What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

Fama said:
If a push/pull pot was possible, toggling with it from buffer to boost or treble boost (you could possibly set those somehow, with dip switches maybe?) would be cool. But tbh I put in a tiny DPDT switch which handles all three modes for me - although for my strat at least the treble boost high pass frequency is way too high, I would change the cap but I'm afraid of desoldering it. Maybe I'll practice with the hot air station I got and tackle that at some point later on when I'm more confident.

But otherwise the Axtivator is really great, I like how quiet the strat is even when turning the volume down now after installing the Axtivator and adding copper shielding, plus the boost is pretty nice too with some pedals.
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I thought about a switch but don't really want to drill a hole in the body.
I may put a push/pull on the tone to flip between boost and unity

May have to alter the caps myself. I won't use the treble boost on the baritone but I'm worried the low cut may be too high, depending on what the c_flat cap value is "stock"
I tried reading it last night but my eyes were to tired.
 
jwin615 said:
I thought about a switch but don't really want to drill a hole in the body.
I may put a push/pull on the tone to flip between boost and unity

May have to alter the caps myself. I won't use the treble boost on the baritone but I'm worried the low cut may be too high, depending on what the c_flat cap value is "stock"
I tried reading it last night but my eyes were to tired.
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Ahh, understandable - the strat of course has the pickguard, so making a hole in that wasn't a huge ordeal.
 
JTEX said:
Thanks for the feedback! It's a pre-production thing at this time, so I haven't settled on various possible features such as DIP switches yet. I will polish it a bit if I ever make it into a proper product (not very likely given people's low interest/awareness and my laziness + dislike of marketing).

And yes, as you said, the standard tone pot you'd use with passive pickups won't work the usual way after any low Z buffer, or active pickups and such. Axtivator has a 1k output impedance, it won't even notice a 250k or 500k tone pot with ANY size capacitor across its output until the pot is at almost 0% resistance. You should use an A25k tone pot, maybe even A10k, with probably as much as a 0.1uF cap to ground. I, for one, also like to add a 1k-or-so resistor in series with the cap to limit the tone pot's range because I never ever want the tone to be fully muffled, but that's very optional and ripe for experimentation.

OR, having said all this, you could place a standard tone pot and cap before the Axtivator, and it would work like any regular passive tone, load the pickup etc. Complete with that resonant hump in the low mids when you turn the tone all the way down. I personally don't like it, so I use a low value tone pot and big cap after the Axtivator.

BTW, EMG's site is a great resource on the right parts to use with active electronics, wiring etc.
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I just wired it basically as shown on the freeway diagram in my photo, except all grounds converge at the tone pot.
It's a 250k and *definitely* works across the full throw. The resonant peak is probably what I was hearing as a change of slope, at least with tired ears on a quite and shitty practice amp.
 
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Fama said:
for my strat at least the treble boost high pass frequency is way too high, I would change the cap but I'm afraid of desoldering it. Maybe I'll practice with the hot air station I got and tackle that at some point later on when I'm more confident.
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No need to desolder the cap if you want to lower the high pass frequency. Just add another cap in parallel with C_TRB on the back of the board. There's no real "stock" value, it's ripe for experimentation. Perhaps 4.7n to as much as 100n is a good range to play with. Tweak until it sounds right to you :)
 
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Put some Fender noiseless pickups in this Squier Affinity tele that I got for free from my roommates family. It had been sitting in their garage for a while so they mailed it to me.

Honestly it plays phenomenal. The previous owner definitely loved it and put a lot of work into it. It has a perfectly cut nut and low action.

The pickups were extremely low output and when I took them out I discovered they were Guitar Fetish Kwikplug pickups, so he even "upgraded" those!

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I also polished up the frets and swapped the black pickguard for a spare pearloid I had. Kind of a 70s vibe now.
 
I haven't even plugged it in yet to see if it works.
I was disassembling it, undoing a jack-nut, with my bare hands sitting in the living room and realised I should at least bring it down to the workbench — had to clear off the friend's Tele first.

Pic 1)
Removed the rubber adhesive pad and 1.5mm hex-screws. There was some white tape covering the back, pulled back to reveal...
"Toight like a toitle." — GM

Pic 2) As expected. It's tight. The display is the stomp-switch (great, so the lens will become scratched in no time — good thing I plan on putting it in its own Bypass/Mute Loop so it's always on). It's SMD city (natch) under the lens.

Pic 3) Seems I can almost get the jacks out, but not quite able — there's no way to take out the whole assembly in one go, none that I can see. I saw some exploded 3D-views of it online when purchasing it; that black wire running diagonally across both jacks is GoldMember-toight — will have to desolder some wires probably ... later. Time to go play with my 'bone ...

— TROMBONE, you filthy-minded...
Rehearsal night for the concert band, this Tunah has to wait.



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Hmmm not much help:

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Still f-inf with the Jericho. First winter with it. The temp and humidity shift toyed with it so out some the Allen wrenches.
Also, knobs. The pushons won't fit on the Axtivator, so I went fishing.
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From a recent eBay lot. They're dumb but I like them. Won't travel but fun for while it's home. "Honey. Turn the oven on."
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Harry Klippton said:
I had to jump on this one real quick and it's a lot of fun. I tried out a few diodes and I'm happy with where this is at. Fuck sockets forever 💅

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I have one of these in the queue so I’ve been watching the builds closely. Did you breadboard it to try it out? The build doc talks about trying the diode in both directions which is kinda blowing my mind.
 
Erik S said:
I have one of these in the queue so I’ve been watching the builds closely. Did you breadboard it to try it out? The build doc talks about trying the diode in both directions which is kinda blowing my mind.
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I was gonna mention this in my build report but I won't leave you hanging. If Joe hadn't done the transistor selection already, I would have breadboarded it first. I've been doing that a lot lately, like with those two snarkdoodles I posted yesterday. Instead I had a socket in to try different diodes. Once I had my pick, I took the socket out and soldered the diode in. I had to lift the attack pot to get the socket out. Joe also sent me a handful of diodes so I tried those forward and back, as well as a BAT46, since @blackhatboojum mentioned that's what he liked. The BAT46 backwards gated real hard just like the D9_ that Joe sent gate real hard forward. I installed the D9_ backward
giovanni said:
That’s a very clean build! And I like that mat, what is it?
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Thanks Giovanni. It's just a cheap silicon pot rest from Amazon. I have two of them on my desk. They catch all the little bits, keep things from rolling or sliding around, and I can solder directly on them. I got the idea from @Guardians of the analog
 
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Debugging someone elses veroboard builds is a bit of a pain - especially when the build has a pre/post switch for moving the boost before or after the OD. But thankfully it seems like the boost (which was broken) only has a cold/broken solder joint, and I'm pretty sure it's on one end of the red wire from the board to the pot.

That's the third connection issue today, from a cheap RGB LED strip which I removed from it's cabinet only to find out that it works after I removed it (it refused to work in the cabinet even though I thought I tried all the connections to be sure), to the Crybaby (which was cut wires instead of a real connection issue to be fair), to this one.
 
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