Forgot to post this earlier, boxed it up a couple of days ago now. It's the Unsound Circuitry Bloodthirster. Sure chainsaws.
I recorded a very quick demo with some uninspired riffs, no bass, Toontrack MIDI drums and presets (no processing on the guitar outside of the Quad Cortex (preset does have EQ on it to begin with), but there is on the master bus). The rest of the range on that High control accentuates the chainsaw a lot, this is where I like it best personally, not full on chainsaw land - although AFAIK the point is to get an ugly chainsaw sound and blend that in afterwards, or possibly use the Blend control here (which I did not).
At some specific settings it feels like maybe the tone stack is clipping? But I used a very cheap "sourced from China but tests ok" TL074 for that and a genuine one for the other one, I could maybe try swapping it out to see if that changes or not. Also a NE5532P for the dual op-amp instead of TL072, because I had it on hand.
There is now a functioning Little Green Scream Machine on my workbench. Ready to move over until I build a case. And the unbuilt count is down to 24...
And lacking a case to set in while installing the potentiometers, I have found a new purpose for the gazillion Legos that I am storing for my boys.Turns out that 6.35mm shaft fits perfectly inside the studs, but I may have to talk to @Robert about the lateral spacing. I mean, surely Lego standard dimensions are the ideal.
There is now a functioning Little Green Scream Machine on my workbench. Ready to move over until I build a case. And the unbuilt count is down to 24...
View attachment 107541View attachment 107540
And lacking a case to set in while installing the potentiometers, I have found a new purpose for the gazillion Legos that I am storing for my boys.Turns out that 6.35mm shaft fits perfectly inside the bumps, but I may have to talk to @Robert about the lateral spacing. I mean, surely Lego standard dimensions are the ideal.
A friend gave me his Pine Box Sirens (chorus/distortion) to see if I could repair it, as the chorus side wasn't working. Turns out the surface mount voltage regulator died. Took me a minute, as I'd never seen a SOT89 package before. Thankfully the only thing receiving 5V was the PT2399 (also dead), so I removed both, added a socket and new PT2399. Told my friend I could order him a new SOT89 regulator, but for now I've tacked in a new 78L05. Working well!
I've about 20 built & tested circuits waiting in open boxes. But even tho it's too cold & damp to paint, I'm just still waiting on the finished enclosures from AmplifyFun. Hopefully, they arrive next week.
SMD porn. A little battery indicator to go onboard active basses. It's in its 4th revision by now! Man, this was a hard gadget to design, even though it doesn't look like much. The devil is in the details...
Having fun, the little detour from the electronics continues.. it helps when you get the mega-flu, chisel yourself, scold yourself on hot bending pipes :/
Dry fitting above of a lining.. but the gluing of the solid linings are under way... who's intellectual idea was it to use solid linings and have sharp bends.
Not pedals, but at least it's electronics, the new PC builds I am doing for my workspaces are pretty much ready to go now! Back in the golden age I built PCs all the time (would proselytize the benefits of custom-built PCs to my friends and offer my speccing and building services in exchange for snacks ) but these days it's almost none, I built one for my FIL last year and then nothing until these three. I find great joy in it!
Not without their headaches though. Kindly forgive the protracted rant that is going to follow.
This one is going to be my own workstation. Core Ultra 7 265KF cooled by an Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 240 on an MSI MAG B860M MORTAR motherboard, 64GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 6400 (this hurt the ol' wallet), 2TB Samsung 990 Pro, Intel Arc B580, Corsair RM750x in a Fractal Pop Mini Air.
Had a bitch of a time troubleshooting the RGB because when I hooked the fans up to the case's built-in fan controller, the front-bottom fan would not light up. I tried several combinations of chain order and nothing seemed to work. Discovered after some swearing and searching that apparently Fractal's fan controllers are bugged specifically with Arctic ARGB fans whereby if you connect two of them sequentially in the chain, whatever comes after does not light (give me a fucking break). Verified this by chaining the VRM fan after the two intakes and then the VRM fan was dark when the front-bottom lit. Solved this by stealing an ARGB splitter packaged with the second build below's motherboard, which puts all the fans in parallel instead.
I like my lighting somewhat conservative, this is apparently a big ask because ARGB control in PCs nowadays is a fucking shitshow and it BLOWS MY MIND. Every single piece of software designed to control them is nonfunctional and user-unfriendly at best and essentially malware at worst with a significantly nonzero risk of bricking your fans or motherboard. Lighting an LED is a grade school electronics experiment. Controlling an RGB LED is just controlling the voltage going to three conductors on a single die. Fancy patterns can be done with code that fits on an Arduino. Why in the name of fuck in the year of our lord 2025 is this still a problem?? After a decade of overwhelming RGB in all PC components?? Serves me right for wanting a bit of whimsy in my life.
Anyway it runs great, CPU idles at ~35 it and passes a demanding whole-system stress test without much issue, CPU and GPU temps in the high 70s under this load. Crossing my fingers this will burn through scientific computation workloads that take 24-48hr on my 5-year-old gaming laptop in much less time, it's definitely gonna look great doing it.
Second build is going to live in the lab, no RGB here to keep a veneer of seriousness. Core Ultra 7 265KF cooled by an Arctic Freezer 36 CO on an ASRock Z890i NOVA motherboard, 32GB of TeamGroup T-CREATE Expert DDR5 6000, 1TB + 4TB WD SN7100 drives, Intel Arc B580 and a Corsair SF750 in a DeepCool CH160 PLUS. Fans are all Arctic P12 CO designed for continuous operation as this system will be on pretty much 24/7. I love the micro form factor but I have mixed feelings about the case itself. On one hand, this thing is packed with features for such a tiny enclosure and is even able to fit a micro-ATX motherboard. Cable management is not excellent but truly not bad given the space constraint, although the relatively minimal-looking cabling back there is still too fat for the side panel to fit on without a struggle. It looks great and is pretty lightweight. The massive mobo cutout is a real boon especially since there are two M.2 slots on the back of the board which are both accessible without removing the board. I like that it comes apart almost completely for easier installation, though this does mean that a normal build process involves unscrewing a ton of shit. People complain about that but I'm not that bothered. What does bother me is the dust filters are behind these screwed panels and the "front" filter cannot be removed without removing the PSU and front fan (this is an idiotic design choice IMO). This case (and it's slightly smaller predecessor) work best in a rear intake configuration with the CPU cooler directly drawing fresh air; DeepCool knows this and yet still chose to put dust filters on every side except that one (stupid!). There is space but no mounting provisions (stupid!) for two fans in the bottom. The front fan pisses me off the most though because it makes no sense. The original CH160 didn't have this; instead the (SFX) PSU mounted on the back panel and you could put a fan in front of it. This meant that the optimal airflow was rear intake directly from the CPU cooler > top and front exhaust, and the front exhaust was well-positioned to extract the heat coming out of the CPU cooler and the GPU flow-through. In the CH160+ you still have that top fan which is in a perfect place to exhaust CPU+GPU heat, but then the front fan is positioned in such a way that it functions neither as an intake nor an exhaust to any significant degree. I originally had it as intake and the case did not like the positive pressure situation; it would throttle on the stress tests after <5 seconds of whole-system load because it wasn't able to exhaust the accumulated hot air fast enough with one exhaust fan and in general the internal ambient temps are quite hot. I have since eliminated the rear intake case fan because I was finding it was actually hindering (turbulent flow at the cooler intake I suppose), and changed the front fan to exhaust because the case really needs negative pressure. That lets it survive a whole system load for a few minutes; with the window off it lasts tens of minutes. I think it will need some tweaking, probably at least a moderate CPU undervolt; not that its users are ever going to put it under that kind of demand, but you want to be ready. I still like the case and would probably buy it again but some conditions apply to its optimal use.
All that said, I am really impressed with the cooling power of the Freezer 36. It was pretty cheap, dead simple to install (even with a contact frame), and has a ridiculous cooling capacity given its form factor. Highly recommended.
Finally a more simple build that will be a replacement instrument control PC. Core Ultra 7 265K cooled by a Freezer 36 CO on an MSI PRO B860M-A, same RAM as above, 1TB WD SN7100, iGPU only, ninja optical drive, additional LAN card for the instrument, and Corsair RM750x in a Fractal Pop Mini Air with all fans swapped for Arctic P12 CO (one missing in the pic because I ordered the wrong number by mistake) as this system will also run 24/7. It's actually a lot fancier than I needed it to be a) because no one had any decent quality, decently priced budget motherboards in stock at the time and b) because for reasons I won't get into, it was needed that the cases and PSUs of systems 1 and 3 be identical. Massively overspec'ed for its application but what are you gonna do. Sure there's less hardware in this one than the others but it runs impressively cool and quiet even at full synthetic load.
Soon to be on the bench. I got the last tool delivered today that I need to build out my little woodshop in the garage. I put this purchase off for 5 years which was dumb because it's ridiculously expensive now. I got a moderate deal on it, though. Next up: scratch built guitars for me and my close friends. I'm really stoked!
I'm also gonna try a little bit of furniture and fine woodworking, too. It's been a dream for quite a while. This box weighs 100lbs in case you are wondering.
Worked on my recently acquired '98 Les Paul Standard (lefty) this week. New Wolfetone Dr. Vintage and Marshallhead MkII pickups, RS Guitarworks pots, and new 3-way toggle wiring (braided instead of multi-conductor). I wired with standard right-hand pots for clockwise control as Gibsons come that way on a lefty from the factory.
I prefer not to use the heavier gauge buss wire for the grounds unless the pots are already installed as I dislike the stress it puts on them if the length/bend isn't just right - I used a template to get this one started before installing in the guitar.
Pooh! This did cost me less blood than expected, about 15cm of bandaid needed. I am so clumsy, my parents never dared to give me money to get my driver's licence; they were afraid I'd kill myself in traffic. No licence, 42 years and counting. Still, my room looks worse after all those sharp corners making countless little doodles over the furniture.
20 degrees backwards.
The "gaps" will be filled up with removable all metal enclosures (power amps, in and outputs (with vertical connectors that link the head with the cab without showing the cables)).
And since my current schematic involves 2 stereo and 4 mono parallel send / returns, I though to make it possible to flip up the head lid (to both sides) to accommodate the pedals within those chains.
) but these days it's almost none, I built one for my FIL last year and then nothing until these three. I find great joy in it!
Still, my room looks worse after all those sharp corners making countless little doodles over the furniture.
