A Pair of Boosters

[GammaFlex]

These are two more trebleboosters that I finished up this week. A poster on this forum suggested that I work a bit harder on making my wiring and other such things more suitable/reliable so that they'll last longer. I took his advice and really tried to cut the leads to a suitable length, worked on making all the solder joints nice and covered, basically eliminating all dry joints. He also suggested that I not let the battery flop around so much, so the velcro closes it off and keeps it from moving around in the pedal.

I am really wanting to get better at building so if anyone has any other advice then feel free to share

[Leevibe]

The joints are looking good from what I can tell. Nice job! Nothing wrong with that wiring either. It's possible that the heat was on the input ground a little too long judging by the slightly melted insulation but that could just be the way the pic looks on my phone. Those jack lugs sink a lot of heat. I usually crank the temp up a bit so I can get in and out fast with the iron. It's good to be kind of quick, especially on the switch lugs. Great work though! Again, I love those sweet axial caps.

[davent]

To save on velcro i cut a battery sleeve from an old bicycle inner tube, stick the velcro to that, slip the sleeve over the battery. Now when you replace the battery you can move the sleeve to the new battery and secure it in the enclosure.

There's a floating cap in there with long leads that could easily short against the resisitor lead or the electro cap body, you want the cap/components mounted to the board such that there's no lead exposed above the board. The transistor leads,if you're going to leave them long, should be insulated, you can use insulation stripped from other wire or you can purchase teflon spaghetti which is great for the job. You could also use thin heatshrink but i wouldn't shrink it, just leave it loose.

Coming along!

[rullywowr]

A lot of good tips!  These look great, I'm sure they sound bangin' too.  A couple friendly suggestions:

-  Hope you are using stranded wire?  Solid is more prone to breaking.  You may want to go a bit smaller, say 24ga.  Smallbear has the 24ga prebond wire which is awesome.

-  That floating cap is asking for trouble.  Get it down on the board and reduce the lead length.  If you need to insulate the legs, do so with some shrink or insulation from stripped wire

-  As Jon mentioned last week, that transistor should be tacked into the socket otherwise it definitely will be rattling around in the box down the line (most likely at a gig, right before a big solo).  Use some heat shrink tubing or insulation from other wire to insulate each leg and then quickly (so you don't toast the transistor), tack the legs into the socket with solder so it's guaranteed not to come loose.

- While you can use the enclosure for the grounding of the in/out jacks, I always recommend to run an extra wire to a central ground point (star grounding) from the sleeve lugs anyways.  A common central ground point would be the sleeve lug of the stereo input jack.  Reasoning is that if one of those jacks come loose, the ground circuit will be broken, and the pedal will stop working (or give you nasty pops) until you retighten the jack.  It's not that  much extra work, and will increase reliability over the long haul.  You can also grab some star washers from the hardware store to go between the jack and the inside of the enclosure for extra bonus points.  This will help prevent those jacks from loosening up.

Nice job!  Keep em' coming.

[GammaFlex]

Wow, thanks for all the tips.. I've gone back and fixed a few things as per recommendations....

How does this look?





As far as tacking the transistor, do you think all 3 legs should be tacked into the socket? Would it be easier/safer to simply do one leg so it's not toasted?

[GammaFlex]

-  Hope you are using stranded wire?  Solid is more prone to breaking.  You may want to go a bit smaller, say 24ga.  Smallbear has the 24ga prebond wire which is awesome.

I am using the 22ga stranded wire that Mammoth sells. I plan on getting some in the future as I understand it's much easier to use, I'll check out the smallbear stuff.

[davent]

Yeah much better!

I would just tack the center leg of the transistor, that way if you need to remove it from the socket you'd just heat the one spot and pull the transistor out, no need to heat a lead, remove the solder, heat another lead/remove solder.  Just heat one leg, pull transistor from socket then clean up socket with no need to keep reheating the transistor. You can shorten the insulation on the center lead to make it easier to solder, a tiny dot of solder should be all you need.

And like mentioned earlier, inner toothed lock washers (3/8", 10mm) for the jacks are great insurance for electrical contact and mechanical security, (very firmly tightened.)

dave

[midwayfair]

As far as tacking the transistor, do you think all 3 legs should be tacked into the socket? Would it be easier/safer to simply do one leg so it's not toasted?

I think you're going to have to suck it up and solder all three legs into the socket. If even one is loose, it can make noise, scratching sounds, or fail when it's getting shaken around or stomped on (or if the stage is shaky when they tap their feet ... seriously, this can happen). Tack soldering a single leg is fine for one of your own prototypes, but you have to minimize every possible way things can go wrong once it leaves your hands, otherwise you're stuck repairing simple things (which is embarrassing -- first for you, but also "oh, this just popped out of the socket" can potentially make the end user feel dumb that they didn't catch it on their own, and then it's just awkward). There are posts here and elsewhere and around the internet that detail how to solder a germanium transistor without damage -- so do some reading and practice until you're sure you can do it without reaching a dangerous temperature. And if your iron or station has adjustable temperature, make sure it's set to the optimal soldering temperature for the solder you're using.

These are looking much better in the more recent pictures.

[pickdropper]

If you are going to sell these things, I agree with Jon: make it road worthy and solder all of the legs.

I love socketing components on DIY and proto builds, but I'd be wary of socketing transistors on something that is going to be kicked around a lot.

If this is a serious venture for you, I'd also recommend drilling templates so that both jacks are closer to the same location on each side.  You may also want to measure out your wiring ahead of time and spend a little bit more time wiring it neatly.

I think a little bit of planning and practice and your builds will look a lot more professional and that will serve you better in the long run.

[Leevibe]

Looking good man!!

[GammaFlex]

Alrighty, no more sockets for these puppies! Did a little research and got them soldered in solid with no issues whatsoever. I think that for future builds I'll try to do a little better with the wiring and planning (I can see what you're talking about pickdropper) I have been using a drilling layout so I'll probably just make sure that it's the same on both sides so that the jacks are more in line.

Jon, I think it looks much better and now I feel much better without the sockets at all, I think I'll do this for each of these from now on.