Hetari Gotoh
Active member
- Build Rating
My first build was thankfully a success, but considering I have no idea what I'm doing it's only a matter of time before something goes wrong. In fact, "having an idea what I'm doing" requires mistakes in order to learn. I guess.
Hence the testing/prototyping rig, complete with something to test, which is most obviously an overdrive pedal.
This time I tried my hand at sourcing my own parts, just to increase the probability of a spectacular failure. With the help of the newbie guides from Aion FX, Coda Effects and the collective wisdom of this forum (I particularly appreciated this post by @Silver Blues ).
Building Madbean's Protorig Jr was as straightforward as one might expect, given its purpose. I need to work on my use of blu tack to hold the components. That crooked DC socket makes me sad.
This time, inspired by a picture of @Guardians of the analog 's workbench (I think), I put together something to suck the soldering fumes away from my face, using some old helping hands from Lidl, an old 120mm Noctua fan and a 12V power supply from a SATA/IDE adapter.
I also increased the illumination of my work area and more or less followed @MichaelW 's cleaning method. Now I can actually see what I'm doing when I'm soldering and the full extent of my ineptitude when I'm done.
Yes, there's something odd over there on the left.
Regarding the Uber Drive, populating the board went smooth as flux-covered silk. I used 2SC1815 instead of the listed 2SC732 because a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. To further prove my courage I also decided to use sockets for them, which means I didn't kill them with my soldering skills but they'll be sent flying inside the enclosure at the first sneeze.
The moment of truth. Will it work? And if it doesn't is it the protorig or the uber drive? What's testing what? Anyway, there's sound passing though but nothing when the uber drive is switched on. At least part of the protorig works.
Now what? Is there any power reaching the uber drive? Yes. What is it then? Ah. Uhm. Empty sockets. The first of many times I guess. One IC and two transistors later, amazingly, everything works as it should.
This time I tried buying a pre-drilled PPCB enclosure from Tayda, in metallic candy gold. It's very nice and everything matches. I didn't check the size of the hole for the DC socket and it was smaller than the Kobiconn socket I planned on using. Thanks to Silver Blues I had a Lumberg one that fit perfectly.
The circuit itself is a close relative of the TS, or so it seems. To my untrained ears it adds some degree of honk and it sounds less polite than the TS. Is it because of the asymmetrical clipping associated with it? I could easily get an answer by studying how things works, but building more overdrive pedals and blindly comparing them sounds more like what an addict like me would do.
I guess my next victim will be a bluesbreaker clone then.
Hence the testing/prototyping rig, complete with something to test, which is most obviously an overdrive pedal.
This time I tried my hand at sourcing my own parts, just to increase the probability of a spectacular failure. With the help of the newbie guides from Aion FX, Coda Effects and the collective wisdom of this forum (I particularly appreciated this post by @Silver Blues ).
Building Madbean's Protorig Jr was as straightforward as one might expect, given its purpose. I need to work on my use of blu tack to hold the components. That crooked DC socket makes me sad.
This time, inspired by a picture of @Guardians of the analog 's workbench (I think), I put together something to suck the soldering fumes away from my face, using some old helping hands from Lidl, an old 120mm Noctua fan and a 12V power supply from a SATA/IDE adapter.
I also increased the illumination of my work area and more or less followed @MichaelW 's cleaning method. Now I can actually see what I'm doing when I'm soldering and the full extent of my ineptitude when I'm done.
Yes, there's something odd over there on the left.
Regarding the Uber Drive, populating the board went smooth as flux-covered silk. I used 2SC1815 instead of the listed 2SC732 because a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. To further prove my courage I also decided to use sockets for them, which means I didn't kill them with my soldering skills but they'll be sent flying inside the enclosure at the first sneeze.
The moment of truth. Will it work? And if it doesn't is it the protorig or the uber drive? What's testing what? Anyway, there's sound passing though but nothing when the uber drive is switched on. At least part of the protorig works.
Now what? Is there any power reaching the uber drive? Yes. What is it then? Ah. Uhm. Empty sockets. The first of many times I guess. One IC and two transistors later, amazingly, everything works as it should.
This time I tried buying a pre-drilled PPCB enclosure from Tayda, in metallic candy gold. It's very nice and everything matches. I didn't check the size of the hole for the DC socket and it was smaller than the Kobiconn socket I planned on using. Thanks to Silver Blues I had a Lumberg one that fit perfectly.
The circuit itself is a close relative of the TS, or so it seems. To my untrained ears it adds some degree of honk and it sounds less polite than the TS. Is it because of the asymmetrical clipping associated with it? I could easily get an answer by studying how things works, but building more overdrive pedals and blindly comparing them sounds more like what an addict like me would do.
I guess my next victim will be a bluesbreaker clone then.
