Fuzzonaut
Well-known member
This build was a bumpy ride, entirely my fault and mainly due to my lack of patience and some stupid or rash decisions.
I was eyeing that PCB when it came out, but was too cheap to pay for international "standard parcel shipping" for just a PCB, as I didn't want the predrilled enclosure with the vents. Thanks to the great guy that @vigilante398 is, he was ok with sending me a PCB in a letter.
As soon as I received the shipping notice for the PCB, I got very antsy and started ordering parts, a mistake, and of course, the tube socket for example was too big, as I would find out later. Another silly thing I did, was immediately and mindlessly solder some big 2W resistors I had lying around to the board when I got it ... well, as everything is pretty thight on that PCB, I had to desolder all but one of them, but still had to improvise on one of the big WIMA caps.
Another rather stupid decision was to try to "force-fit" the too big tube socket with "extensions" ... that didn't really work either, I finally had to desolder the tube socket too and get one that would fit.
Then, when I finally had the pedal together .... it didn't work. There was a wee bit of sound, but it was very quite, the Gain didn't do anything, Volume kinda worked though. What now? With the 200V thing, I was hesitant to do the usual audio probing and/or poke around the power section.
Finally, I started beeping my way through the audio section, just checking continuity. As my PCB and the one in the build doc didn't match layout wise, that was a bit tricky too. But I got to the conlusion that pin 6 of the the tube isn't connected to C2 and R2 (that I desoldered).
I put a jumper wire in there and YEAH, there it was, big fat tube goodness, just as I rembered it, because I got to test the real deal at some local pedal freak meetup.
What a relief, but there was one more detail, ..., when I wanted put the lid on, the lid wouldn't close or fit and after another round of cursing, I remembered something about certain 125B enclosures beeing a tad to narrow or something, so one filing session later, the pedal was finally ready.
All this trouble shooting and messing around with the circuit already in the enclosure left some scratches (drilling was off too, by the way, ha-ha) ... so, it already looks pretty used.
Speaking of looks: I was totally fine with the space part of the name, but the heater part was not really for me, so mine is called SPACE HAZE and I used some of the marijuananauts floating around the web. I even smuggled the Sushi box logo in there, it's pretty well hidden, here's a close up.
The pedal sounds so good, might build another, but in an extra deep BB enclosure or even JJ? Then I will be able to use the big ol' mustard caps silly me also ordered for this build.
There is a Marconi 12AU7 in there.
I was eyeing that PCB when it came out, but was too cheap to pay for international "standard parcel shipping" for just a PCB, as I didn't want the predrilled enclosure with the vents. Thanks to the great guy that @vigilante398 is, he was ok with sending me a PCB in a letter.
As soon as I received the shipping notice for the PCB, I got very antsy and started ordering parts, a mistake, and of course, the tube socket for example was too big, as I would find out later. Another silly thing I did, was immediately and mindlessly solder some big 2W resistors I had lying around to the board when I got it ... well, as everything is pretty thight on that PCB, I had to desolder all but one of them, but still had to improvise on one of the big WIMA caps.
Another rather stupid decision was to try to "force-fit" the too big tube socket with "extensions" ... that didn't really work either, I finally had to desolder the tube socket too and get one that would fit.
Then, when I finally had the pedal together .... it didn't work. There was a wee bit of sound, but it was very quite, the Gain didn't do anything, Volume kinda worked though. What now? With the 200V thing, I was hesitant to do the usual audio probing and/or poke around the power section.
Finally, I started beeping my way through the audio section, just checking continuity. As my PCB and the one in the build doc didn't match layout wise, that was a bit tricky too. But I got to the conlusion that pin 6 of the the tube isn't connected to C2 and R2 (that I desoldered).
I put a jumper wire in there and YEAH, there it was, big fat tube goodness, just as I rembered it, because I got to test the real deal at some local pedal freak meetup.
What a relief, but there was one more detail, ..., when I wanted put the lid on, the lid wouldn't close or fit and after another round of cursing, I remembered something about certain 125B enclosures beeing a tad to narrow or something, so one filing session later, the pedal was finally ready.
All this trouble shooting and messing around with the circuit already in the enclosure left some scratches (drilling was off too, by the way, ha-ha) ... so, it already looks pretty used.
Speaking of looks: I was totally fine with the space part of the name, but the heater part was not really for me, so mine is called SPACE HAZE and I used some of the marijuananauts floating around the web. I even smuggled the Sushi box logo in there, it's pretty well hidden, here's a close up.
The pedal sounds so good, might build another, but in an extra deep BB enclosure or even JJ? Then I will be able to use the big ol' mustard caps silly me also ordered for this build.
There is a Marconi 12AU7 in there.
