mkstewartesq
Well-known member
I believe this is the first GuitarPCB board I’ve ever built. I already have a couple of “sort of“ vibes – there is one on my Lectric-FX Karaoke Chorus and another quasi-vibe on my PPCB Circulator - but I wanted a dedicated build. At the same time, I really wasn’t up for the hassle of dealing with shopping for smaller components for stacked boards or buying an incandescent bulb, which shut me out of the world of most vibe builds. So when I was ordering some components from Barry, I saw that he had this “The Vibe” board on sale for $3.00 so I figured “what the heck?”
Build: The build was pretty straightforward, although I did add a switch to change between two and four stages, and I added a rate LED by running the ground of the LED to lug three of the rate pot. (I also tried the depth mod by replacing R30 with a B1M pot but that didn’t really make much difference (even with an additional resistor in series) so I reverted that back to stock.) Yes, the CLR on the footswitch is socketed – after I put the build together I decided to replace the 3PDT with one with a lighted ring, so I wanted to audition CLRs to get to my preferred brightness. Trying all these different mods and making all of these changes before I boxed it is why the wiring is a bit messy. Lastly, just before I boxed it, I replaced the 2N4125 with a 2N3906 to see if that would make any difference on the vibe issue (see below)– it didn’t, but it did boost the output a fair amount, so I decided to keep it.
The sound: Eh. I guess I knew what I was getting into. I know that a vibe is often described as “just a fast phase” but I also associate it with a bit of a pitch shifted/detuned sound. That sound just isn’t present here. It’s just a phaser with a fairly shallow depth – so there is pretty much nothing I can do with this pedal that I couldn’t accomplish the exact same thing by playing with the rate on my XC Phase. While I admit that I’m not a huge fan of that detuned sound in a vibe if it becomes overwhelming, I would have liked at least a hint of it to know that I’m actually working with a vibe as opposed to just another phaser. (I was hoping the depth mod would address this a bit but it did not.)
Much like the XC Phase, the phasing is an incredibly tiny area on the trimpot - maybe 2% to 5% of the entire turn at most. So it’s kind of difficult to dial in and, since it’s not what I’m expecting for a vibe, I’ve just set it the best I can for a traditional phaser and that’s what we’re going to run with. I’ll probably open it up and adjust it 9 million more times just like I did with the XC Phase.
Anyway, no big deal – it still has a nice sound for what it is and, as noted, I have two other vibes as “bonus features“ in two other pedals (really, only one (the Circulator). as the one in the Karaoke Chorus has a pretty limited rate range (even the slowest speed is way way too fast) that makes it a bit unusable for my taste).
Graphics: The graphics are film free decal covered in clearcoat. Not a whole lot to report there.
Thanks for looking.
Mike
Build: The build was pretty straightforward, although I did add a switch to change between two and four stages, and I added a rate LED by running the ground of the LED to lug three of the rate pot. (I also tried the depth mod by replacing R30 with a B1M pot but that didn’t really make much difference (even with an additional resistor in series) so I reverted that back to stock.) Yes, the CLR on the footswitch is socketed – after I put the build together I decided to replace the 3PDT with one with a lighted ring, so I wanted to audition CLRs to get to my preferred brightness. Trying all these different mods and making all of these changes before I boxed it is why the wiring is a bit messy. Lastly, just before I boxed it, I replaced the 2N4125 with a 2N3906 to see if that would make any difference on the vibe issue (see below)– it didn’t, but it did boost the output a fair amount, so I decided to keep it.
The sound: Eh. I guess I knew what I was getting into. I know that a vibe is often described as “just a fast phase” but I also associate it with a bit of a pitch shifted/detuned sound. That sound just isn’t present here. It’s just a phaser with a fairly shallow depth – so there is pretty much nothing I can do with this pedal that I couldn’t accomplish the exact same thing by playing with the rate on my XC Phase. While I admit that I’m not a huge fan of that detuned sound in a vibe if it becomes overwhelming, I would have liked at least a hint of it to know that I’m actually working with a vibe as opposed to just another phaser. (I was hoping the depth mod would address this a bit but it did not.)
Much like the XC Phase, the phasing is an incredibly tiny area on the trimpot - maybe 2% to 5% of the entire turn at most. So it’s kind of difficult to dial in and, since it’s not what I’m expecting for a vibe, I’ve just set it the best I can for a traditional phaser and that’s what we’re going to run with. I’ll probably open it up and adjust it 9 million more times just like I did with the XC Phase.
Anyway, no big deal – it still has a nice sound for what it is and, as noted, I have two other vibes as “bonus features“ in two other pedals (really, only one (the Circulator). as the one in the Karaoke Chorus has a pretty limited rate range (even the slowest speed is way way too fast) that makes it a bit unusable for my taste).
Graphics: The graphics are film free decal covered in clearcoat. Not a whole lot to report there.
Thanks for looking.
Mike
