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Last spring a musician approached me and asked me if i could build him an octaver. Told him i never built one but was very willing to give it a try, and so i went with the Lowrider. He also asked if there was a way he could footswitch the octaves; i posted a topic in that regard.

So here'e the finished build i'm about to give him :

Left footswitch is for both the lower octaves, right switch is for the upper octave, and middle switch is bypass (duh!). I let you figure what are the LEDs here for.

The desing of the waterslide decal is all made by him. He named the pedal "Tranche Montagne" which could be translated as Mountain Slicer. He was inspired by some old folks legend here in Québec about a giant slicing mountains. So what has it to so with an octaver... simply because why not!
Another thing i have to give him all the credits is that he did all the drilling templates. The guy never ever made any DIY project, and all by himself he figured that he would need a Hammond 1590BB, and from there, positioned all the components for the tamplate. I was totally amazed.

For the MODs i had to do to add some footswitching, i went this way, which in terms of wiring the thing, looks something like this :


Finally, the the whole thing put into the box looks like this :


As you can see, it does fit in, but it's real tight. I must have spent an hour if not too with him, looking carefully at his template to make sure everything would fit in. Just look at the DC jack, i even had to fold its pins!

I'll meet the guy next weekend, in the meantime, i'll test it with my own gear to make sure it doesn't have any problems before i hand it to him.

This is my first build report on this forum!

Introducing my Slow Loris :




I redesigned the PCB myself with DipTrace with the components and potentiometers where i wanted them to be. Here's a pic to give you an idea what this looks like inside :


The schematics of the PCB is the same as the Slow Loris (except a slight modification on the DC filter). Like i said, i only redesigned the PCB my own way.
Being in an appartment, i can really krank up my amp to give it a real test, but from what i heard, the Si/LED switch as well as the CUT control really gives a lot of variations in the grain and the characteristics of the distortion.

Hi People
I have the project of building a Lowrider, and i would like to add a little mod on it : putting the upper octave on one footswitch, and both the lower octaves on another one.

I already have a few ideas on how i could make it, but my main concern is wich one of these ideas would be the least likely to generate big POPs while switching. I also have to consider that i'm working with an already made PCB, so i have to find a way to put any additional wire on it. Here are my ideas:

Alternative A: The simplest way would be to put a direct switch on the wires going to the mixing op-amp. However, i would have to use an X-acto to cut some of the traces and risk to damage the PCB, and there is also nowhere i could add wires, so this alternative is pretty much out.

Alternative B: I put my switches at the output of each of the potentiometer. All i would have to do is to add a wire on pin 2 of each pots, solder R46, R49, R55 on the footswitches, and put wires in the holes where those R were supposed to be on the PCB. Seems pretty much doable.

Alternative C: Probably the simplest one to do. I would use the switch to put the signal comming from the potentiometer to ground (or to VR in this case). All i would have to do is to solder wires on the pins 1 and 2 of each pots without messing with any component on the PCB.

Since my main concern is that i don't want any POP while switching, which one of B or C would you suggest me (assuming that i completely discard A)?