Risolle (Lovetone Meatball)

[Muadzin]

Finally gotten around to build AlanP's Risolle.



To keep to the smallest possible enclosure with topmounts only I chose a Hammond 1590Q enclosure. Unfortunately that meant I had to eliminate two of the six jacks. I decided to eliminate the FX send/return jacks as I figured this would be a pedal that I could squeeze in on my pedal board, but not the additional pedals for said pedal loop.



When I built this pedal I made a critical mistake. Several probably, but this is a huge one. When I fired it up the first time the envelope LED didn't do squat and the pedal wasn't doing much filtering either. I was getting signal but it was mostly clean sound with a tiny teensy bit of filtering. The envelope LED was apparently in wrong, it would seem the square pad was not the positive as I assumed it was from a million other builds. Not so smart designwise, but it happens quite a lot and a mistake that was easily fixed. Still the envelope LED wasn't working though. As did the LED's aimed at the LDR's. Something was seriously wrong here. Checking with a DMM I noticed that something was causing the LED's to ground. Turned out it was the jack for the intensity expression pedal. Apparently one absofragginlutely had to use an isolated jack instead of a normal jack. Otherwise ground loop city! I eliminated the contact the jack made with the enclosure and I finally measured current on the positive sides of the LED's. But still no light, nor envelope filtering going on.

More measuring and tracing the circuit followed with the DMM. Turned out that what I thought was the updown rotary switch (to which the LED's were supposed to be linked) was actually the range switch and vice versa. And now we get to the really embarrassing part. I am in the habit of when I'm putting pots and switches into an enclosure to follow the names on the artwork. I rarely work with PCB mounted pots and switches, usually preferring my own layouts. So when the time comes to boxing a pedal my modus operandi is to check a pot's value on the BOM, see what its function is on the BOM and place it on the corresponding hole by the label I created on the artwork. It works fine with wired pots. Not this time though.

Turned out the BOM I had used to create my artwork layout was an old one, one that AlanP had made for the prototype layout and one that had been significantly changed for the 1.4 version I was building. Like 5 pots had completely changed places. That's what you get for keeping different files on different machines. My files folder on my desktop had the PDF for the 1.4 version, which I had used to populate the board, but my laptop, which I had used as a basis for the artwork, had the outdated PDF.

D'OH!!!!

I had to desolder 5 of the 6 pots (only the blend was still in the same place), resolder them in the correct place and suddenly the LED's came on and there was envelope filtering going on! Sweet!  On the downside, with the exception of the blend pot and the moog switch probably none of my labeling matches the correct pot anymore. 

Lesson learned: when using PCB mounted pots, always check that you're soldering the correct pots in the right places! Check and check again! And always check that you're using the latest BOM! Here endeth my embarrassing lesson.

[alanp]

That sounds like an adventure and a half! I know the pots moved between 1.4 and the first version, should have made it a bit more obvious :/ it did make the PCB a lot easier to lay out, though.

Virtual beer for doing all the troubleshooting yourself! (Real beer if you ever turn up on my doorstep )

So, is the pedal worth all that grief?

[selfdestroyer]

What a beast! Great job.

Cody

[jimilee]

I gotta build mine, nicely executed

[juansolo]

We all have 'one of those builds' (mine was the Double Dragon recently). But it's always good when it comes together in the end. 

[Muadzin]

They say all the fun is to be had in the journey, not the destination. In that sense I did have a lot of fun. Of course sometimes you have fun, and sometimes the fun has you.

That sounds like an adventure and a half! I know the pots moved between 1.4 and the first version, should have made it a bit more obvious :/ it did make the PCB a lot easier to lay out, though.

Virtual beer for doing all the troubleshooting yourself! (Real beer if you ever turn up on my doorstep )

I'm just lucky the only thing I really screwed up were the pots. The rotary switches, well, those are easily fixed by resetting the number of positions. But I came close several times to open up a troubleshooting thread. But its true what they say. Sometimes you have to walk away for a while to come back with a fresh perspective again. Each time I thought 'and now I'm going to reopen that sucker and take some gut shoots for a thread' and you start noticing new things.

So, is the pedal worth all that grief?

Hell yeah!  It allows me to nail some U2 tones I've been dying to nail. And despite being in a larger box it's still significantly lighter then that Digitech Synthway I was planning to use. Or smaller then a Line6 FM-4. Now that I know the pitfalls I wouldn't mind having a 2nd one. If you (or anyone else) ever plan to do a new run count me in!

[LaceSensor]

nice

shame about the faff and also shame you didnt keep the FX loop; much more useful than the CV pedal controls (!)

[luks999]

great looking build

alanp: do you have some rissole boards left? cant find them on the OSH park site

[Jebus]

Looks great, good job getting it together!

alanp: do you have some rissole boards left? cant find them on the OSH park site

I'll take one too if there's any left. 

[BrutalFX]

Also interested in a pcb or two.