Aion will have 25 new projects in 2018

[Yahoo67]

Just missed the black friday sale but noticed in the annoucement section that they plan to do 25 new projects in 2018 :/ i can already feel my futur wallet getting ligther

https://aionelectronics.com/blog/category/announcements/

[sonnyboy27]

If he makes some with top mount jack instructions I'm gonna be very poor. I've built two of his klons, the morning glory, prince of tone, and I have a Nobels that I need a couple more parts for, and something else I can't think of.

[aion]

Just missed the black friday sale but noticed in the annoucement section that they plan to do 25 new projects in 2018 :/ i can already feel my futur wallet getting ligther

I've been trying to avoid setting future expectations after the Blueshift was delayed by nearly a year, but I feel pretty good about this one. I've got 12 of them fully designed already with prototype boards on my desk here, and for the rest, I'll choose from a to-do list of several dozen more that I've already decided to do at some point - so I feel pretty good about it this time around 2018 will be a lot of fun!

If he makes some with top mount jack instructions I'm gonna be very poor. I've built two of his klons, the morning glory, prince of tone, and I have a Nobels that I need a couple more parts for, and something else I can't think of.

I've tended to subscribe to the Boss/Ibanez/EHX Nano aesthetic of power on top, jacks on the side, but I have had a heck of a lot of people ask about top jacks, so I've got it on my list to do some engineering work in the next couple weeks to see what it would take to pull off, and whether it can be done with existing projects or if new layouts would be required.

Is it more of a space efficiency consideration, or an aesthetic/consistency one? I do understand that you can get a little more pedalboard space out of a 125B with top jacks than a 1590B with side jacks, even with pancake-style patch cables. But I always thought BYOC's pedals were a little rough on the eyes for some reason... although maybe it's just the size of knobs they come with that don't balance well with the larger 125B enclosure size.

[somnif]

So.... any non-specific hints as to what sort of projects we get to look forward to over the next year?

[Muadzin]

I've tended to subscribe to the Boss/Ibanez/EHX Nano aesthetic of power on top, jacks on the side, but I have had a heck of a lot of people ask about top jacks, so I've got it on my list to do some engineering work in the next couple weeks to see what it would take to pull off, and whether it can be done with existing projects or if new layouts would be required.

Personally I'm of the opinion that people continue to use side mounts, because that's the way its always done. I started out like that too, building those early all wired BYOC pedals. Then I branched out into sourcing my own and continued to do it that way, because that's how I had learned it. But I had built a couple of GGG pedals as well and I found the top mounts to be way more pedal board efficient. So one day I realized, why do I even do side mounts any more if you like top mounts better. Haven't looked back since. It's SO much more efficient.

Is it more of a space efficiency consideration, or an aesthetic/consistency one? I do understand that you can get a little more pedalboard space out of a 125B with top jacks than a 1590B with side jacks, even with pancake-style patch cables. But I always thought BYOC's pedals were a little rough on the eyes for some reason... although maybe it's just the size of knobs they come with that don't balance well with the larger 125B enclosure size.

It's not a question ofa little space efficiency, it opens up a LOT of space efficiency. I was able to cram more pedals on my boards using top mounts, and it was always the Boss and EHX style side mounts which gave me headaches on how to fit them on my boards. I for the life just cannoth understand why people think that a 1590B eats up less pedal board real estate then a 125B, since the former has to use side mounts (unless you have l33t drilling skills and tiny jacks), while the latter is so easy to equip with top mounts. So many people design their PCB layouts for sidemounts, which makes it hard for me to use them in my builds as I can't use them with board mounted pots to fit with my top mount OCD (it's an OCD, I fully admit it). Especially those boards where you mount the pots to the top.  Methinks the easiest way to fix this would be to make it so so you can flip the orientation of board mounted pots around. Like the ability to install a jumper and cut a trace so lug 1 becomes 3 and reverse.

Another problem with 1590B designed boards with board mounted pots is that they tend to be bunched together a little closer then on a 125B designed board. Which means it becomes a little harder to use large knobs. I like to use Marshall style knobs on dirt pedal and you just cannot fit three of those on a row with pots mounted to a 1590B board. We

[cajone5]

If he makes some with top mount jack instructions I'm gonna be very poor. I've built two of his klons, the morning glory, prince of tone, and I have a Nobels that I need a couple more parts for, and something else I can't think of.

I've tended to subscribe to the Boss/Ibanez/EHX Nano aesthetic of power on top, jacks on the side, but I have had a heck of a lot of people ask about top jacks, so I've got it on my list to do some engineering work in the next couple weeks to see what it would take to pull off, and whether it can be done with existing projects or if new layouts would be required.

Is it more of a space efficiency consideration, or an aesthetic/consistency one? I do understand that you can get a little more pedalboard space out of a 125B with top jacks than a 1590B with side jacks, even with pancake-style patch cables. But I always thought BYOC's pedals were a little rough on the eyes for some reason... although maybe it's just the size of knobs they come with that don't balance well with the larger 125B enclosure size.

I always prefer top jacks.  I think the main reason is that I can tightly space pedals and there's no need to stagger them so the jacks don't interfere.  They can be placed in whatever my desired layout (in rows anyway) and jack location is a non-issue.  In addition, you can lay everything out and then wire up instead of having to do the two tasks together since the jacks are squeezed between things.  I guess If compactness was a non-issue, jack location would as well, but when trying to squeeze everything into a limited space in the optimum way, top jacks (everywhere) really do make that job a lot easier.

[sonnyboy27]

If he makes some with top mount jack instructions I'm gonna be very poor. I've built two of his klons, the morning glory, prince of tone, and I have a Nobels that I need a couple more parts for, and something else I can't think of.

I've tended to subscribe to the Boss/Ibanez/EHX Nano aesthetic of power on top, jacks on the side, but I have had a heck of a lot of people ask about top jacks, so I've got it on my list to do some engineering work in the next couple weeks to see what it would take to pull off, and whether it can be done with existing projects or if new layouts would be required.

Is it more of a space efficiency consideration, or an aesthetic/consistency one? I do understand that you can get a little more pedalboard space out of a 125B with top jacks than a 1590B with side jacks, even with pancake-style patch cables. But I always thought BYOC's pedals were a little rough on the eyes for some reason... although maybe it's just the size of knobs they come with that don't balance well with the larger 125B enclosure size.

It's a bit of both. I like the way that top mount jacks work for my board. It opens up a lot of space for me and I like the look since I don't have to offset pedals from each other. For your standard boards I've actually been able to top mount them in a 125B without any trouble. I've done that with your Klon board, the Morning Glory, and the Prince of Tone (I know, same board). I just had to move the board slightly further down in the enclosure. Since I don't use batteries it's not an issue at all. I do agree with you on the BYOC thing though. I've always used larger knobs to compensate for the empty space and that's worked for me personally.

Honestly, I love the fact that your boards all fit to a specific design principle. I have a couple of boards of yours that I've just done as side mount because they're designed so well for that. I'm just trying to make a specific board all top mount. But your layouts are incredible look amazing IMO.

If you are looking at top mounting, then I'd talk to BuGG. His stuff is designed for top mount in a 125B for the most part. His stuff just isn't quite as modular/mod friendly as your projects.

[WormBoy]

After discovering the extremely flat EBS patch cables, I am very happy to do side mounts with almost all of my builds. Added bonus is that you have shorter input-output wires in bypass modes, and the wires don't cross the board, so less chance of noise creeping in. With top mounts in a 125B, I might be able to put them 1 cm closer together, max, but for me that's a non-issue. Looking forward to those new projects!

[drog_trog]

Where are the new projects at? 25 this year?...were in March now Kev get a shift on! 

[aion]

Where are the new projects at? 25 this year?...were in March now Kev get a shift on! 

The Chinese new year always throws things off - the whole country is shut down for basically all of February which puts a damper on prototyping But I just received production quantities of 3 new ones, just need to finish up the documentation for them before they go out.

Still very much on track for the year - I'm up to around 20 designed now plus several updated versions of existing projects... just need to attack the prototyping queue and finish them up.

[drog_trog]

yo Kevin, how are your projects coming on?

[aion]

yo Kevin, how are your projects coming on?

Maybe a bit of a preview is in order! The reason it's been 6 months with only a couple projects released so far is that back in January or February I had a bit of an epiphany as I was thinking about how I should be designing projects going forward. As a result of this epiphany I decided to redo the new ones that I was prototyping—all 1590B—in favor of a completely new PCB format with (wait for it) top mounted jacks in a 125B. It's more than just that, though. It's an entire system with a unified set of drill templates, consistency in layout/design rules and component choice, as well as some other secret special stuff that I'll talk about in a few weeks.

As of today I have my 8 most popular projects redesigned in this new format, as well as 6 new ones. I had to do a whole lot of them before I was comfortable releasing any of them, just to make sure my design rules were sustainable and that it was "out of beta" in the first release, because I'm locking myself into it for the most part.

I'll have a big release announcement around July 4th. They won't all be ready by then, but the ones that aren't ready at that time should follow within a month.

I'm still planning on keeping all of the current 1590B-based projects in stock for the foreseeable future, as long as they continue to sell. But many of the projects will now have 125B variants, some with different features. For now I am working my way down the sales ranking, top to bottom, and the plan is to redo the top 50-70% of existing projects.

There is much more to be announced about what I've been up to and what's coming - this is just the tip of the iceberg - but I figured I owe some sort of explanation since I built up some hype at the end of 2017 and haven't yet delivered on it!

If he makes some with top mount jack instructions I'm gonna be very poor. I've built two of his klons, the morning glory, prince of tone, and I have a Nobels that I need a couple more parts for, and something else I can't think of.

[AllenM]

Thanks for the update and looking forward to your new designs! Can't wait to see the top mount jack designs!!

AllenM
Madtone

[drog_trog]

I understand, I am the same with stuff I do, the PCB and layout in the enclosure have to be spot on., a bit OCD.

[playpunk]

Looking forward to the option for board mounted relay bypass.