What's on the drawing board? 🎨🖌️

So did a bit more work on the BFDR project. Decided to go with F&T caps in the doghouse, so of course I had to find the logo and trace that at greatly magnified size.


This is the traced logo with a 3d fill:

I had the hardest time getting the color right, I had to sample the color on a picture and grab the R/G/B values.... There was a lot of shades, so I used a darker shade for the outline and a lighter one for the fill.
F&T LOGO.jpg

The logo courtesy of a PDF on the Mersen/F&T site:
Graphic1_ImgID1.png
This is the 100% to scale chassis I bought from ZackMDhunter on eBay (cheaper than wholesale price at CE Dist). Visio has the ability to select an object, and then replace it with another. So to complete the layout, I click on a hole, then say click on a drawing I've done of a nine-pin socket and align x and y. Boom, the hole becomes a socket!

Blackface Deluxe Reverb AB763 chassis only.jpg

I think F&T have the coolest looking caps ever. And really good specs, but coming from Germany they are three times the cost of MOD caps.
Blackface Deluxe Reverb AB763 doghouse caps.jpg

Still in progress.

Blackface Deluxe Reverb AB763.jpg


Being retired, and almost 70 years old, I need to keep ye olde brain cells active and drawing stuff to scale is a great way to accomplish that!!!! That and playing guitar......
 
Next up on the Photoshop mockup drawing board is a Torn Speaker circuit concept build to be done up in stripboard fashion. The guts will be based on a Tl431 reference diode (with or without an accompanying 2N3904) rather than a series of opamps and/or transistors. And yes, I'm aware the mockup's controls don't match the schematics, it's just in concept stage at this point. It may or may not have a 'Hiss' (Tone) control.

AF_Torn_Speaker_Template_1590B_Mockup.png TL431-Fuzz_Torn-Speaker.png
 
Next up on the Photoshop mockup drawing board is a Torn Speaker circuit concept build to be done up in stripboard fashion. The guts will be based on a Tl431 reference diode (with or without an accompanying 2N3904) rather than a series of opamps and/or transistors. And yes, I'm aware the mockup's controls don't match the schematics, it's just in concept stage at this point. It may or may not have a 'Hiss' (Tone) control.

View attachment 107150 View attachment 107152
Bill!!!
 
Next up on the Photoshop mockup drawing board is a Torn Speaker circuit concept build to be done up in stripboard fashion. The guts will be based on a Tl431 reference diode (with or without an accompanying 2N3904) rather than a series of opamps and/or transistors. And yes, I'm aware the mockup's controls don't match the schematics, it's just in concept stage at this point. It may or may not have a 'Hiss' (Tone) control.

View attachment 107150 View attachment 107152
1764889648546.png 1764889794622.png
 
All the little blue dots are anchor points where I started or stopped a new segment and meticulously used the control points to modify the curve to match the bitmap under it. Then I made a copy and yanked a few anchor points into spikes just screwing around.



1766270030601.png

Now that it's a vector drawing I can modify the 3d and color.
Marshall Logo traced 12.20.25.jpg

Marshall green Logo traced 12.20.25.jpg

Marshall blue Logo traced 12.20.25.jpg

Man, my butt is sore from setting so long. This took a good 7 hours................................ Time to party!
 
God love Bill the Cat, Opus, Milo, Steve Dallas and the gang - I miss them dearly. I have a long relationship with Berkeley Breathed's creations, including signed copies of his 'Academia Waltz' undergrad comics for the student newspaper at Univ of Texas at Austin.
Oh wow, very cool.
 
I love the 5E3 tweed deluxe amplifier, but the form factor was originally laid out to be a student amplifier using as little material as possible.

This creates a very tight space for making connections and it is not fun to build them.

This is why Leo eventually switched to the chassis design used in the 60s for the black face amplifiers.

I got the idea that it would be fun to try using a blank steel chassis to build a 5E3 in the black face form factor.

This is the layout that I made over the last couple of days. Note the resistor on the switch side of the output jack to provide a load if the speaker is unplugged thereby saving the output transformer!!!

Another note, I called it the edge deluxe because it’s a clone of the edge deluxe made by fender. That’s why there’s .022 UF caps where you normally see .1

T.E. 5E3 2025.jpeg
 
the typeface looks sick! You got blank templates? I want to bring it into gimp/procreate and give it a college try
Thanks! It's the Maximum Voltage font at FontSpace, https://www.fontspace.com/search?q=maximum voltage
I just put the words I need as into the website (as sample text) and save them as png (w/ transparent background), then I incorporate them into my design. That way I don't download the font itself, as I use lots of different fonts for my various pedals.

ps: I only build my own personal pedals, none for commercial purposes, so I don't need to fret re: the copyrights and legal issues.
 
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Where do you get custom-printed UV stickers? (If you please.)

I use this company, HerperTailor, in Hong Kong.

These UV-printed transfer stickers can have any color, including white. And they put a white layer underneath, so they are optically opaque. I can pack a large # of pedals into one 12" by 22" gang sheet, so the price per pedal is quite reasonable. (They also have metallic labels at a higher price.). There are also several other companies on Etsy that make this type of label, if you need a smaller # of labels then you can check with them. I tried this bunch first and was very pleased with how they look, and they were responsive to my emailed questions before buying. I send them svg's at 1200dpi, and the end results look really sharp.

The only potential drawback is that I don't know how well these will hold up under a lot of hard stomping at random angles, like at gigs - i.e., they are vinyl. I suspect decals under clearcoat are likely more robust under abuse. But these stickers work fine for me at home, where I'm wearing flip flops and regular shoes, and hit the pedal squarely.

Here's some examples of the finished product:

ps: happy to answer any additional questions
pps: also, they cut around your designs, leaving maybe ~0.5mm of clear sticker around them. So the stickers don't have large areas of clear sticker, which is nice. E.g., If you look close at the Variac photo, you can see the raised clear surround on the lettering for the pots. So the rest of the black front panel is uncovered, exposing the painted enclosure. I do put a couple layers of clear satin spray shellac on top of everything after the stickers are attached.
 
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