Topics

Gudday all.  A fellow was getting rid of some Apacpulco Gold pcbs of $2 on FB a little while ago, so I nabbed three with the purpose of selling the builds later.  I'm not a fan of the AG as it stands although it does what it does well, so I decided that it needed a gain control and dual channels because I can't leave well enough alone and that's what I do.

Super happy with the gain taper given by these "b" pots, seems smooth through the whole throw.  I thought I meant to get "a" but... anyway, there it is and it works great.  Both the volume and gain controls are just voltage dividers and in theory you could get the same result with your guitar's volume knob as far as the gain goes.

Wiring is always neat until I start messing around with the pots and whatnot.  The pcb has some double sided foam tape under it but there wasn't a good spot to put it down so I zip tied it to some other cabling.

Tayda drill, powdercoat, and UV print.

Gudday all, here's my X-Fuzz on vero.  I'm not a fuzz fan at all, but this thing rips.  Tayda drilled, powder coated, and UV printed.

Willy.

Gudday all, this is the latest of my builds that lack any sort of visual inspiration.  Using Chromosphere's Blues Crusher pcb, I've wired the "Crush" switch to a footswitch, and replaced the resistor in the gain section that it would switch with a pot.

Basically, it switches between the high and low gain dip switch settings on PoT.  It's not a crazy amount of dirt, just a bit more fuller in the saturation.  Tayda drill, powdercoat, and UV print.

Willy.

This is the PCBmania KoT pre-populated smd pcb with Tayda drill, powdercoat, and UV print.  It's not bad.

Gudday all, I have a stack of pedals coming up but this is the only one that has any colour.  Tayda drilled, powder coated, UV printed, Effectlayouts Cremepog PCB that I won in the BOTY comp a couple of years ago.  I mislabeled the Drive and Level, so I had to pull it apart and attach leads to the pots so they could be in the right place.

Anyway, it is what it is, I like the (stolen) artwork.  Tayda do a good job of lining up the drilling and artwork although I'm not sure they get the colour registration 100% onto the white base.

Willy.

Had this populated for ages, not a massive fan, decided to finally box it, might need more biasing even though everything is at 4.5v 

Anyway, Tayda UV print using my "new" art style taken from my massive lack of inspiration.  Very tight fit into the 125b.

I've got a Kentauride sitting here, and for whatever reason, it wasn't passing signal.  The TS-10 side was working fine but the Klon was no go. Once I realised that my dpdt footswitches were momentary, I switched that out and tried again. Still nothing. Everything looked ok, so I made an audio probe from some spare bits and off I went.

Using my laptop playing MP3s through my Focusrite 18i8's headphone output as a source, I found that it was passing signal fine but as soon as I plugged a guitar in..... nothing.

After some messing about, it turns out that I have to run the headphone amp pretty hard to get anywhere so the guitar just doesn't make enough volts to be heard.  Everything on this looks ok as far as bridges, solder, and cap orientation so I'm just going to have to go through and measure every part and see what I've done wrong. 

So, I got a cheap Squier project off a guy (great condition, he'd also put Gotoh locking tuners in it, so great value), and mentioned I was selling my PRS SE and Ibanez s670pb in order to get a Charvel So-Cal.   He messaged me later and asked if I'd do a trade:  Those two guitars for a Fender Strat Plus.

I ummed and ahhed about it for a while, and asked my friend if he wanted it.  We decided that if I didn't like it he'd buy it off me.  Anyway, it was in great nick and came with a hardcase so now I have an 89 Strat Plus to go with my Player Strat....

The original Hellboy had some high pitched whistle going on that I couldn't get rid of.  When you look back at the build, it's not surprising.

https://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=30180.msg291482

Anyway, I stripped and filled a few holes in that box with JB Weld, and redid it with just the Seventhheaven, moving both Structure (Brimstone) and Boost (Fire) to footswitches.  Kept the 9-18v chargepump.

Should have dusted it off before the photos.

There's a few sinkholes, but overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

Just a proof of concept.  Using a TPA3118, Lart's Simple Cabsim, and THCustom's Linedriver, and a 3 way splitter + separate buffer vero, we have a 60watt amp with passthrough, cabsimmed XLR output, and 60watts (sure...) into the cab of your choice...

I think this might be my first build for the year.  It's a TPA3116 pcb with a dual buffer sandwiching the volume pot in front of the board.  Just a quick concept build using a board I had lying around, hence the quality artwork and plastic jiffy box.

So, I've been tossing the idea of making a super small pedalboard amp for a while.  Plenty of people have already done, (Seymour Duncan, EHX, et al), but of course I have to fudge it my way.  I grabbed a couple of board off ebay, but this one seems to have worked REALLY well.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/373663516378

I'm powering it with a laptop power supply for about 27v, iirc.  Running my Mooer Preamp Live into from the 1/4 out has plenty of volume when the PCB is hooked up to a 4x12, lol - it kept up with drums with more to spare at praco today.  BUT, running into it from the out of a Effectlayout/Storyboardist JC-120 pcb is really, really quiet (and a little noisy).

So, I'm wondering what I need to do to fix that issue.  A boost (LPB1?) into a buffer before the amp maybe?

Quick vid as proof of concept....

Dunno if anyone has seen or used it yet, but Tayda are doing custom drilling now....

https://drill.taydakits.com/dashboard

After wanting a proper Fender since I started playing guitar in 1987, I finally decided that the Player Strats was the go.

I was really surprised how good it was - I'd read all the reviews and posts - but it exceeded my expectations.  I'd actually prepurchased a lot of the mods I had planned, but once I used it at praco, I was kinda on the fence about it.  The pickups are great, the tuners kept tune, but I still hated the grub screws sticking out of the bent steel saddles.  Apparently you can get shorter screws but the future is now, old man....  Bent steel.... bloody hell Fender, get out of your 1950's nostalgic boomer attitude.

ANYWAY.  I purchased this (pleked and set up by the shop before sending it out) and started modding...

Gotoh solid steel saddles, Fender locking tuners, Lace Sensors (Red Dually, Silver, Blue), Dimarzio lock strap...

The stupid thing is Fender released the Player Plus series about 2 days after I paid for this.  If they'd done those in straight black I'd be miffed as they have a better fitout imo (locking tuners as stock, 10-14inch compound neck), but also would have cost another $600.

This thing was good, but it's a beast now...

Decided to stop mucking around with cheap second hand guitars and get a quality workhorse. Sold a stack of pedals, pickups, a guitar, and here we are.... Fender Player Strat, plek'd and all....

I'll mod it of course, but it doesn't need that much.  I have a set of Lace Sensors (Red dually, silver, blue), I'll probably get some locking tuners, and I'm definitely going to replace the saddles with solid somethings as I hate the height screws in the bent steel digging into my hand.  The volume knobs on the normal strat is in a stupid place, so I'll do something with that too (I also have a pickguard with no control holes on the way from alibaba)...

But yeah, great guitars.

2020 was a relatively quiet year for me, and I've taken a break from building pedals to concentrate on my playing and building plastic models, but I got a fair bit done I guess.

In no particular order:

Storyboardist Exemplar.  I won this in last year's BOTY comp (or maybe even the year before), and had no inspiration for artwork.  It's transparent sticker stuff on a tayda powdercoat that I got in trade.  Blues Breaker clone.

Powerbrick:  Just a power brick that does any voltage over 12vACDC and converts to a 12v and 4x9v outlets with a passthrough for the original voltage.  Don't use it.  Another black primer over yellow box.

Nuka Cola: Storyboardist Barracana:  Another pcb I won in the BOTY comp, this time a Pantheon clone.  Datapol sticker over etching primer on yet another yellow box.

Wolverine:  Pedalpcb BE-OD.  Predrilled, prepainted, and UV printed by Tayda.

Godzilla:  Madbean's proto take on the BE-OD.  Another predrilled, prepainted, and UV print by Tayda

That's right guys.  It's a New 80's Tube PreAmp Day.

I saw an ADA MP1 on a trestle table at a garage (yard sale) sale for $20AUD, and I believe the whole street heard me yell "Oh my god" as I threw the cash at the bloke.

I took it to the local and tried it with a step down transformer and it powered up.  I purchased the step down.

I took it home and plugged it all in.  Finally worked out how to edit the preset and got some sound.  No other presets worked, so I did a preset reload and I had sound.  I believe the internal battery is flat as it returns to a "All zero" state in all the patches until the patch is edited or all the presets are reloaded, so I will replace that and we should be golden.

I don't know that it will be part of my rig, but I had to have it, working or not.  I will do a tone capture for my Mooer Preamp Live though...

Willy.

Don't normally post political stuff, but good luck with the election guys. 

So, I was planning a purchase of a Mooer Pro Live to pair with my MS-3, against a Neuron (no xlr) or Iridium (no app, no xlr, $$$).  It has midi, but only accepts PC commands for changing patches, whereas the other 2 both support CC# for changing parameters within a patch.  The Mooer won out, basically because it has a balanced XLR output and can replace Endgame on my board.

But the PC only thing was bugging me.  The MS-3 has assigns within a patch, but they can only send CC# - the MS-3 has to change a patch to send a PC message.  This didn't seem to be making the most of what the MS-3 can do.  So, I figured I could live with changing a patch on the MPL for higher or lower gain if I could convert the CC to PC.  Turns out there are devices that will do this, but you can also do it with Arduino... and found a thread here at DIYstompboxes:

https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=121902.0

I uploaded the program to a cheap chinese nano, converted the layout to vero, and drilled out a cheap plastic box.  Turns out I swapped pins 4 and 5 on both the midi in and out jacks, but once that was sorted it worked perfectly.  Gutshot and current board.

After putting an MS-3 on my board to take care of general effects (and the drives are pretty good too) , I just picked up a Mooer Preamp Live, much to the partner's annoyance.  This will take care of my drives now, and result in removing Endgame from this board (it will probably go on a grab and go tapdancing board with Lightspeed, Leviathan and Space Station)... 

Not a bad unit, enabling the power amp sim really makes it shine with headphones at least, so I suspect the same will be translated direct to PA.  Not sure it can do "edge of breakup" yet, but I haven't fully messed with it yet.