What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

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Can't find my black sharpie :V these are from the two non functional radios.

Not too bad, also got a couple silicon jobbies in there. I think the black radio with the missing brand badge was a Sony. The duds were either actual no reading or <10 hFE

Part of me doesn't want to scav the working one. Heh.
 
Found a buttery set for a tonebender (reverse order, because I'm detail oriented …?)
Q3, Q2, Q1
183, 95, 68
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Messed about with some other combos including low-gain silicon NPNs. Fun, but not as creamy as the combo above

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short story: this is the first Tonebender I've ever built, breadboard or otherwise (shocking). I've laid out PCBs of varying circuit types, vero, and proto projects of even other fuzzes, but not the Tonebender. Figured I should do one.

I spent this weekend trying to get this h*ckin thing to work. Tried a battery based positive ground from several drawing, then a charge pump version (this one). Thought the circuit was just allergic to me or something. Turns out histamine wasn't the problem. Turns out this does NOT like my chonky 2N2904s in Q1. They'll work great in Q2 and/or Q3. Once I popped one of the salvaged germs it fired right up.
 
While I'm waiting for some other parts to arrive, such as the BA662 @Guardians of the analog found for me for the Szukalski-Squishy he hooked me up with (cannot thank him enough! He's my Guardians of the analog Angel lookin' out for me, keeping me on track and out of trouble)...

While I'm waiting I let cUriOsiTy and a discount get the best of me and with my recent Gørva order I got the MAE-Gørva joint: LARAN.

At first I couldn't stop thinking about what mods I'd be able to do, like clipping LEDiodes where the Astronaut's laser lights are (seriously lost opportunity there between the artist and pedal-designer) — but when it arrived and I didn't have to trace it (they included the schematic, unlike StuMuck) — I almost completely lost interest right then and there, curiosity sated. It's a little misleading, the ad-copy, "It tears down the common Muff and rebuilds it to be bigger and meaner. A MOSFET input stage slams two additional clipping stages". Well, yes, but no. MOSFET stage feeds the first two stages of a Muff, essentially. So it more "tears down" than adding "two additional" stages. The circuit looks cool, though, I like it and look forward to hearing it live, without YuTooble's copious compression. It's crying out to be modded. Such a little circuit in such a big box with all that room...

There's no clipping diodes, so do I add them in? How bout a second gain pot, have a footswitch where the LED goes and a Jewel Light to hide the vacant footswitch hole in the middle and drill a second stomper on the other side of that for Ch-2? Same double stomper idea but instead of gain add a bypass-able EQ?

So here I am after 4:30am in the morning and I've decided to build it stock.

HOWEVAARRRRRR... I'm measuring every single component and then going to replicate this with Metal Film resistors instead of the Quies, or carbon-comps. The Gørva website says the kit is shipping with carboniums until the quiesies are back in their stock-aid.
(How does one even tell the quiche from the carbo-loaders anyway? Enlighten me, someone, please — I did a precursory search online and found nada.) Should I use Gørva pots for the clone, or instead of just comparing the quiebons to Metallica-Film-at-11, compare a non-chi-chi-bootiki Tayda cheap parts build to the grandiose high-falutin' überspek of almighty Gørdova?


So, yeah, then I thought of cross-referencing my DMM with the TC-1.


Having fun measuring things. Woohoo.



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Big Monk said:
Depending on which Tonebender variant you are making, Q1 is leakage biased.

If you want to use your 2N2904 units, put a 470k-1M resistor from base to collector of Q1.
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Good shout! I did some tweaking during lunch. First I just plopped a 1M trimpot and then ended up adding more resistance, making sure it worked with the attack in full sweep and biasing Q3, until I ended up with a figure of 1.547M to have the best noise/signal balance. In all honesty, this could coalesce into a 1-knob fuzz, just leaving the attack at full, but I suppose the extra control is nice.

Incidentally the schematic I was following is a modified Mk II
 
Carved this guy out today, it’s Northern Ash, with a Poplar back, and Old growth Redwood stripe my friend gave me, he said it probably came from a 1000 year old tree, got it at an estate sale locally. I know the strip is a little off centered, but so am I lol
 

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Whelp, I got the Desolate fuzz desoldered (the hot air station @jwin615 linked in the singles day thread was a huge help - and the soldering iron felt decent too, at least compared to what I'm used to) and soldered back up. I used flux quite liberally as you can also see from the picture. You can see one of the switches is sticking up quite a bit since I had trouble fitting it back in the hole which still had some solder left (hard for me to remove all of it). But it fits in the enclosure so that's ok.

At first I felt like it was gating way too much, so I checked the JFET voltages and resoldered and measured some resistors, before googling for the veroboard discussion where it seems that 0.5V for Q2 is normal. I did a bunch more playing and figured out that it sounds pretty much like the demos, except that it maybe gates a little more with some of the switches toggled and onset lower. The crush switch especially seems weird, and iffy, borderline unusable - but then, that's pretty much how the original seems to work too, so I think it's fine like this.

I wonder if 5.1V is too much for Q1? Could be a tolerance issue I guess.

In any case I think it's close enough now, all the switches work more or less like it should and the pedal itself is more or less like it should, so I'll see if I can get it boxed tomorrow. Considering how I felt when I first messed up by putting the pots and switches on the wrong side, it's a huge success that I got this far.
 
This Realistic SCT-18 tape deck. I replaced the belt on it 4 years ago almost to the day and then it stopped moving the transport wheel again. I assumed it was a crummy replacement belt since they're hard to source. I shoved it in the closet and forgot about it.

I pulled it out today to check a few things and show my kid the inside of it. The belt had simply slipped off. Now if I can just unstick the vu meters, it'll make a nice mixdown deck for my 4 track machines
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Just finished clearcoating four enclosures after applying film free decals. Kind of bummed that I got a few nibs and even a couple of fisheyes, which hasn’t happened before. Maybe this house is colder inside than I recognized. Anyway, I will need to fix those defects in a day or so once the clearcoat cures.

These boxes are for, from left to right:
  • Unchained
  • Waddle Box
  • Clandestine Preamp
  • Moonshot Tremolo
Mike

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Vicious C said:
Carved this guy out today, it’s Northern Ash, with a Poplar back, and Old growth Redwood stripe my friend gave me, he said it probably came from a 1000 year old tree, got it at an estate sale locally. I know the strip is a little off centered, but so am I lol
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That's awesome. When I get a larger workspace I want to build a CNC machine and start making guitars. Do you make the necks and cut fret slots on yours as well as bodies?
 
mkstewartesq said:
Just finished clearcoating four enclosures after applying film free decals. Kind of bummed that I got a few nibs and even a couple of fisheyes, which hasn’t happened before. Maybe this house is colder inside than I recognized. Anyway, I will need to fix those defects in a day or so once the clearcoat cures.

These boxes are for, from left to right:
  • Unchained
  • Waddle Box
  • Clandestine Preamp
  • Moonshot Tremolo
Mike

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That tremolo is really good.
 
DailyDovetails said:
That's awesome. When I get a larger workspace I want to build a CNC machine and start making guitars. Do you make the necks and cut fret slots on yours as well as bodies?
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The CNC definitely makes life a little easier, cleaner cuts and exact neck pockets etc. The devil is in the details. As far as the necks go, yes I can do them and also use my laser machine to cut the fret slots. But if I want to get a guitar done faster to make up some lost funds, I just get an Ebay neck that's rough, and do all the fretwork and finishing work to make it play to my standards.
 
Vicious C said:
The CNC definitely makes life a little easier, cleaner cuts and exact neck pockets etc. The devil is in the details. As far as the necks go, yes I can do them and also use my laser machine to cut the fret slots. But if I want to get a guitar done faster to make up some lost funds, I just get an Ebay neck that's rough, and do all the fretwork and finishing work to make it play to my standards.
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I hadn't heard of cutting frets with the laser. I will have to research that some. If its works well it makes sense so you don't have to run the small bits to cut frets slots that I have heard break easily. I have a Yamaha classical where the fret slots don't run all the way thought the board and it makes it really smooth playing that way. Also I have an interested in cutting fan frets. I don't think there is any easy way to do either of those without automation.
 
Harry Klippton said:
This Realistic SCT-18 tape deck. I replaced the belt on it 4 years ago almost to the day and then it stopped moving the transport wheel again. I assumed it was a crummy replacement belt since they're hard to source. I shoved it in the closet and forgot about it.

I pulled it out today to check a few things and show my kid the inside of it. The belt had simply slipped off. Now if I can just unstick the vu meters, it'll make a nice mixdown deck for my 4 track machines
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One of these was one of the first things I plugged my guitar into when I was a kid. It undoubtedly sounded like shit, but having the overdriven guitar enveloping the living room made me feel like I could really get the hang of this music stuff
 
DailyDovetails said:
I hadn't heard of cutting frets with the laser. I will have to research that some. If its works well it makes sense so you don't have to run the small bits to cut frets slots that I have heard break easily. I have a Yamaha classical where the fret slots don't run all the way thought the board and it makes it really smooth playing that way. Also I have an interested in cutting fan frets. I don't think there is any easy way to do either of those without automation.
Click to expand...

Yeah it’s pretty sweet! The bits I used to use on the cnc always broke on harder woods
 
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