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[I would %100 love some recommendations on how to improve this section.]

Continuation of the Pocket DI
You can click on the pictures for the full sized images, or check out the album here: https://imgur.com/a/JS633cu


Not being satisfied at how messy the first one was, and since I have never actually designed a board before, I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone.

So I tried to make a board for it. Modified a build, added a input pot, led indicator, etc.






I know that I didn't use the software correctly, but In the end I did get a working board:







I was very proud of myself for the cutouts for the caps, haha.
Anyway, as it stands, it all fits in the box...






But because I did the resistors etc. standing up instead of flat, the Jacks cant fit into the box. I just wasn't thinking 4th dimensionally.






So I re-did it, thats for a later report.

But what do I do with the boards I already made?

I put one in my Bass.


I know some people get a little upset about people modifying instruments, but this Bass is nothing special AFAIK, and I also got it for free.
Not that I want to ruin it, but the stakes aren't super high.

I started by popping it open to look and see where the best place to add the jack was. I decided to put it right in the middle of the big flat part, since It would structurally modify the body a bit. The jacks are pretty big. I just used awl to put a little divot in the exterior where i wanted to drill:





Next I drilled it out, and used an exacto knife to trace the border of the jack. I needed to recess it in a little bit since it is flat, and it will be on the curve of the bass:





Then I started to  remove material. Unfortunately i misjudged how deep the shell went and broke a chunk off. Probably the worst mistake I made.
I used a little bit of wax pencil to at least blend the color so you wouldn't see the wood:






Next I drilled a new hole for the tone knob, as the DI would sit where the old one was. The cavity isn't big enough for me to make them symmetrically spaced, so i put it as far down as I easily could. I don't have any pictures of me doing this, but this is the end result:






With that finished, I dropped the jack in, and screwed it in to the body.
It is a lot taller than the other jack in there so I made it easy on myself and didn't try to match the height.
Didn't want to perform that much surgery, Plus I didn't have the biggest tool selection:






I went with XLR for one reason. I wanted to power it with phantom instead of adding a DC jack and an additional cable.
This is what I have for removing phantom power so it does not go to the output of the DI and for dropping it to 12V to use with the DI.
I would %100 love some recommendations on how to improve this section.






SO, here it is, in its Messy wiring prototype-y form:






I did have to drop the Regulator and the LED as that was pulling too much for the phantom/zeners to run.






So how is it working? Its working OK. I think I need to keep tinkering with the phantom, as the waveform isn't symmetrical right now, and It still clips easy, Something I was not getting when running off 9V wall power. (it should be 9-18v tolerant) I may try 9v zeners instead of 12v. The input of the DI is in parallel with the output of the bass, so it can still be used as normal.






[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/gear-gear-950185522/di-in-bass[/soundcloud]






You can check out a video of me going into designing board cold here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgrzZoU64Kc

More of a project for "Fun" than for any real use.
Spoiler, It was certainly "Fun."
I think I rigged it so you can click on the images to see the full sized versions.
Or check out the Imgur Album of highlights,
or the Google Drive of all the pictures.
^{Including the failed first attempt that I had to rip the guts out of}



Pocket DI. Theme sort of inspired by the Gameboy Pocket.
I used a Laser and Marking compound to mark the surface. I wish i had done that First, since the head of the laser did not clear the pot when at the correct focal legnth.
Had to keep rotating and realigning to do all the marks on the face.
I really like the look that the unfinished aluminum and the halftone lines give on the back, I wish it was darker, and all over.


It has both an In, and an Out, and a Balanced TRS out. The output is tied to the Tip of the TRS and I haven't been able to test to see if theirs any issue with that yet.
Like I mentioned this was more of a "Fun" project than anything. Hell, I'm actually a Tuba player, not a bass guitar player, I'm still learning to play.





And of course, the Interior.
Fair warning, its a mess. All done point to point, and Its sloppy.
It looks like the output and the Balanced Out would touch, but they actually have a lot of clearance, Just a bad camera angle



At one point it was in there all nice and "neat," Siliconed in, and of course I forgot to tie pin 4 of the IC to ground. You know, the Pin thats deepest into the case:

There are also 5 Caps hidden in there, as well as a 5mm LED.


I have no doubt that this is one good fall away from Breaking, but that's life. I considered flooding the interior with silicone(minus clearance for the inserts), but I don't think I will.

The input is pretty sensitive, It does clip fairly easily, I think i need to tweak it a bit.
The plans i was following do say that it can take up to 18V (I'm running it on 9) and that it has more headroom that way, so I may tool with that too.
Which is great since the LED and the CLR were the first things to go in, haha.
You can hear some of the distortion early in this track:
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/gear-gear-950185522/pocket-di?si=ca73ea512a6b43c3be82e3f1a89dcaf6[/soundcloud]

Another one I made in the last month or so:



First time I have done a kit instead of sourcing it all myself. I liked not having to fuss around with mouser for hours, but I didn't like the quality of some of the parts. (Do people share mouser BOM's for projects?)
If you look at some of the other pictures you will see I replaced the push buttons. Also they drilled the led hole off center? haha.

Getting the little screen up and running was great, no sweat. May be something cool to pop into another project if i think it warrants it? Although it does say the name of the pedal when it boots.
I thought it would be better to put it on a header instead of direct soldering it, but the header likes to scoot out if you bang the box around a bit. Thankfully you can give the wires going under a little tug and it reseats.

I think I need to work on making the insides cleaner, amongst other things.
I stripped the plastic dc jack, ended up with some of the IC's in backwards. Figured that out while troubleshooting. Replaced them just in case.
Learning that the Etching compound for the laser needs to be applied pretty thin, otherwise you end up with the spottyness you see in that last image. But it gets the point across.
I also missed the "Mode" label above the rate pot. Didnt realize for a few days so that was a pain to get back in position in the laser. I forgot to take new pictures after I added that.

As with last time, I streamed the soldering of the board live:
Part 01: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-YE3xN_rL8
Part 02: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZzlua2S4ak

Quick post about the AutoWah.
I'm still learning how to play bass so I ended up sending this to a friend to use.



Heres a bit of me fooling with it. Ignore the video. I really do like how it sounds:

I ended up messing up the Laser Etching, Especially on the inside, but you can see what I wanted to do and how cool it would have looked, haha.

Not sure how this first picture ended up looking green and gold but its nice.





I did record myself building this which you can watch here if you are interested:
Part I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAoh-oWn1zg
Part II: https://youtu.be/ELNEthuAjfg?t=3316