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Almighty forum, I need your help! I just built a "Naughty Fish", but is not working. The volume control works, but all other switches and pots have only minor impact on the sound (if any). It does not "crackle", when connecting the battery while the effect is connected to the amp, so maybe something with the power supply? The battery is new, though...

Below, you can find some pictures of the project, things that come to my mind are (just) the following, maybe somebody else spots the mistake(s) or can guide me through the debugging process (I am not that experienced with this yet...):

• C11 obviously is not the size I expected. Anyway, the values should be ok.
• Hi/Lo Switch: I did not have one to solder to the board, so I used wires up to now
• HP/LP/BP Switch: It is the wrong type, (there is two types, see image below) - the one I have is type 1, the project requires type 2. That's why I wired it up "over cross". Anyway, in the left or right position, this should be irrelevant.
• The LED is a orange 5 mm (instead of a 3 mm one). I think, this should not matter.

I am currently trying to get the components for a naughty fish, some questions:

The Trimpot should be a Bourns 3362P, right? In the document, it says 2262p (which - I think - does not exist...).
I assume 0.5 W should be enough power rating for the Zener, right?

Thanks for your answers!

I am thinking of building a "naughty fish"... been looking at some of the concepts and reviews out there (BYOC DOD440 clone, GGG Neutron, Meatsphere etc.). From what I read, the madbean Nautilus gets the best review (e.g. in terms of intensity of the effect), and I hope, that this is true for the "naughty fish" as well (Feedback welcome!).

Anyway: I would like to add an expression pedal (i.e. a modified wah enclosure) to the naughty fish. The idea would be to have a toggle switch to have the brightness of the VACT-LED's either be controlled by the envelope or by the external pedal. Wah's usually come with a 100k ICAR pot, it should be easy to use that for the control of the brightness of the LED's.

Do you think, that that would work?

An alternative would be to by a EH Q-Balls Riddle off the shelf, but I think, that would be too easy, less fun and not so good sounding...

Feedback very welcome!

I built this tiny monster based on the Uproar pedal (based on the Suhr Riot). The red LEDs are the clipping LEDs, which usually reside on the PCB; they glow with the dynamics of the input signal. I wanted a dirty looking surface, so the stained looks is intended (basically, I painted the whole thing and partly sanded the top of the case).

Hi,

I built a double pedal with a madbean fatpants booster and an egodriver overdrive some time ago. The egodriver is powered by the 18V outlet of the fatpants. All worked great for a couple of week, just recently, I recognized an unpleasent clipping. This vanishes, as notes fade out/are played more silent. I am using a cheap DC-9V wall wart, which might produce maybe 10 Volts.

Question: Where would you start debugging? Any ideas? Exchange the IC's? I still have a JRC4558 at home, should I try that in the egodriver? Any comments welcome!

Best,
Matthias

Inspired by these two projects:

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=6199.0
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=fb36c1a053fb03dec8212740a9820913&topic=5824.0

,I built one for myself. I changed only two things:

- Order switch to be able to select the order of the booster (Fat Pants) and the drive (Ego Driver)
- Be able to run it with a battery

I needed those changes, as I will use it in different settings:

I play with a good Marshall amp (silver jubilee edition), which has a very good drive channel (and a good crunch sound as well). I will need "The Ant" mainly as a booster for solos (and sometimes for a bit more drive); I would use the setup "Ego Driver into Booster" for that szenario.

Sometimes I just play over a small tube amp with one clean channel, "The Ant" will do the rest (crunch sound with just the Ego Driver, Lead Sound with Booster in front of the Ego Driver).

As I am located in Germany, I bought all parts at "Das Musikding". I have a shopping list for that store available, just send me a message, if you want me to share it with you (reduces the time to search through the store).

All I can say is, that this thing sounds fantastic in ANY setting. Dynamic, punchy, biting (if you want it), lush (if you want it), warm,... I did not bother to have the LED-clipping option on the ego driver (I tried it, but didn't think it made that much of a difference). The boards I bought from madbean are top notch.

Here are some impressions from my project:

Hi there,

I have build the ego driver according to specifications with the following parts:
OA1154 for D1
500 kA Pot for Gain
100 kA Pot for Vol

For testing, I did not use a footswitch yet, but simply hooked it up with a battery (so, no bypass at this point in time, which should not be a problem).

Problem: Vol, Gain and Tone Controls are working, but the signal is way to low (basically like the input signal, no overdrive at all). The diode clipping switch does not change anything in sound. In fact, when I remove the Diode D1, nothing changes either...

What I tried:
- As said above, removed Diode D1 - no change
- Changed orientation of D1 - no change (of course, given, that it seems to be irrelevant, whether the diode is in there)
- Removed D4 and D3, no change.
- Checked soldering (see images - I removed the pots again for a cleaner view on the soldering side of the PCB)
- Checked IC (TL082, took it out and put it in again, sound stopped when I took it out)
- Checked Orientation of Elkos and transistors, LEDs and Diodes
- I use metal film resistors and Wima Capacitors for the rest of the build

Slowly running out of ideas - would be great, if somebody could send some help (and motivation ;-)).