Post your first build
- Thread starter DailyDovetails
- Start date
dawson
Well-known member
Cool thread! I'll join in.
Some of you may have already seen my 'bird-house' volume pedal:
Years ago, my Ernie Ball VP-JR started sounding scratchy, and I didn't know that one could easily clean dirty pots with contact cleaner.. so I built a whole new volume pedal for myself as well as two more for other guys in the band.
They work great, but I went back to my VP-JR because the footprint of this thing is just way too big!
Some of you may have already seen my 'bird-house' volume pedal:
Years ago, my Ernie Ball VP-JR started sounding scratchy, and I didn't know that one could easily clean dirty pots with contact cleaner.. so I built a whole new volume pedal for myself as well as two more for other guys in the band.
They work great, but I went back to my VP-JR because the footprint of this thing is just way too big!
DailyDovetails
Well-known member
What an ingenious creation that is. I have been kicking around a small form factor 3d printed volume/expression pedal but it’s pretty far down on my to do list currently.Cool thread! I'll join in.
Some of you may have already seen my 'bird-house' volume pedal:
Years ago, my Ernie Ball VP-JR started sounding scratchy, and I didn't know that one could easily clean dirty pots with contact cleaner.. so I built a whole new volume pedal for myself as well as two more for other guys in the band.
They work great, but I went back to my VP-JR because the footprint of this thing is just way too big!
Harry Klippton
Not Interested
i love thisCool thread! I'll join in.
Some of you may have already seen my 'bird-house' volume pedal:
Years ago, my Ernie Ball VP-JR started sounding scratchy, and I didn't know that one could easily clean dirty pots with contact cleaner.. so I built a whole new volume pedal for myself as well as two more for other guys in the band.
They work great, but I went back to my VP-JR because the footprint of this thing is just way too big!
xefned
Well-known member
Robert
Reverse Engineer
dawson
Well-known member
xefned
Well-known member
I found this Rangeblaster PCB in the junk box today:
And while It's far from my earliest build, it's my earliest surviving build.
It worked too—just needed to be rehoused.
And while It's far from my earliest build, it's my earliest surviving build.
It worked too—just needed to be rehoused.
jhaneyzz
Well-known member
The 1971 is freaking awesome! I was going to say it was "money" but then you might have thought I was just going for the joke.
Seriously. that is sick!
Well... ditch the white washer maybe... no... definitely...
Passinwind
Well-known member
As promised, my very first PPCB build:
This is the Crystal Lettuce Silver variant. Super easy build, and better sounding than I really expected.
This is the Crystal Lettuce Silver variant. Super easy build, and better sounding than I really expected.
Feral Feline
Well-known member
Would a *nudge-nudge* Euna-what
- fit in one of those clearly-unshielded enclosures?Welp, somebody (the OP) asked for it, so here 'tis, my first build as it stands today — behold the "GainGreenous Bactrian":
The enclosure you've possibly seen before, it even earned me a win in a bad-drilling contest (Thanks again Fig, et al!). Everything used to be in the bag of shame it's all sitting on, but I drug out the enclosure for the aforementioned contest and to use as a test-fitting mule. I've never bothered to remove the masking tape that I so carefully measured upon and still completely borked the drilling.
Way back when, after more than a decade of hemming-hawing on mail-order kits from UK-publication Guitar & Bass Magazine, suddenly they were no longer offered. I wish I'd ordered the kits those decades ago, but... oh well. Later... Something came along called the Internet and I gained the confidence to attempt to build something after becoming friends with an amp-builder/designer. There was a build contest on the GuitarPCB forum and the PCBs were cheaper than most other places, so I thought I'd enter — I had grand aspirations, to say the least.
In the pictured pile above are all Tayda bits on GPCB boards:
- TwEQ
- BuffnBlend (modded to have an LPF on the dry signal path)
- Emerald Ring (Green Ringer), some sockets for trying out some mods
- Angry Red Camel (Red Llama), substantially modded
- Stage 3 Boost to push the GR
- Order switcher 4PDT stomper
Before the boards arrived, I cut out cardboard templates the size of the PCBs to check if they'd all fit in the fugly-green Hammond 1590BB I ordered from Mouser. I also draughted the graphic (pencil on paper) of a bactrian at an oasis. I still have that sketch, somewhere, but my artistic skills are about as good as my graphics-programs s'kills so I'll be lazy and safe us all my embarrassment there.
Boards and parts had taken longer to arrive than anticipated, and the contest deadline was fast approaching — I didn't even have my own soldering equipment yet — my new Amp-Sifu friend let me have the run of his tools and would leave me on me oddy-knocky soldering into the wee hours.
For reasons I don't recall, I built the TwEQ first, and it worked. I was elated and emboldened.
Then the Green Ringer and Boost — and they two, too, worked.
Next up the ARC and BuffnBlend.
The ARC is not just a Red Llama, but the circuit also has a boost already on it, I tackled that circuit and added my mods. Things didn't go as smoothly, but eventually I got the modded ARC working.
Finally, time to stuff everything into the enclosure — I had to offboard wire the ARC's pots and few other things as well, to comply with how I wanted the controls arranged on the face of the pedal.
Everything worked on its own, separately, out of the box.
Once all the disparate boards were locked inside the 1590BB, suddenly nothing worked. Might have been some grounding issues with the offboard-wired ARC pots — My trouble-shooting skills were non-existent and my Amp-sifu was too busy to "help" me trouble-shoot (ie too busy to trouble-shoot FOR me). I think my friend, and thank my friend for it, wanted me to learn through the school of hard-botches and learn how to trouble-shoot, deduce, reason, explore, figure things out on my own. I'm still not very good at that. Needless to say...
The contest deadline came and went, the guts I'd pulled to trouble-shoot never made it back in the enclosure and never got fully torn apart either. Into the plain-brown envelope of shame they went.
I moved straight on to my second-build challenge: stuffing a 1590BB-sized Parasit PCB into a 1590N1 — but that's another story...
jwyles90
Well-known member
This was my very first build (that worked). It was a Tone Bender from GGG, and it took me more than a month to figure out why it wasn't working when I finished it. Turns out one of the resistors included in the kit was the wrong value, and it took the experienced eyes of one of my friend's to catch the difference. Once I got that swapped out it fired up no problem.
I think the offboard wiring that GGG has for their kits might have contributed to my dislike for the wiring process early on. I used to view it as such a tedious, annoying and painstaking process. Now I find it to be pretty relaxing and meditative. I also haven't done a pour paint build in a while, and I think it might be time to try another one out. Even though they're messy as hell I've always had a soft spot for those colorful swirls.
I think the offboard wiring that GGG has for their kits might have contributed to my dislike for the wiring process early on. I used to view it as such a tedious, annoying and painstaking process. Now I find it to be pretty relaxing and meditative. I also haven't done a pour paint build in a while, and I think it might be time to try another one out. Even though they're messy as hell I've always had a soft spot for those colorful swirls.
Attachments
PunchySunshine
Well-known member
December 22, 2021. Klone from Amazon. Ya can't beat $50. I reused the enclosure when I later redid with the kliche' plus quality components. I'm much happier. It did get me started down this hunt for toan.
Nice! Surprised the holes for the pots etc lined up so well! Definite win!
dawson
Well-known member
Ah gee- I just found more relics while cleaning..
Flimsy hardware all sourced from amazon- enclosures fabricated out of redwood scraps, roof flashing, comically overstated 3d-printed washers, and copper shielding tape:
A true bypass loop:
..& some sort of 'Y' thing- I can't remember what I was thinking:
Flimsy hardware all sourced from amazon- enclosures fabricated out of redwood scraps, roof flashing, comically overstated 3d-printed washers, and copper shielding tape:
A true bypass loop:
..& some sort of 'Y' thing- I can't remember what I was thinking:
Sorry no pics of the actual build, but it was nearly 40 years ago.
Built in a repainted DOD “bud box” enclosure, most parts scavenged from an old 8track player and a DOA ADA Flanger. Perf board was made by scraping traces off of the old 8tracks PCB.
I learned to read schematics from the Craig Anderton articles in Guitar Player magazine. I believe I was in 7th grade? This project was also based on a guitar player article my dad had in all of his back issues.
Luckily I could find redrawn schematics since the actual pedal is no more. I believe I used 0.01u caps for the 2k boost (again, it’s what I could salvage)… the only part I think I bought new was the op amp. The magazine article also had a second volume pot and a bypass switch (the switch in this schematic would toggle from flat response, 3dB boost, to 12db boost at frequency I believe). I’ll replace the pic if I ever find a reprint.
Built in a repainted DOD “bud box” enclosure, most parts scavenged from an old 8track player and a DOA ADA Flanger. Perf board was made by scraping traces off of the old 8tracks PCB.
I learned to read schematics from the Craig Anderton articles in Guitar Player magazine. I believe I was in 7th grade? This project was also based on a guitar player article my dad had in all of his back issues.
Luckily I could find redrawn schematics since the actual pedal is no more. I believe I used 0.01u caps for the 2k boost (again, it’s what I could salvage)… the only part I think I bought new was the op amp. The magazine article also had a second volume pot and a bypass switch (the switch in this schematic would toggle from flat response, 3dB boost, to 12db boost at frequency I believe). I’ll replace the pic if I ever find a reprint.
Fuzzonaut
Well-known member
I signed up for a work shop at a festival, that was in 2017. The guy behind Lastgasp Arts Laboratories was performing there and doing the workshop. You were supposed to bring your own iron and know how to hold and use it ....
Although I didn't meet any of those requirements, I went anyway and with a little help could make this work.
It's an oscillating fuzz, basically his "86" without the expression input, IIRC.
Although I didn't meet any of those requirements, I went anyway and with a little help could make this work.
It's an oscillating fuzz, basically his "86" without the expression input, IIRC.
