Eoo3 progress

[gordo]

Thanks for sketching that out.  I'm really stoked about getting this thing together and one of the things that has escaped me till recently is rather than try to fight my amps inherent ability to break up and deal with a murky clean sound is to add a clone of a JHS Haunting Mids and boost the upper mids when I roll back for a clean sound.  It maintains the edge and grit that I'm looking for (I don't really like totally CLEAN) while staying very focused and detailed.  Setting up "scenes" involving the JHS plus effects plus the amp channel with a single switch will be very liberating.

[Marshall Arts]

Any progress on the Eoo3 so far?

[gordo]

Well, "wiring in a few days" ended up being half the bloody summer but I'm back at the bench.  I'd forgotten how much work a new puppy is.

The code is in and the footswitches are wired up and all appears to be working very well.  I haven't tested midi functionality yet but I have little doubt it's good.  The wiring looks like a rats nest now, although it was all neatly bundled.  I'll get to that in a minute.  It's going to be challenging to jam all those wires in and get the lid closed so will just take a bit more planning and dressing.



My wiring issue was the angled connectors mounted to the footswitch boards.  On Marshall Arts' build his connectors had the release clips on the top, which makes it MUCH easier to unplug the connector if needed.  And in my case it was needed.  Hardly a big deal but my release clips (connectors purchased from Mouser) are on the bottom.  Even though I'd read the build docs multiple times...in my brain I rotated the wiring scheme to be upside down to compensate.  Obviously I didn't put a lot of logic to it.  Here's how my connectors (wired correctly now) look:



So all my wiring was backwards.  Turns out not to be that big a deal: with these connectors it's just a matter of inserting a flat blade screw driver into the slot that the crimp connectors plug into and they pop right out.  I had every footswitch rewired in under 15 minutes.  I had to cut apart all my neat wiring bundles but it turns out I needed to anyway.  Space under the display and on top of the controller board is a bit tight.



I should be able to reroute a bunch of this stuff around the midi connectors and over the loop 7/8 tails board (not installed yet)  Wire used here is the Smallbear 24ga and would be nice to have something with less jacket.  I really like the wire though.  I picked up some of their fine gauge RG-174 for the shielded runs to the jacks so that will help.



It was a REALLY good feeling to apply power after pumping code to the Arduino and having the display and LED's boot up to a little light show and E003

[gordo]

Oh yeah.  A pic of the pooch.  Dylan is 12 weeks in this picture and his ears are cut but not pinned yet.  It's a drag to put him thru the pinned ears thing but he's going to look great and for all the attention he gets he doesn't seem to mind.  Sort of a barbaric practice though, I'd probably have passed on it had the breeder not got the process started...

[Marshall Arts]

Wow, great work there... I know that the space for all these wires is tight, but did not find another solution for that.... I could have used +5v and Gnd 'rails' and than connect both from switch to switch, but that does not look nice either...

If it boots up, midi will work :-)

I like your Eoo3, but your dog is the REAL Beauty in this thread! Wow.

[gordo]

He's a handful.  Generally if I say anything to him he assumes it means "lets trash this place".  He's getting big very quickly.

[gordo]

Got my ribbon cables made last night and hoping to at least get the loop board done today.

[Marshall Arts]

As a motivation: Re-labelled mine and use it mainly as a controller for my HX Stomp and Amp Channel Switching. Looks like this these days:

[gordo]

I like that.  I've been wondering how I was going to mount it and my thought was to put in a two layer approach like that.  Set it and forget it stuff on the bottom layer and then anything I need to interact with on the top.  I picked up a bunch of Hosa TRS to 90 degree angle mono cords so I should have connectivity covered without having to make cables.

We've got wireless in-ear monitors these days so I picked up a relatively inexpensive Line6 wireless system so I'll just need access to the Loop In, Loop Out, Amp Channel, and Output jacks.

[gordo]

That was the nudge I needed.  Spillover board is ready to be loaded in.  Relay board has all the coax wired up and hoping to get the jack boards connected tomorrow night.  If that happens I should be able to test the main loops and once verified can load in the spillover.

I think I mentioned that I'd picked up an old Line6 M13 for next to nothing and it will be great for testing Midi functions.  I use it when I'm playing an unknown backline because I'm used to the L6 modelers, it's easy to edit on the fly,  and its super flexible.  The distortions are mediocre but usable.  I even coaxed a believable slow Uni-Vibe out of it yesterday.  Because...well...you need a Uni-Vibe in church!

[gordo]

Finally some solid progress.  I had to abandon the coax cable.  It's thin enough that I was constantly having to chase snapped wires.  I got frustrated and tore it all out and used stranded hookup wire instead, although I twisted it to try to avoid parallel paths as much as possible.  If I get too much noise I'll revisit it but at this point I just want to get this thing working.

Loops 1-6 are working correctly as are the channel bank switches and the patch switches.  Tuner output is good.  I have the wrong jacks for the loop send/return but I have that bypassed for now.

Spillover goes in next and hopefully I can start using this beast.  Very excited.

[Marshall Arts]

Cool. I guess that hookup wire is totally fine, unless you use multiple high gain pedals. Let me know, please. Hope, that the spillover works for you and does not create switching noises... So excited to see yours come alive!

[nzCdog]

This is quite an undertaking!  Looking great so far, your pedalboard is gonna look pretty intimidating with all those switches

[gordo]

Testing this beast tonite.  I got the tails board in only to find out that there was no possible way I was going to close up this beast.  I've made every mistake imaginable on this build so I should have figured as much.

The nice part about having crimp connectors on everything that if it was all soldered it would have taken me forever to redo the wiring.  I had to bite the bullet and cut a considerable amount of length off of the loop button wring.  Honestly, within an hour or so I had 32 wires shortened, recrimped, and inserted back into the connectors.

The beast is closed up and I'm going to drag down an armful of pedals to plug in.  I've checked each channel individually, now it's time to load it up.

[gordo]

I'm officially calling this a win.  I haven't been able to check amp switching yet but it's working on my DMM.  The display window needs a bit of black paint to dress it up a bit (you can see the edges thru the plastic).  I'm not getting voltage or any noticeable clicking thru the trails loops.  I need to get this beast on a board with everything in place for a final verdict but so far it seems very quiet and rock solid.  I'm very stoked.