Messages

    finally opened it up.  not good.  I think this board has more than two layers.  Tracing is going to be a nightmare.  Does anyone have any tips for tracing boards like this?

Bought one on ebay - arrived today.  Its awesome.  Haven't opened it up yet.

i've had a couple of sessions trying to make some progress on this.  really difficult without access to the actual pedal as there is a lot of guesswork trying to work out where the traces go and I'm not skilled enough to be making reliable educated guesses.  In any case there are many component values that cannot be determined from the pics alone.

Need help from someone who owns one.  Might try over at FSB.  Is it OK to post a link there to this thread?

where is the collosalus BOM?  cannot find it here in the forum or on the projects page.

Awesome photos Sigesmundninja!!

I've never done a trace before but happy to give it a crack and happy to receive some help

Sigesmundninja, I am thinking that we may need a couple of lot more pieces of info from you.

Things I can think of:
Cap values 70
Hidden/obscured resistor values about 10
Diodes 5
One transistor
Trimpot values 3

Offboard components

Pots
Speed 100kA
Manual 50kA
Depth ??
Env 50kA
Regen 100kB
Mix - dual pot???
TZF 100kA

Resistor from mix pot lug to ground bus wire - is there only one?

Component from Speed pot lug to ground at Manual pot.

Two resistors on the back of the board 470K

Wiring arrangements for the Modulution and Audio connector pins.

Modulation pins
White - to Common1 of DPDT TZF polarity footswitch
Brown  - Both?? wipers of MixA and MixB
Green1
Yellow1
Green2
Yellow2
Yellow3
Yellow4
Blue - Wiper of Speed pot
Red - hot lug of Manual pot
Green3
Yellow5


Audio pins
Blue1
Green1 - Hot lug of Regen pot
Blue2
Blue3
Orange1
Red - not clear whether to common or one of the throws to polarity footswitch
Blue4
Orange2
Blue5
Orange3

I have annotated one of your pics Sigesmundninja link here

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/120/annotatedcomponentsidep.jpg

Mr resistor code reading is whitebelt - is anyone up for validating a few resistor codes?

Just spent 5 hours on this and haven't even started any pcb tracing yet

and how do you work out traces under components?

Dls website says this thing has digital content which if programming based would put way beyond my kung fu abilities.  Does anyone know if its got programming content and or if anyone has successfully re'd a programmed circuit?

Neo ventilator seems to have leaped over rotosim based on recent web reviews but even more expensive!!

So this has progressed more quickly than I anticipated.

Thanks Sigesmundninja for the photos.

Quote from the foxrox website:

'Power - Paradox requires 9 Volts, AC (9VAC) in order to operate. A power adaptor is included with each unit. Don't confuse 9VAC with 9VDC, which is what you get from a 9V battery. That's what most other effects use, but not TZF. TZF's internal circuitry runs at 36Volts DC, split into plus and minus 18 Volts."

Does this help identify the function of the unidentified chip under the heatsink?  With 9VAC input and supply ultimately delivering + and - 18V rails a voltage multiplier/inverter would be required.

Is this what the heatsink would be for?

What is the T220 package?  DC regulator to supply the charge pump?

there are a couple of weird looking components.  the two orange rectangular shape items (five pins I think)  audio relays?

Very excited in hoping that this ends up in a full on tracing thread.

Any chance of some photos with greater resolution Sigesmundninja?

Reckon this one meets a couple of criteria for a project:

Not in production (website says its having a rest).

Not available for reasonable dollars on the second hand market either.  When and if available that is.

Customizable level of complexity - eg I think switching on this is electronic, which I'm assuming could be omitted to simplify the project.

Hopefully no unobtainable mojo parts - wishfull thinking here, I don't know.

Many seem to hold this pedal out to be best in its class as far as flangers go as well as having some unique features.


Negs would be:

It may be difficult to find one available for RE.

Its a complex build (could be a positive depending on your view).  I would treat it as a challenge.

Limited market for boards??

The guy is a small scale boutique builder and I know some may have a problem with supposedly cutting his lunch.  That said, its been out of production for a while now with no indications as to when its coming back.

Overall, at the price advertised on the website its a pretty good value product IMHO given its a complex build and reported production quality, the design and uniqueness of what it does and its robustness - its just not in production and said to be so for economic reasons.  IMHO this is the clincher for what makes it a viable diy project - too costly to produce as a commercial product (in its current form) but so rare/unique/unavailable and challenging as a project that a diyer who is not going to count the cost of their labour will happily build one.  Maybe not a large production run madbean board but a worthwhile one nonetheless.

This is great. Probably a bit late but I would be voting for the Aquaboy if it was a candidate for next batch of releases.  I have a MN3005 on standby for it already.  Collosalous second.

the KingSLayer, as long as it's what I think it is (hope it is)

What do people think the Kingslayer is?

Otherwise RumpRoast - minitube and Mudbunny

I've been playing with TZF... personally I feel the Electric Mistress filtering/clock doesn't cut it that well unless you play overdriven/distorted constantly, not saying it doesn't work but it just doesn't do it for me.

interesting...  I do remember reading somewhere that mxr117 was a good candidate for tzf.  What do you prefer Scruffie?

Yeah its tight there but its not touching, clearance is less than 1mm.  I couldn't place the output jack the same way as it was making contact. ended up having to check with a continuity meter whether the output jack would make contact with the lid when a jack was inserted - lucky it didn't but can't see how much the clearance is.  I spent more time getting it boxed up than I did putting components on the board!  If it starts giving me issues I rehouse into a bigger box, which I'll have to do anyway if I do TZF.

I find it really frustrating when builds don't work first up but debugging forces me to think about how the circuit actually works - up til then its a bit more 'painting by numbers'.  So I find it more satisfying when I get it to work - just as long as I haven't thrown it at the wall first.

Picture attached.  Note the flying C20 cap to avoid the input jack - I found this a really tight build in my 125B (clone I think which may have been a bit smaller).

Nothing inspiring on the front I'm afraid my enclosure decoration/artistic skills are nonexistent.

Have been thinking about some TZF experimentation - would have to rehouse it.

OT but I see the Aquaboy (not the Deluxe version) is no longer marked as 'discontinued' but instead has a forecast release date of 2012??

Its amazing what a good nights sleep will fix.

Followed madbean's advice and checked all components again, one by one against the schematic and the parts list.  I had 100n for C3 instead of 1n.  Reckon I checked the signal caps three times already but just missed it.

All good now and very happy.  All boxed up had a quick play and onto the next build have spent the last couple of hours putting components in some dirtbag boards.

Missed the first aquaboy so looking forward to the new one.

Hi all,

First post here.  Built a few madbean pedals, sunking, retrograde, in the middle of a couple of dirtbag builds (one mn3005 one v3205).

I've just built a current lover and its flanging.  I think I've biased it OK.   But its really dark sounding compared to the bypassed tone.  Had a quick search here and at diysb and fsb and haven't been able to find much on this.

Checked the components and didn't find anything (not saying I haven't missed something). 

Not sure where to go from here.

Any help appreciated.