Started the Hydra this morning. Got shorted a couple of parts, so it’ll have to wait until I can stop by the electronics store Monday. That’ll give me time to work on the enclosure tomorrow.
Traditionally I would do one project at a time start to finish. I'll plan at least 4-5 and order anything I don't normally have on hand and do my enclosure art and then build them one by one. I wanted to do it differently this time. Build and test, build and test. Then I'm going to box one up per week. Drill, wire, photos and then make noise thru an amp.you were pretty close with the jellybeans
Traditionally I would do one project at a time start to finish. I'll plan at least 4-5 and order anything I don't normally have on hand and do my enclosure art and then build them one by one. I wanted to do it differently this time. Build and test, build and test. Then I'm going to box one up per week. Drill, wire, photos and then make noise thru an amp.you were pretty close with the jellybeans
This is basically what I have been doing too. So I might have several partially built for a while, adding to the pile bit by bit. Then end up finishing a bunch within a few weeks.
This is a thing of beauty, Temol!
I have a couple questions, if you don't mind:
1) is it etched or machined? (if it's etched, do you have tips for properly aligning the layers?)
2) what's your approach for solder masking?
3) are the holes plated?
If you have a pile of boards incomplete because you need to make an order for things you don't have from the last order are you really even building pedals?
Tone Bender Mk3. Took me at least an hour to figure it out but it ain't right. Beautiful fat fuzz but the Tone pot acts as a reverse volume control and the Fuzz pot does very little. Mmh...
EDIT: I fixed it. The range on the Fuzz pot could be wider but now everything works. I had to get rid of the 220k before the volume pot because the circuit was too quiet. I also need a higher gain and higher leakage Q3 apparently. I have one I can try, hfe 214, leakge 257uA.
Tomorrow maybe. It's almost 1am and I need to eat dinner. Have to wake up before 8am tomorrow, very early for me.
Nighty night!
If you have a pile of boards incomplete because you need to make an order for things you don't have from the last order are you really even building pedals?
While I’m waiting to get one little component for the Hydra, I threw Aion’s ODR-1 together. Currently waiting for the clear coat on the box to dry before I put it together.
I etch all the boards. Aligning top and bottom is quite easy. I use UV photosensitive film and expose pcb image on the board. I put registration marks in the corners of the transparent foil with the pcb image. Then it's just a matter of aligning two sets of the foils (with a pcb sandwitched between them).
UV curable solder mask from aliexpress. Pcb with uv mask applied, transparent foil on the uv mask and on the top - transparent foil with the image of the solder pads.
No, too much work. I just solder wire to connect the vias.
All this seems to be complicated but it takes me up to 2-3 hours to complete the board. This includes: exposing the pcb, etching, exposing the solder mask, curing the solder mask, drilling, putting description layer (only for single sided boards), drying protective layer of the spray paint (on the descritption layer).
Finally had a spare moment, after not touching my solder-iron for nearly a month, to finish re-jigging the phase issue and install the golden flat-toggles…
Stock switches with old and new solder blobules about to be yanked.
New & Old: Taller collar than original and yet the new didn’t stick out as much once on the guitar; but the bats are quite a bit longer.
Old mess on the left, new less-mess on the right. Note the two hot-wires (red & white) swapped on the new switch compared to old.
Need to stick an extra nut/shim under one.
All in all, I hated the cheap, thin, little brittle wires of the ToanRyder pups, total PITA,
and to call the cheap-plastic wrapped around them "insulation" is an insult to all insulated-wires.
I'm sure there are many who will jump to defend TR, blame the person wielding the iron —
that's fine, I'm not the best at this but it's the crappiest wire I've come across to date.
Fingers-crossed that the weight of the wire doesn't break them from the switches again; give the guitar a little shake and it might.
Thanks again to @HamishR for the line on those flat-toggles, solid!
Finishing up my orders to complete these. Pretty excited ab the calypso. I always love waveform options. The subdecay quantum phaser (the original 125b version) has always been on my radar, just never pulled the trigger. Think this will be a suitable substitution. The digidelay was actually just for padding my shipping costs when ordering some stomplfo chips, but it will be fun to play with a 4sec delay time.