Thermionic Deluxe – A first time builders post mortem

[kylewetton]

So the Friedman BE-OD and I have been to some exciting places, it's the backbone of my chugs and toans. I hope you enjoy reading about my experience.



This Christmas awarded me with three weeks of glorious free time, I was encouraged by Bryan (The Sword, RIP) of all people to give it a go as he is actually really into it, but I never really knew where to start.

It became pretty clear being on r/diypedals for a few days that pedalpcb was the place to start, and the BE-OD Deluxe clone being on offer I instantly pulled the trigger in November. 41 days later my PCB arrived on the 11th of January. I started back at work on the 11th of January. Fuck.

41 days though, thats a lot of time to deep dive into YouTube and this forum to be sure I give myself the best chance of success. I downloaded JSpice, I instantly uninstalled JSpice. I watched solder videos (something I'd never done before), read all of your 'How to build guitar pedals' blog posts, and quietly dipped into my savings to set myself up for my future builds (a decent soldering station, a great third arm assembly, solder sucker, a multi-meter, etc).

The day arrived and after soldering 5 rogue resistors onto a perfboard to test the waters, I started.

I want to say this to anyone else that might pick this pedal as their first; it's ambitious but if you take your time and take care, it's really not so bad.

At this point I'd like to break the 'not so bad' into the...

The Good

• Soldering wasn't as tough as I thought it'd be, sure there were maybe one or two connections where they came out a little untidy, but with the board basically living in the third arm the entire build, and a batch of blue-tak, populating the board was pretty straight forward. I was naive in thinking that it was the hard part though, holy shit was I wrong there.
• Hopefully this isn't too buried down in this report as it really is the point of doing this, so allow me the bold the point: the pedal sounds great, and it really is true to its inspiration. This is a Friedman sounding pedal through and through, and I'll happily replace my single channel store-bought pedal with this one, but I'll never sell either.
• The feeling of it all working is very rewarding, you feel like you just performed magic, I hope that feeling stays with me for at least a few future builds.

The Bad

• I'll never order Tayda's drill service again. It took about a week longer to ship because of this, and when it arrived there was a hole missing. Shit I was stuck, so off I went and dipped into savings again and bought an hand held electric drill and step drill bit. I really enjoyed that experience as well and all future builds, I'll save myself a weeks wait and drill the enclosure myself, anything that makes it a little more hands-on appeals to me.
• I missed a component which led to my first issue which was some serious self oscillation, a visual inspection is super important.
• I'll never again dismiss the idea of giving the board a good clean once you've populated it. Flux pools and turns to grease everywhere, don't leave this step out.
• 14 pots, that's a tough pedal to install into an enclosure, I had to do this about 6 times (each time desoldering the power switch, dumb mistakes that I've learned from).
• I found the hardest part of installing the pedal into the enclosure is lining up the damn LEDs, which are happy to bend over themselves if you don't get it right, I feel like anyone on this forum could happily dock a ship at the International Space Station with the practice this procedure gives you.
• Desoldering wires off the circuit board is hard, and a couple times I just wasn't able to get it. One of my grounds is actually mounted on the top of the board as I just wasn't able to clear the hole. Be sure your leads are cut the right length. (Hah, actually you'll see that ground lead is ironically way too long in this build).
• That brings me to issue number 2, more self occultation caused by an entirely different problem which turned out to be a dodgy wire install. Here I'm going to give future search bar wielders some keywords to help find this nugget of advice (whistle when turn volume up, squeal, high pitched tone), it's a bitch to debug but check your wires, be sure your board is clean. You checked for bridged connections? Oh, check again.
• Anyone else feel like this entire process feels about the same as carrying a lego Death Star down a spiral stair case? It's exhilarating. You're all worriors (sic intended).

The Ugly

Well, here it is. As you can see, my budget hasn't reached the "paint, print and waterslide the enclosure" part of this hobby yet, but my next one will look nice. What I do enjoy doing is jimmying up design ideas in Blender3D though, so if you're here looking for some pretty pedals, enjoy some of my renders to iterate ideas for this build instead:

Highest voted render will be my design once I'm geared up to do it




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[GizzWizzKing]

Having gone through several of these things recently as a beginner I can say this is a great writeup. The Sword... Yes.
I do enjoy drilling myself at this point but also think for something with this much space to bork your drilling it is likely a good idea to go with tayda's drilling service. Anything 9+ knobs leaves minimal room for error for beginners. If this is your first attempt then I look forward to reading your future write ups. Also yes, the LEDs are ultra fiddly. Compared to my builds I would never guess from your gutshot you had to do so much renovation work. Nicely done 👏 👏 👏

I gotta go with Riffolas Cage for my vote.

 

[kylewetton]

Having gone through several of these things recently as a beginner I can say this is a great writeup. The Sword... Yes.
I do enjoy drilling myself at this point but also think for something with this much space to bork your drilling it is likely a good idea to go with tayda's drilling service. Anything 9+ knobs leaves minimal room for error for beginners. If this is your first attempt then I look forward to reading your future write ups. Also yes, the LEDs are ultra fiddly. Compared to my builds I would never guess from your gutshot you had to do so much renovation work. Nicely done 👏 👏 👏

I gotta go with Riffolas Cage for my vote.

You’re totally right in that this one would have been out of my league to drill myself. My next two builds are triangle big muffs which I think will be a good starting point in DIY drilling

Any tips for easier handling of the LEDs?

 

[Nic]

All your renders are really cool, I prefer the first one. The 3 first in fact.

 

[GizzWizzKing]

Any tips for easier handling of the LEDs?

Others may have better tips.
I generally don't drill for my LED till I see how the PCB lines up in the enclosure. I mark as short a route possible for them and drill. Then I fit the board and mount it inside the enclosure before I add the LED (from the outside which means you have to be patient with lining up the legs) and then solder (mind the +/-). Whichever bezel you use may require a bit more planning because some are a bit more resistant to being installed post de facto.

 

[Hirti]

Wow, what an ambitious first pedal! Nice write up! I'd either go with the first one or the "Doesn't Do Jazz Pedal" mock up.

 

[Alan W]

All the designs are nice, but I really like the first one best.

You can attach a few inches of thin leads to the LED (shrink wrap over the led leads for safety) and then place the LED wherever you want it. I do that about half the time, the other half (when I’m just going with the stock placement) I wait until the board is located via the pots and switches, and feed the LED into the board from the face of the pedal, (if that makes sense…).

Really an ambitious first project! And a good job of it too. Welcome to the forum!

 

[jwyles90]

Man, all of those designs are great but I looooove the Nic Cage one. Just rename all the knob labels "BEES!" and you're good to go.

 

[Feral Feline]

Great write up, but I gotta say... you make it too damn tough to decide on which theme to vote for. After some deliberation...


PANDAMOANIUM gets my vote, though.

If going for Evil Knievel, ya gotta swap out the knobs for red and blue (since the enclosure is white) and the CHANNEL LED should be a red/blue thing to match the knobs and the bypass/on LED should be white ... all IMO of course, your pedal, you're gonna do what you like!

 

[eh là bas ma]

All these artworks are good, but the first one, Mozzie, is certainly the most interesting. I might use these colors on my next build.

 

[Barry]

I vote number 1, but I like them all, build looks good!