While the family is away, I hope to...

[daleykd]

The wife and kid are headed out of town for about a week.  I have a million things I want to do, which makes me feel overwhelmed, which makes me shut down.

* I want to finish my nano+ pedal board, but that means I have to make a Deep Blue Delay in a 1590A, a Zendrive and/or TS808 in a 1590LB, and some for of distortion.
* I want to finish all of the 1590G builds (8 of them), which is just too much design, sanding, etching, sanding, painting, sanding, soldering.  This is probably my lowest priority.
* I want to box up a "hundred" boards that are sitting in a box in a working state.
* I want to play Overwatch non-stop.
* I want to watch The Last Ship, Season 2 (I can do this while soldering).
* I want to figure out why my CE-2 clone's wet bass mod isn't working right.
* I want to find the right diode combination on my King of Tone clone (and then box it up, which requires me to be a drill ninja).
* I want to figure out why my Suhr Riot clone doesn't sound different (enough?) with the different clipping diodes.

The last three are like a rash that irritates you and just won't go away.

I wish I could just outsource my enclosure work.   I also wish I had a local friend that did this (and could share the joy) with me.  Then we could work together.

What would you guys do if your family was away for a week?

Kyle

[dbp512]

I completely get that. I've grown accustom to having more things to do than hours in a day, but after a while it does wear you down. I haven't touched my soldering iron in over a week; even longer since I actually spent time with it daily. 
 
If I had a week of absolutely nothing to do, I'd be able to: 
* finally finish soldering drolo's liquid mercury and twin peaks
* flash a few taplfo chips for said effects
* order 125BB enclosures for a few builds and box them up
* I'm not much of a gamer anymore, but there are a few games from gamestop I picked up many moons ago but haven't touched yet
* I have way too many TV shows to watch
* my music collection is a serious mess, and needs many tedious hours of organizing it by hand

I also couldn't agree more about having another local builder. I used to talk to a few of my guitar playing friends about my upcoming pedals and whatnot, but they don't know much about effects so can't share my enthusiasm; as long as it sounds cool in the end they like it and thats the end of it. 
 
Plus, its always nice to have an extra pair of eyes. I built a mid-fi demo tape fuzz several months ago, but for some bizarre reason I can't get it to work. I reflowed the solder several times and checked all connections, but I just can't determine whats wrong with it. Since its not a very popular circuit it doesn't get much attention on the forums, so its just been sitting in a box collecting dust (partially because I've got other stuff I'd rather work on).

[daleykd]

Thankfully, I got a little done yesterday.  I verified my Deep Blue Delay 1590A board (what a bitch when the PT2399s don't work).  I also got a lot of Overwatch playing in, and a lot of The Last Ship watched.  Overall, pretty successful.  Next up, enclosure art.

[thesmokingman]

re: KoT ... the original diodes are out there and available on ebay ... my feelings are you can pair up silicon diodes to match the vF vs spending money. I think the feedback loop diodes are just about right. the diodes to ground feel like an afterthought/gimmick and could definitely be better ... I'd be curious to know how mosfets sounded in there. 

[daleykd]

re: KoT ... the original diodes are out there and available on ebay ... my feelings are you can pair up silicon diodes to match the vF vs spending money. I think the feedback loop diodes are just about right. the diodes to ground feel like an afterthought/gimmick and could definitely be better ... I'd be curious to know how mosfets sounded in there.

Hah.  I actually love the "hard clipping" (the ones to ground).  I feel like it gives it a more "distorted" sound vs. overdrive.

I'm not using originals.  I was trying to find a combination of diodes that gave enough of vF difference to make a huge audible difference.

For example, My current setup uses an ON-OFF-ON SPDT.  The off has no clipping.  One of the ons uses 4x 1N4148s.  The other on, I tried 4x LEDs.  That gave zero audible difference to the off position.

Any particular (simple) combination I should try to give a completely different sound to no clipping or 4x 1N4148s?

[thesmokingman]

considering the very high vF of the LEDs, it is likely that they had no effect whatsoever so your outcome is expected.
a normal pair of 1n4148 would have about 600mV of vF and doubling those up would be 1.2V. if you wanted more compression and clipping, try 1 1n400x rectifier diodes on each side of the quad or even try a quad of them. expect your ability to get back to unity volume to be affected. if you want it more open and less compressed, try the proper diodes(they have higher vF than 1n4148, yet lower than LEDs) or a pair instead of a quad of LEDs.

[daleykd]

Well, I:
* Finished up The Last Ship Season 2.
* Caught up on Hawaii Five-0.
* Played a lot of Overwatch (currently level 59)
* Etched 8 enclosures for the 1590G line up.
* Etched and boxed up my 1590A Timmy.
* Etched and boxed up my 1590A Deep Blue Delay.
* Finished soldering my KoT boards.  Pleased (enough) with the clipping results.  Started drilling the enclosure.
* Almost done soldering my own layed-out drolo Liquid Mercury Phaser board (designed with his permission).  Can't wait to find out if it works!

Not so bad.  I still have a lot of work to do to get "caught up."

[nzCdog]

Dude I'm jealous. I need to send my family away for a week.... here. Congrats