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After 40 minutes with the El Capistan it's already all packed up and ready to go back. To me, it didn't sound nearly as 'analog' in person as it did in clips. Maybe it doesn't go well with with my gear ...

Pretty disappointed. I'd been looking forward to getting my hands on one of these for a while. I read some people don't like the buffer, and I could see why. I felt like my tone was taken over by Invasion of the Digital Body Snatchers. There wasn't any liveliness left at all. The 'tails' feature made me mad because I couldn't make the sound go away fast enough.

I didn't like the reverb at all, either. I've been through 4 or 5 digital reverbs and this was about as bad as any I've ever tried.

A really harsh review, I know. Part of it may be the disappointment of a 'pull back the curtain' moment. To its credit, it is loaded with features and the modulation on the repeats is very decent. I think with a digital/solid-state rig it might be a keeper.

This PT2399 delay sounds better to me than any of the other ones out there. There are some gutshots on FSB, but not much progress beyond that.

I'm going to build one of these phantom-powered JFET buffer cables.
http://www.till.com/articles/PreampCable/index.html

He says in the article that, in the future, he's run it at a higher voltage to get more headroom for humbuckers/high-gain pickups. The voltage part is easy (I have a few road rage boards). If I regulate to 15V, what value resistors should I use?

I don't usually 'review' anything until I'm sure I've gotten past the honeymoon period, but - WOW. I got a Winfield Cyclone today and it's just plain amazing.

I'd never played one before and it goes way beyond my expectations. I searched up and down for a DC-30/Stangray style amp in the 18-watt range and this really nails it.

The cleans are huge and lush with amazing clarity. It doesn't get the really aggressive high gain sounds, but it has a Huge range of breakup. I can go from Jack Johnson to Keef with a flick of the pickup switch.

The gain situation is no problem, because this thing absolutely LOVES dirt pedals; even the ones I built and didn't get along with that were living in the closet have a whole new life.

I'm just blown away and had to give some love to Winnie.

OK, I know you're not supposed to do it and it can be dangerous, but I'm curious about using my plastic breadboard with tube circuits.

Does anyone have some experience using a typical breadboard with 200ish volts?

I've been thinking a lot about how to make one of these for a few days since I'm piling up the pedals and want to be able to use them better together.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the Carl Martin Octaswitch, it works almost like a 'programmable' loop selector. You can assign different loops to eight footswitches.

I think I have a rough idea together for how to do this.
If you look at this article by RG:
http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/multivol/multivol.htm

The part at the bottom shows how to get a steady signal from one and only one momentary switch at a time. It seems to me that if you were to rout each of those steady signals to one of eight DIP switches, you could send that signal on to a non-latching relay at each loop. Just set the dip switches to which loop you want each switch to put into the signal and you have a 'programmable' set of momentary stomps with true-bypass loops.

Seems like you could do it with a couple really cheap chips plus all the switches, jacks, DIPs and relays - and a lot of time.

Is this right or am I missing something?

Also, I've got a plan for how to do away with all the dip switches and replace them all with a single rotary encoder. The problems I have with that Idea is that right now it would require 29 chips and wouldn't 'remember' the settings after the power is turned off. 

This started out as a Sunking build (hence the name) and just kept evolving.

After days of tweaking and testing, it ended up being a SK running into a Rump Roast powered at 18 volts by a Road Rage. Whew!

When I first powered up the Sk, it was a little harsh for my tastes. I've never been a huge fan of diode-to-ground clipping. So I added some series resistance (3rd knob from left) and a 2n2 cap across the diodes.

The Sk controls are trimpots and I control the gain, tone and volume with knobs from the Rump Roast half. It took a long time to dial in the sweet spot on the Sk, but it really does what I want it to do and sounds fantastic from very light OD to the heavy stuff.

I also ended up using component choices based on a lot of the work I've seen in other build reports here, namely using TLE2072 opamps and LM313 diodes. I tested a lot of other configurations, but ended up settling on those anyway. Also, there was mention of possibly using a BZ385-1.2 in place of the (very expensive) LM313s. I tried it out and the difference was absolutely razor thin, so I fully recommend giving them a try.

This was also my first etched enclosure job and might be my last. My shoulder is still sore from all that sanding. I screwed up three transfers before I got a good image and had to sand em off to try and try again.

Anyway, here's the pics, including my typical rat's nest wiring style:

I've been searching for a while for a good-sounding, fairly simple design for a RIAA preamp and haven't been having much luck.

I've found a few schematics, but haven't had any luck finding a layout to etch.

Anybody know of one?

I know you're (Brian) slaving away over a dozen or more projects right now, but I was wondering if you'd thought anymore about the project you mentioned in April about a small circuit board for attaching the stomp switches to.

I've used something similar in the past that worked pretty well, but had some faults. It did, however, make the box wiring a ton simpler and faster.

I also think it would be great for beginners since, if silkscreened fabbed board, it gives them a clear way to get everything connected to the right spot. I'm glad to see the community growing and I think something like this would give an extra confidence boost to someone new to pedal building.

I posted a question about this on DIYstomp, but I thought I'd put it to you guys, too.

I'm planning a big project where I need to control 3-4 boards with the same 3 pots.

After a lot of research, I've discovered there's not going to be an easy answer to this, especially since I wan't to keep it analog.

The best idea I've come up with so far is to use each pot in a voltage line to control a series of circuits with octocouplers. Similar to what TGD did with his Rock 'n Control: http://tech.thetonegod.com/rockncontrol/rock.html

My thought is that if I daisychain a series of Rock n' Controls I can create a virtual 9-gang pot.

Does this have a shot of working or am I nuts?

Also, anyone have an opinion on these cheapie Octos?
http://www.futurlec.com/Photocells.shtml
http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G15396&variation=&aitem=1&mitem=1

Sure, I could easily make my own but ... 99 cents!

I've got a Cupcake board ready to be built and I'm wondering if anyone has a good way to add a treble boost/cut for it. I currently use a Janglebox, which has a three-way tone switch and I'd love to have an OS clone with variable treble control.

I'm rocking in my seat like a 7-year-old waiting for recess. Getting by with a Biyang for now.
This is my first post here, so I'd like to say to Brian that your stuff is far and away the best I've worked with. Really appreciate your attention to detail.