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Just had to show off my fresh-from-the-postman Clusterfuzz JR in, I beleive limited edition, doo-doo brown sparkle.
Its really cool!

Thanks so much Brian for this most wonderful of prizes

Hi

Drawing your guys attention to my latest post on the Build of the Year thread, Not to humble brag, I just want to make sure eligible parties see this

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=27400.msg266658#msg266658

My only wish (not quite stipulation) is that if you do win, that the prize attempts to stay in the Madbean fraternity, and preferably not sold, rather PIF'd or traded.

Best

Ian (Lace)

Hi

Any veros out there for a simple noise gate (to get rid of hiss on a metal/rock distortion pedal)?

Thanks

Ian

Hi

anyone got any suggestions for ready to build PCBs for something like a Rectifier (triple wreck?) with an integrated noise gate?

At a push I dont mind two PCBs but an all in one solution would be grand.

Recommend-me-do!

GO!

Not sure if this is really that cool to post here, but I have a couple of discussion points on this awesome pedal
So yea I made a clone of the Clusterfuzz from Function(fx)



Firstly, its really cool. Everyone that likes fuzz should probably buy one, or at least build one to appreciate it.
Lots of sounds from overdrive to Lovetone Big Cheese - its the closest I have heard to copping that classic sound.
I adapted the vero layout from a popular vero website, but expanded it to fit across a standard vero board and make it less of a squash.
Next up I decided to use vero mounted pots, but rather complicated in a sandwich fashion. Quite a few jumpers and a bit of head scratching, with a liberal use of DIYLC to design the board. Uses an onboard rotary switch too.



Worth noting early that I decided to ditch the no clip option having prototyped the vero to make sure it worked right and not really loving that option, plus something had to give because the mini rotary only has 4 options per pole.



As you can see in the pictures the sandwich is acheived with headers, and the pins are actually the inserts from a row of headers but removed from the plastic.
I had to drill the vero to accomodate them more snugly, and individually solder each one. Honestly the amount of time I have spent on this.







Because this was to be my coolest vero build ever I decided before boxing that rather than labels I would use the other pole of the rotary to add traffic light LEDs for the clipping modes.



Something I noticed from my initial testing of the verification vero was that the pedal is really bright. Maybe its my amp or maybe the vero/schematic that was traced is wrong. I think it doesnt sound this bright on the youtube videos I watched...but anyway...it is what it is for now.

So I did some experimenting with the cap to ground after the tone control. This lead me to paralleling a 6.8nf and a 10nf for a few combinations to darken the tone a bit, ended up with this as an internal dipswitch. Those extra few rows of vero came in handy!  At the extreme of clockwise, the same sounds can be acheived, but the roll off counter clockwise is more extreme. It would be cool to hear some thoughts on this, particularly if the 2.2nF indicated from the trace is correct, and how the value was arrived at. Other ways to add bass back would be interesting to discuss, too.




Im quite proud that my vero chops have stood the test of time; its not a medium I have indulged in much since the first year or so of building pedals maybe 7 years ago now. We are very spoilt by the PCBs available today.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the read, and to Bean, Pickdropper and CJ et al the Clusterfuzz is really great.

Ciao,

Ian

post script.

I think if I were to do this again I would have planned to do the LED indication from the get go, and then wire it instead of an indicator LED for the footswitch; would have been cooler in hindsight. Also, I reckon I could have somehow managed to "vero-board mount" the switch for the filter if I had been smart.

Thinking about the bass response, Im wondering now about playing further with the filter switch capacitors. Do the designers have any thoughts on the potential effectiveness of that?

Hi

Can the 2015 layout of the current lover be run on 15v from a charge pump, like the old version?
Im 99% sure the answer is yes, but wanted to check here first.

cheers

Ian

New cheap TC pedals

http://www.tcelectronic.com/guitar/pedals/

Notable the dimension C clone is back, previously discontinued by Behringer but with mono output and true bypass

http://www.tcelectronic.com/3rd-dimension-chorus/

The past week or so spent rehousing these cheap  clones of veritable classics from the Boss back catalogue
VB-2 Vibrato (Behringer UV-300) and FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz (Behringer SF-300)


Both have been made true bypass, and the Fuzz has removed the boost mode, as I wouldnt ever use it.
Vibrato retains the rise function but loses the momentary activation mode, again by choice.

The big issue with these is removing the existing potentiometers and replacing them. I used 9mm pots for the Fuzz, with trimmer style for the Treble and Bass.
For the vibrato, I used 16mm with wired standoffs. The extra switch parallels C15 (47nF) with a 330nF cap to give a slower range to the LFO for real warped vinyl sounds.

Honestly it was a hell of a lot of work, but quite satisfying.
For the Vibrato, I hardwired it into the unlatch mode, but used a throw of the footswitch to replace the tactile switch, and retained the original illumination method from the PCB mount LED. For the Fuzz it was a case of finding the flip flop transistor with a bit of trial and error and jumpering it such that the pedal is always on.

If any one is attempting and needs details, just ask.

Anyone got any pros and cons for a cheap bit of fun like this?

https://www.gearbest.com/kits/pp_367832.html?currency=GBP&vip=2094323&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIot2RpKjn1gIVqQrTCh2A4AYSEAQYASABEgLMxvD_BwE

Would it be useful for things like the BlueShift Chorus and Deluxe memory man calibration?

Hi

Pretty sure I read the build docs multiple times and didnt miss this
Is there a way to adjust the output volume? I feel like the chorus boosts the volume a noticeable amount.

Thanks

Ian

Hi guys

Ive not been active at all, cant remember when my last build report was. However, I had to come out of temporary retirement to build the Aion Blueshift DC-2 clone.
First thing to say, is this beast is complex and has many many parts. I ordered using the Mouser spreadsheet for convenience, and the BBDs clocks companders from Banzai in Germany.

It took about 3 hours to populate the boards to about 99% done


From there it was time for a break before returning to drilling the case and test fitting. The drill template worked amazingly.

Note that I soldered the switches on after the test fit, despite what the first image Ive posted might indicate. I recommend others do the same.

My main concern with the build was wiring it. I chose the standard wiring scheme. As others have noted, ignore the diagram and use the table to match everything up correctly. Its worth doing all the grounds first then working "up" from the PCB, and finally the connections to the 3PDT



I built this in a cheap raw 125b that I had left over. I felt after all this time that I might not get away with a box before rock, so didnt want to waste a fancy powdercoat. Luckily for me, it worked first time. I biased by ear as I dont own a scope ( ). I did this by strumming hard and eradicating any clipping.




Final word. This sounds godlike. If you appreciate chorus, you need to build this, and run it in stereo. Its stunning.

Hi

Anyone can recommend me a bass compressor project, one that gives some classic slap bass tones.
Its not for me and I dont play bass, so I cant really test it either, so need a solid vouch

cheers

Ian

Hi guys

Not been building anything for months but couldnt resist getting in on the Total Recall
Here is my build, with Panasonic MN3005s, JRC4558s except the LFO (TL072), and wired true bypass. I also added a 1M trim for the input impendance mod.
I did have it wired with the vintage wiring but two things - I could hear the delay VERY quiet in the bypass tone, and I didnt like having the preamp always on.

It sounds very close to my 4xMN3008 big box reissue by EHX
Biasing was a bit of a pain, and I ended up doing it by ear/feel til it was the same as my big box, which I love the sound of. Therefore I dont know if its as "aligned" as Howard Davis would like but it sounds great to me.

Enjoy pics. Thanks 'Bean.









yes its in a tall box 

Hi

Here is my build of the AlanP "Nameless" Lovetone ? Flange with no name "lite"
It sounds really very good.

I decided to include the stereo out option, and also modded the build for the Lovetone "light jack" CV in control - which is in essence a parralel resistance on the manual pot.
I tested this with my Lovetone light jack tools and it functions correctly. Please see image for this mod.

I had to shield a lot of the wiring to reduce ticking. For now its sounding really good and the only ticking is in bypass, in square LFO for Space, with the stereo switch "down". So not a big loss, considering you can always leave that switch in the up position and not compromise anyhing else. That is actually a phase switch, not a stereo switch per-se, and only affects the bypass signal anyway, so it was a bit of a misnomer. The effect isnt true stereo, what it does is split the time and space fucntions to two independant outputs. So, meh.

Of course as this is the shrunken "lite" version there are not FX loop jacks and associated footswitch but again this isnt a bit loss.

This fired up first time and sounds extremely close to my real deal. Kudos Alan. Thankyou.

HI

Does anyone know of a self contained treadle/expression based pedal that instead of a wah sound gives a filter (low pass / band pass) sweep? I appreciate this can be done with MANY pedals using add-on expression pedals (classic example would be the moogerfooger low pass) however this requires lots of space.

The same is true of a number of other options.

The other consideration, outside a commercial offering, is to build a "static filter" into an expression pedal "shell" and solve the problem that way.

Any advice would be excellent.

Thanks

Built this for a guy over at ILF
Board works first time, unlike the vero which never worked satisfactorily.

Found that you should really shield the signal path as its very noisy and had some bleed, but then again I didnt board mount anything, as I was re-using my box that I had laid out for the vero so had to wire everything to accomodate it.

It sounds pretty rad

A bro at ILF switched me on to this - http://parasitstudio.weebly.com/original-designs.html

I was vaguely aware of the tremolo pedal he designed from another forum, but hadnt checked the other ones out.
My favourite is the Arcadiator, which I intend to build next

The reason he linked me to it is cos he wanted me to build him a two in one, of the Raygun PLL and the Flawed logic fuzz
The result is this (nicer red box in person, my camera suffers with non-natural light...)
I dont really like to etch, so I plumped for the vero*:



There is an order flipper (pointed down its left to right, pointed up its right to left...I think I remembered that right!) which allows very different response and sounds from the interaction of both in series.
The Mod switch on the Flawed logic brings an oscillator into play. The Rotary on the Raygun side starts off at "Stun" which is "just a fuzz", and from there decends rapidly into PLL pitch-divey madness.
In short, its amazing.



Enjoy pics. Cheers for the inspiration, Kent. I hope you like your pedal.

Ian

(*ps incase anyone needs to make one of the Flawed Logics, here is my adapted vero, note the issues with the TL062 have been fixed)

Hi

Populated the board yesterday, and got it boxed up today, so officially completed on the 1st January 2015
Its the Dirtbaby- I was lucky that someone gave up their PCB for me to try having missed the limited run

I think my PT chip isnt the cleanest; I have about 20 from Tayda that all suck a bit / motorboard on long(er) delay times.
I will try and get a legit clean sounding PT before I do any side by sides, but suffice to say it does cop the vibe of a real Memory Man
The modulation is particularly nice, and the Rate control is a welcome addition.
The only mods I made were to have a 100kb delay control, with a 220k resistor in parallel (for about 70k) allowing for longer delay times.
Oh, actually, I also used polarised caps for the 2.2uF; hopefully I got them the right way round - I just compared to the DEM schematic and went from there. The one connected to the depth control is definitely right anyway
I chose to wire it for true bypass.

For the graphics I just tried to ape the real deal again. Also, this time I went for a landscape orientation with top mounted jacks. Previously with the Dirtbags I had built them portrait; thanks for the inspiration from some other Dbag builds for that.

Here are the money shots:







now with video

HI

Can someone run me down a few reasons why an LFO might not "work"?
Im talking about a Op amp based LFO. assuming the power, bias, and GND are all connected, what might cause it to not work?

For detail, I am building another Lovetone Flange and the LFO isnt spinning
ive tested all traces for continuity, checked parts values, changed the Op amp chip, tried different op amp types etc.

Ian