training wheels PCB - PNP tonebender mk II

[oip]

hey folks

trying to bash my way through learning how to use eagleCAD and ordered a couple of small PCBs from china.  first pedal attempt is a tonebender mk ii professional (this schem: http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/mkII.php) because i have a whole bunch of russian transistors and been meaning to make one for a while.  i was genuinely not expecting it to work at all but damned if it didn't fire up first shot.  it sounds pretty decent to me, quite nasty, raw and lots of sustain.  but i don't know exactly what it's supposed to sound like.. might be horrible.  i'm sure i need to audition transistors properly, next step is building a little proper gain/leakage tester and sorting them all into buckets.  also want to try and include a voltage inverter to put in LED and DC jack.

anyway really cool fun!  still a LOT to work on (eagle is so fiddly i have little idea what is going on most of the time) but a nice different ballgame from vero.

last pic is with the other russian Ge builds, a fuzz face and a rangemaster.  carved all the stamps.

[zombie_rock123]

Super neat layout!

[cooder]

Very cool work all around! Well done!
Dig the graphics as well, can you post a photo of the stamps you made for it? Looks great!
Also: what pcb fab did you use and did it work well for you to work with them?
Cheers!

[stringsthings]

Excellent graphics!  The set looks great together.

[drog_trog]

Cool, i do like the 'Roswell' looking transistors.

[oip]

many thanks! 

Dig the graphics as well, can you post a photo of the stamps you made for it? Looks great!
Also: what pcb fab did you use and did it work well for you to work with them?

the stamps are cut out with a little scalpel into stamping rubber all bought from a craft shop, after drawing the shapes with pencil.  it feels like it shouldn't work but it does somehow.  major downside is that large surface area stamps are really hard to get right on powdercoat - they are real slippery because of the ink but you still need to get decent pressure on the whole thing and if it moves even slightly it will screw it up, and cleaning the ink off eats the powdercoat finish so it's dulled and stained.  so i wouldn't necessarily recommend the big stamps by hand.  if i was going to do a lot i would consider building a jig for them.  the letters work great though.



for the PCB it was j l c p c b (they sent me an email asking to promote them on social media after the order so.. i'm not doing that).  bare bones website but the price is very cheap and crazy turnaround, like 4-5 days from uploading to receiving.  it's the first place i've tried other than oshpark.

[midwayfair]

awww, I like the little fox.

Congrats on getting the PCB right the first time!

[Andlord]

Great builds but the translator you used on the one with the fox failed horribly. "Маленькая лиса" is the correct formulation

[oip]

thanks guys!

haha oh dammit.  yeah that's on google translate and my own almost 0 knowledge of other languages.  i hope i didn't insult the innocent fox

[midwayfair]

Great builds but the translator you used on the one with the fox failed horribly. "Маленькая лиса" is the correct formulation

Hey, we English speakers don't have fancy gendered word endings!

I just checked and google translated it correctly, so maybe oip put in "little" and "fox" separately.

[oip]

to be honest i'm pretty sure i just chose the most nice looking word from the options presented by google translate but i do think i put them in together also so i'm happy to pass the blame.

would not necessarily recommend permanent ink as a good way of learning russian basics.  i might leave it but also that fox might get a makeover along with a tone pot..