KoT..shit even hear one in real life. 600 bucks and 3 years be damned!
I built a stock version. I built a mini version. Sounded great, but I quickly became frustrated with the internal DIP switch. Lurking around, I found Caleb's 'Court Jester' mods here . oh shit, warm tone you say??? high/low gain you say?! HEADROOM and MOJO to boot?! @ckaudioeffects you're incredibly gracious and talented - I can't thank you enough for your hard work & open-sourcitiveness (it's a word).
My first attempt at all the mods didn't work, and I destroyed the board troubleshooting (removing a dog hair that was actually a lonnnng trace was the nail in that coffin). My first attempt at Warm, Clipping Toggles, and Gain did work. The improvement in sound quality blew me away - so much so, I had to retrofit the first stock build to reflect the component changes.
I promised a few to some friends, and set about learning Illustrator. It was the first design in a batch order. All of them arrived fucked up. Usable, but enough mm off-center, that I couldn't rightly give them to anyone. With my newly acquired AI skills in hand, correcting the mistakes in alignment, color, and scale were easy enough to correct...but I had a bunch more boxes to design, so it would be several weeks until these got here. And several more until the entire internet restocked dark red/deep red/wine red/burgundy mxr knobs.
At long last, the board was done & assembly was complete. Nice and tidy, and ready to go. Psych! She didn't work. I trouble shat and trouble shat and trouble shat, until I had to stop. I sat at my desk this morning, knowing damn well I wasn't getting any work done until this thing made music...I stared at it, in a sort of fugue state, and recalled as I was falling asleep last night "did you check the orientation of the jack wiring?"
Well fuuuuuuuuuuck me, there it was! Clear as day! Input/Ground were swapped. Unreal.
The guts were a lot prettier before I tortured the damn thing for hours, but sometimes good enough is : )
*long sigh* finally.
Like many, or at least a few, of you - my impetus to start building anything, was to play a KoT..shit even hear one in real life. 600 bucks and 3 years be damned!
I built a stock version. I built a mini version. Sounded great, but I quickly became frustrated with the internal DIP switch. Lurking around, I found Caleb's 'Court Jester' mods here . oh shit, warm tone you say??? high/low gain you say?! HEADROOM and MOJO to boot?! @ckaudioeffects you're incredibly gracious and talented - I can't thank you enough for your hard work & open-sourcitiveness (it's a word).
My first attempt at all the mods didn't work, and I destroyed the board troubleshooting (removing a dog hair that was actually a lonnnng trace was the nail in that coffin). My first attempt at Warm, Clipping Toggles, and Gain did work. The improvement in sound quality blew me away - so much so, I had to retrofit the first stock build to reflect the component changes.
I promised a few to some friends, and set about learning Illustrator. It was the first design in a batch order. All of them arrived fucked up. Usable, but enough mm off-center, that I couldn't rightly give them to anyone. With my newly acquired AI skills in hand, correcting the mistakes in alignment, color, and scale were easy enough to correct...but I had a bunch more boxes to design, so it would be several weeks until these got here. And several more until the entire internet restocked dark red/deep red/wine red/burgundy mxr knobs.
At long last, the board was done & assembly was complete. Nice and tidy, and ready to go. Psych! She didn't work. I trouble shat and trouble shat and trouble shat, until I had to stop. I sat at my desk this morning, knowing damn well I wasn't getting any work done until this thing made music...I stared at it, in a sort of fugue state, and recalled as I was falling asleep last night "did you check the orientation of the jack wiring?"
Well fuuuuuuuuuuck me, there it was! Clear as day! Input/Ground were swapped. Unreal.
The guts were a lot prettier before I tortured the damn thing for hours, but sometimes good enough is : )
