MichaelW
Well-known member
As you may recall my first attempt at building the Space Heater went up in smoke.....literally.....
Trying to troubleshoot that build was limited to whatever I could do outside the box as I really don't have the experience to be poking around high voltage caps.
Removing the board from the enclosure was done extremely gingerly heh.
I had this one finished yesterday but wanted to give it a couple of hours of play time and "burn in" before calling it good.
I have a suspicion as to what the problem was in my first build. I am so used to building @PedalPCB boards which are always laid out beautifully with plenty of room to work. The Space Heater board has a LOT packed into the tiny board and I am super impressed with how @vigilante398 managed it.
Having said that more care needs to be taken soldering because of how tightly some of the pads are spaced. I have a feeling there was a solder bridge in there somewhere but as mentioned I didn't want to poke around the board with a meter, so I decided to start fresh.
A couple of things I did differently on the second build. I slowed down and really took my time with every single solder joint using the least amount of solder possible but still making sure I got good flow through and a nice small dome.
I also cleaned the snot out of the board with IPA, a step I skipped on the first board as I wasn't really sure what components could withstand a liberal dunking in IPA.
I also took @vigilante398's recommendation and used ribbon cable for the connection to the daughterboard.
The pedal works great and NO SMOKE this time hahah. I used a 1Spot 1700ma wall wart but it also seems to work well with one of the 350ma taps from my pedal power supply.
Sounds fantastic, really love this thing. I used a JJ 12AX7 and its got enough gain to be a standalone overdrive box and sounds really good both by itself or being boosted a bit. I tried both my Modus Operandi boost (this is really becoming my favorite boost pedal) as well as boosting it with the Closed Circuit Booster/Limiter or boosting it with the General Tso's compressor.
With the gain dialed back and the level dialed up a bit, it makes a great boost itself driving another overdrive or amp, adding a bit of tube warmth.
I have to say that playing this really makes me appreciate my Cattle Driver build even more, that thing really does such a great job emulating tubes.
I do not seem to have any of the issues with squealing at the high end of the gain range. My typical set up has a couple of buffered pedals at the beginning of my chain (TC Polytune and General Tso's) but I tried the Space Heater as the first pedal with guitar going directly into it with no noise or squeal even with the gain dimed.
While I was waiting for the board and a few components for the build, I decided to play around with some rattle cans with the original enclosure I got with the first build. I've had mixed results painting enclosures but this one came out "ok-ish".
I had recently build an herb rack for my wife and this was the color she chose (Hyacinth Blue), so with the leftover can I painted a couple of enclosures.
With the new color scheme I decided to go with cream knobs.
Thanks @vigilante398 for making this project available to us!
Trying to troubleshoot that build was limited to whatever I could do outside the box as I really don't have the experience to be poking around high voltage caps.
Removing the board from the enclosure was done extremely gingerly heh.
I had this one finished yesterday but wanted to give it a couple of hours of play time and "burn in" before calling it good.
I have a suspicion as to what the problem was in my first build. I am so used to building @PedalPCB boards which are always laid out beautifully with plenty of room to work. The Space Heater board has a LOT packed into the tiny board and I am super impressed with how @vigilante398 managed it.
Having said that more care needs to be taken soldering because of how tightly some of the pads are spaced. I have a feeling there was a solder bridge in there somewhere but as mentioned I didn't want to poke around the board with a meter, so I decided to start fresh.
A couple of things I did differently on the second build. I slowed down and really took my time with every single solder joint using the least amount of solder possible but still making sure I got good flow through and a nice small dome.
I also cleaned the snot out of the board with IPA, a step I skipped on the first board as I wasn't really sure what components could withstand a liberal dunking in IPA.
I also took @vigilante398's recommendation and used ribbon cable for the connection to the daughterboard.
The pedal works great and NO SMOKE this time hahah. I used a 1Spot 1700ma wall wart but it also seems to work well with one of the 350ma taps from my pedal power supply.
Sounds fantastic, really love this thing. I used a JJ 12AX7 and its got enough gain to be a standalone overdrive box and sounds really good both by itself or being boosted a bit. I tried both my Modus Operandi boost (this is really becoming my favorite boost pedal) as well as boosting it with the Closed Circuit Booster/Limiter or boosting it with the General Tso's compressor.
With the gain dialed back and the level dialed up a bit, it makes a great boost itself driving another overdrive or amp, adding a bit of tube warmth.
I have to say that playing this really makes me appreciate my Cattle Driver build even more, that thing really does such a great job emulating tubes.
I do not seem to have any of the issues with squealing at the high end of the gain range. My typical set up has a couple of buffered pedals at the beginning of my chain (TC Polytune and General Tso's) but I tried the Space Heater as the first pedal with guitar going directly into it with no noise or squeal even with the gain dimed.
While I was waiting for the board and a few components for the build, I decided to play around with some rattle cans with the original enclosure I got with the first build. I've had mixed results painting enclosures but this one came out "ok-ish".
I had recently build an herb rack for my wife and this was the color she chose (Hyacinth Blue), so with the leftover can I painted a couple of enclosures.
With the new color scheme I decided to go with cream knobs.
Thanks @vigilante398 for making this project available to us!
