PCB Sources and Success Rate?

Diynot said:
Nah, nothing so complicated as all that, this is the Filter fx one. It came up in discussion around LP filters and someone (either @Feral Feline or @Mentaltossflycoon) mentioned they were building it with the expression pedal option as a stand in for a Moog or Iron Ether Xerograph.
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Built one for a friend, it's pretty fun, and the build was easy.
For my part, built with PPCB (evidently), Parasit, DeadEnd FX, MadBean, and most of my stripboard builds. Where I had a problem, I was the culprit. But with more experience, and measuring most of the component beforehand, I had a great rate of success. Got me a bit cocky, so I box before rocking it except on more complicated builds.
 
Diynot said:
Nah, nothing so complicated as all that, this is the Filter fx one. It came up in discussion around LP filters and someone (either @Feral Feline or @Mentaltossflycoon) mentioned they were building it with the expression pedal option as a stand in for a Moog or Iron Ether Xerograph.
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I've built quite a few of the Filter Fx. It's a good one. Especially the sample/hold and HP filter. It isn't nearly as fat at a moog or xerograph but it makes some pretty unique, if subtle, sounds.
 
Betty Wont said:
I've built quite a few of the Filter Fx. It's a good one. Especially the sample/hold and HP filter. It isn't nearly as fat at a moog or xerograph but it makes some pretty unique, if subtle, sounds.
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Nice! I am pretty excited to get it built out. I did happen to notice that they carry chips for 4 pole LP filters, I wonder if he has a synth board that could be adapted. I guess the problem is getting the control voltages in a pedal friendly format.
 
PPCB, Aion and Madbean consistently provide quality boards. I also like the time Madbean spends designing pedals for 1590A enclosures. The original designs at ElectricDruid are refreshing and well thought out, reminding me a bit of the way that RunOffGroove approached creating fresh designs.

I like the projects DeadendFX chooses and the builds are reliable but usually require larger or deeper enclosures. Seems like an opportunity there for building smaller versions of those projects.
 
zgrav said:
I like the projects DeadendFX chooses and the builds are reliable but usually require larger or deeper enclosures. Seems like an opportunity there for building smaller versions of those projects.
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Agreed, I know the guys at DeadendFX from DIYSB and they're great guys, but I like smaller boxes. I used their PLL documentation on my 125B PLL build.
 
I’ve not tried Electric Druid boards but have used his tapflo IC in delyk tap tempo tremolo (drolo fx clone). I’m thinking of building ED delay with tap one day.

I did run into issues with the delyk pcb - issue was a missing 5V trace going to the ED chip - really painful to find. I never got a definitive response for the issue from delyk, whether it was on-off or a specific batch. But I was being told that new version of tapflo ic needs “do not populate” few resistors and cap, which obviously I DNP. But I spent considerable amount of money and time trying different vactrol and led-ldr combinations, thinking that was the problem before tracing the huge circuit and studying datasheets.

As much as I love mod effects, this delyk trem and pcb mania filter did bring me to my knees that I’ll never get into world of filters and vactrols due to complicated circuitry… only to find out it was a MISSING TRACE on each of them. 🙄

Drolofx tremolo is a brilliant circuit and tap feature makes it so much fun. Can get some really interesting ethereal synthy tones down to simple trem sounds.
 
Diynot said:
Nah, nothing so complicated as all that, this is the Filter fx one. It came up in discussion around LP filters and someone (either @Feral Feline or @Mentaltossflycoon) mentioned they were building it with the expression pedal option as a stand in for a Moog or Iron Ether Xerograph.
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That was me. I'm almost done with the filterfx, just waiting on a tayda shipment. I built the Flangelicious multi-flange a while back and it's fun. I haven't boxed it as I'm not a huge flanger (or modulation in general) user. Also it's the only flanger I've built/own so I don't have much to compare it to other than flangers on my old zoom ms60b and the like. At extreme settings there seems to be some odd noise that I'm interpreting as "clock noise" but I dont know much about that.
 
NSJ said:
As much as I love mod effects, this delyk trem and pcb mania filter did bring me to my knees that I’ll never get into world of filters and vactrols due to complicated circuitry… only to find out it was a MISSING TRACE on each of them. 🙄
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The 1590LB tremolo? I’ve got that on my bench rn— just need to settle on some graphics before I start it. I’ll be sure to trace the PCB before I start to see if there’s a missing trace that I need to place a jumper for.
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
The 1590LB tremolo? I’ve got that on my bench rn— just need to settle on some graphics before I start it. I’ll be sure to trace the PCB before I start to see if there’s a missing trace that I need to place a jumper for.
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No, the cherry pie is what I built. It uses the tapflo IC by electric Druid for tap tempo.
www.delykpcb.com

Cherry Pie Tap Tempo Tremolo PCB - delyk PCBs

Be sure to get all the additional parts while you're here. They're not exactly the easiest to obtain.
www.delykpcb.com www.delykpcb.com

That LB pcb looks really cute. I’ll have to look up the demo of what all sounds are possible. Point me to a demo if you know of.
 
NSJ said:
No, the cherry pie is what I built. It uses the tapflo IC by electric Druid for tap tempo.
www.delykpcb.com

Cherry Pie Tap Tempo Tremolo PCB - delyk PCBs

Be sure to get all the additional parts while you're here. They're not exactly the easiest to obtain.
www.delykpcb.com www.delykpcb.com

That LB pcb looks really cute. I’ll have to look up the demo of what all sounds are possible. Point me to a demo if you know of.
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Ah! Yeah I have a few cherry pie PCBs. I haven’t built them yet, but I traced the PCB continuity against the schematic a while back and didn’t notice any errors- maybe they fixed it. Do you recall what pin the missing trace connected to so I can double check?
The LB trem is I believe just an EA tremolo, which is a pretty standard circuit with plenty of examples readily available online. I did a fuzz of my own creation loosely based on a DAM Meathead on the LB fuzz pcb— you can find the thread by searching for Dumesday in the search bar here. The LBs aren’t too hard to build, but you have to be super accurate with your drilling, and lumberg mono jacks are the only ones that’ll fit from what I’ve tested.
 
Diynot said:
Nah, nothing so complicated as all that, this is the Filter fx one. It came up in discussion around LP filters and someone (either @Feral Feline or @Mentaltossflycoon) mentioned they were building it with the expression pedal option as a stand in for a Moog or Iron Ether Xerograph.
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Must've been Mentaltossflycoon, but now that it's been mentioned...


I've had the Cherry Pie for ages, but not built it yet — thanks for the heads-up on that one, NSJ.
All my dealings with the Delyk dude have been stellar, he's a stand up guy.

With the GPCB boards, if you want an exact clone of whatever you're building on a GPCB board, compare the schematic with an original schematic. Barry refuses to use the word "clone" and indeed in some cases a cap and resistor are swapped for resistor and cap — it may or may not make a difference in the overall behaviour of the circuit, but if you're a stickler for accuracy do check for discrepancies between the schematics.
 
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This is what the issue I had.

The pad of R10 and pad of R12 that have +5V connected in schematic needed to be jumped. These are “do not populate” Rs for tapflo v3. Somehow the pad of R10 did not get the +5v from regulator IC. Only R12 pad did. But when I checked connectivity then R10 +5v pad is the one actually connected to pin 1 of IC. So without a jumper (at least in my case) the IC never powered on.
 
NSJ said:
This is what the issue I had.

The pad of R10 and pad of R12 that have +5V connected in schematic needed to be jumped. These are “do not populate” Rs for tapflo v3. Somehow the pad of R10 did not get the +5v from regulator IC. Only R12 pad did. But when I checked connectivity then R10 +5v pad is the one actually connected to pin 1 of IC. So without a jumper (at least in my case) the IC never powered on.
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Interesting. I wonder what happened? I did not run into that problem.
 
Love PPCB and I just started doing so Madbean. Madbean are great and the build docs are awesome. Aion is good too but I’ve only built a couple.

I use Guitar Gear Gadgets for a lot of my utility stuff like buffers mixers and headphone amps and they are great. Layouts are ok but the real thing is how easy they solder it’s like the pads have glue on them and they just perfectly suck the solder up. Could be the size of the pad or something idk. I will say MBP are great too. PPCB can be a little small for when you’re starting out but I have had no problems once I figured my technique out
 
Fingolfen said:
If this topic strays into verboten territory, please feel free to close delete...

So I've been building a lot of pedals recently, and I've noticed that when I have an issue it tends to be with certain PCB manufacturers over others.

PedalPCB - I'm up to around 10 builds, but absolutely zero issues
AionFX - Only two boards (of many) that I still can't get to work right - both fuzzes, so it could be a transistor issue. Everything else I've been able to get to work.
Effects Layouts - Hand etched or otherwise 100% success rate (again, if it doesn't work the first time I have always been able to find where I fouled up).
Tone Geek - No issues - 100% success rate
Madbean - not enough experience yet - still working on my first couple of builds
GuitarPCB - not enough builds yet - so far so good though
PCB Guitar Mania - Hooo boy... Owner's a nice guy, but some of them work like an absolute charm, others not so much. Honestly of the pedals I've built that haven't worked - or don't work as expected - even after debug almost all of them have PCB Mania boards

So, am I just having bad luck with the PCB Mania boards, or do other people have similar experiences?
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I'm 2 for zero with pcbmania boards... neither worked at all
 
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