Help with new project - Hotcake Clone!

[red.guitar]

Hey,

This is my first post here. I've been wanting to start building my own effects for a while now, and I've decided to start with a clone of the Cowther Hotcake. I've been looking for a pedal to drive my AC30CCH for a while now, and this pedal just sounds amazing with the amp.

I've taken some electrotech courses in college, so I have a decent understanding of how to read diagrams, solder, and what most of the components do. I also do work on my guitars, so I don't think I'm a complete beginner; but this will be my first pedal build from scratch.

I think I'm going to order the Big Dipper Effects Short Stack

I also found  http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.ca/2012/02/crowther-hotcake.html There are some difference between the caps used in both.

I'm just wondering if anyone here has tried to diy one of these pedals, and if you could give me a few pointers.


Thanks!

[jubal81]

Welcome aboard. The Hotcake is a good one to start with since it's not very big or complicated.
Check out Poodle Pedal Parts PCB project 'Chilly Biscuit.'

The best advice I can give is to go slowly. Concentrate and take your time. I know you're going to be excited to hear the effect, but diagnosing problems afterward is a lot harder and takes longer than being slow and methodical to begin with.
Also, buy extra parts in case you drop, lose or burn up something.

[GermanCdn]

Welcome to the forum.

I've built the tagboard version, works great.

[red.guitar]

I think I'll just pick up the short stack it'll prob work out to about the same price and I'll likely get it a lot quicker.

[selfdestroyer]

Welcome to the forum red.guitar and welcome to the madness of building. Its more addictive than meth in my mind.

I just built a Hotcake a few weeks ago from the BeeJive etch and so far so good. I did do the Bluesberry mod which helps to smooth out the decay of notes. Mine was very fizzy sounding using the LM741 at low gain and I wanted to try to rid that as much as possible. I can't say I 100% fixed it but it did make it better. I will revisit it this weekend to see what else I should change on it.

Timbo on here gave a good description on the Bluesberry mod.

The "Bluesberry" mod, which puts a 1N914 from pin 2 (cathode) to pin 3 of the IC, and from pin 2(cathode) to ground (pin 4).

[red.guitar]

Thanks for the info.

I just have a quick question. I just getting ready to order parts now. What type of caps should I order?

[Haberdasher]

if it runs at 9v get 16v electrolytic caps.  lots of times i just order 25v in case i build something that runs at 18, but i do look at the size of the caps on the datasheets if possible.  i like small electros for space saving purposes.
for the film caps make sure they have a 5mm lead spacing.
without knowing where you're ordering your parts from that's about all i got for now.

[red.guitar]

Thanks!

I'm planning on ordering from small bear.

What type of pots should I use? Audio, linear or rev audio?


Thanks for the great help!

Edit: I've read that linear will always work and audio is good for volume.

So I guess I'll go with 1 audio and 2 linear.

[Haberdasher]

b=linear
a=audio, yes often used for vol
c=reverse taper

you will normally use 16mm pots in builds.  it looks like for the short stack you probably go with lug pots, but many of the madbean projects use pcb mounted pots these days.

i forgot to say earlier, get radial caps, not axial

ordering from smallbear should be pretty straightforward since most of what they carry there is geared for stompboxes

[red.guitar]

This is probably a stupid question but the parts list for the pedals build I'm following list the caps in nf, but when I look on small bear, everything is listed as mf.

The reason I'm confused is barbecue I need a 10nf for c1, so if I convert that its equal to 0.00001mf?? The lowest value radial aluminum cap that is listed is 1mf, as far as I can see.

What am I missing here?

[selfdestroyer]

This is probably a stupid question but the parts list for the pedals build I'm following list the caps in nf, but when I look on small bear, everything is listed as mf.

The reason I'm confused is barbecue I need a 10nf for c1, so if I convert that its equal to 0.00001mf?? The lowest value radial aluminum cap that is listed is 1mf, as far as I can see.

What am I missing here?

This might help
F, or farad, is the unit of capacitance (storage capacity).
μF (also shown as uF) stands for microfarad, millionths of a farad.
mF stands for millifarad, thousandths of a farad.
so a mF is thousand times that of a uF/μF.

This is a nice conversion chart
http://www.justradios.com/MFMMFD.html

[blackedition]

i've also been suspicious about small bear's labeling (as i'm currently compiling lists of parts to order for my own build).  it is really odd to see things listed in mF, as i'm much more accustomed to seeing things in uF, nF, and pF.  does anyone know if small bear actually mislabels uF as mF?  i can't imagine that they would, but it seems like a really arbitrary order of magnitude to label everything in...

[red.guitar]

I've actually just read a few post in other forums saying that small bear does use mf instead of uf.

Edit: I'm a little confused now. Can someone comfirm what caps I need?

The parts list calls for:

C1    10nF        (0.01uF)
C2    10uF
C3    100uF
C4    10uF
C5    82nF        (0.082uF)
C6    470pF
C7    10nF        (0.01uF)
C8    47nF        (0.047uF)

[rullywowr]

I've actually just read a few post in other forums saying that small bear does use mf instead of uf.

Edit: I'm a little confused now. Can someone comfirm what caps I need?

The parts list calls for:

C1    10nF        (0.01uF)
C2    10uF
C3    100uF
C4    10uF
C5    82nF        (0.082uF)
C6    470pF
C7    10nF        (0.01uF)
C8    47nF        (0.047uF)

You got it, values are correct. When first starting out, I wrote both the nF and the equivalent values on the storage envelope...heck it still helps. After a while it becomes second nature. With most pedal PCBs we deal in pF, nF and uF.  Most caps described in pF are less than 1000pF(or 1nF) most films used are 1nf to 1000nF(or 1 uF) and 1uF to 220uF are usually electros. There are exceptions (like 2.2uF film etc).

As a learning tool it may help to write the decimal places out to three places when converting to visualize them better. For example:  0.010 uF is 10nF.   Or 0.470 uF is 470nF.

[red.guitar]

Im still a little confused about how small bear names their caps. I've read that a lot of the time, distributors will lable caps as mf, when it really should be uf.

As in 10uf=10mf??