Finally boxed up, Part 2: Mad Beans Collosalus, with a trick.......

[DutchMF]

As with the Shoot the Moon tremolo of my previous post, this was long overdue. For some reason I enjoy populating boards much more then boxing them up, but to use a board....... well, you get the idea!

Collosalus in a 1590BB:


With top-mounted jacks, how the hell.....


Well, this is how:

By rotating the board 180 degrees around the pots, components facing the other way around than we're used to, the board moved toward the 3PDT, thus freeing up the space below the pots to squeeze in the jacks (mounted as low as possible in the enclosure). It took some planning to figure out if this could actually be done, but as you can see, there's just enough space for the switch and LED. Made wiring a bitch, by the way.........

Got some plans to build a few more of these 'upside down' pedals, as I'm redesigning my pedalboard and need the top-mounted jacks to get the maximum amount of pedals on there. It's gonna be a long project though.....

Paul

[madbean]

Very clever. Generally, I'm in favor of keeping pots underneath the PCB because it provides support (if you use 3M foam tape like me) but there's a lot to be said for top mounted jacks, too. Even a small piece of foam under the PCB set up like this would probably go a long way to prevent the solder joints on the pots from weakening with abuse. Great work on fitting all that in there!

[DutchMF]

Thanks, Brian! It's probably a very good idea to put some foam under (and on top of) the board, as there is indeed a lot more stress on the solder joints when you do them like this.

Paul

[nzCdog]

That looks so damn fine!  Nice work Paul