Build Report Bonanza

[diablochris6]

Haven't posted any builds in a while. I got real busy with medical stuff and changing jobs at the last minute as well as feeling my hobby focus move a little away from pedals and more into a guitar I am building from scratch. It took many months to actually box these up and a couple more months before I bought knobs for them, but here they are! They all use laser jet waterslides and Envirotex on top. I might go into more detail with some of the circuits later if I have the time.

Brejna's Warhead VH4 distortion
Wicked distortion to make my Tele get all chun-chunk! I still need to add a jack for the power amp output. This thing likes to squeal with higher gain settings, but the squeal will reduce when I touch the box with my toe, so there might be a grounding issue I need to take care of.



Brejna's Bass Preamp
Basically a Sansamp. I made the Ampeg graphic using Inkscape and gave it some chunky knobs. Too bad I swapped the bass and treble controls! I haven't added the XLR out yet, which accounts for the large hole at the bottom.



The Low Down
I took the basic concept of the chopped Boss OC-2 and added extra stuff. I changed how the octave and clean signals blend and added a square wave and octave down square wave to mix in as well. The standard octave down has an additional tracking, filter, and gain controls for more gnarly and out of control sounds.



Dminner's Optical Ring Modulator
What a wicked and simple circuit design! Gnarly mayhem. I tried to design an enclosure that was a marriage of our two styles.



The Somnambulist
This is based off the Korg MS-20 LPF with two competing LFOs and an expression pedal jack. I have some other ideas about thing to add to it, so it is still a work in progress. I plan on adding a simple CV out to link it with a HPF version soon.
*EDIT: I forgot to mention that the basis of the artwork of this is a watercolor that my 4 year-old son painted a little while back. He was particularly happy that I put his art on one of my pedals.



Voight-Kampff Chorus
This is a three(!) PT2399 chorus loosely based on the Solina String Ensemble chorus unit. You can subtly adjust the influence of the clashing fast and slow LFOs, the depth of each chorus, and the amount of delay feedback for each PT2399. Super-cheesy sound but super-fun! The origami unicorns were made in Inkscape. To boost the insanity level, there are three interconnected PCBs in this build.



The Deadnought
A Big Muff with all the bells and whistles! Loosely based off the Violet Ram's Head, it starts with a tone control at the beginning to use as a focus control for more sludge. You can switch between silicon, germanium, or no clipping diodes for both stages (although the silicon sounds a little lacking at the moment...I might need to tweak a value or two still), and instead of a standard BMP tone stack, I use the EQ controls from a Colorsound OD. On top of that, there is a voltage sag and a switchable pregain LPB-1 more for mayhem. I used the artwork to create a mask to paint part of the background white before applying the waterslide over it. If you notice the stacked boards, that is the tone circuit. I didn't have time to breadboard it all, so I designed a couple variants and popped them in and picked the best one.

[Aleph Null]

Damn.  There's a lot of great stuff happening here. I especially like the effect you achieved with paint and mask on on the Deadnought!

[LaceSensor]

Ive got that textbook 

nice builds

[skyled]

Wow talk about a Friday document dump!
How does that Solina chorus sound on synth strings? You said they have feedback controls, so can you get more of a triple flanger sound out of it also? Are the boards for sale?

I love the eyeball artwork on the ring mod.

[diablochris6]

Wow talk about a Friday document dump!
How does that Solina chorus sound on synth strings? You said they have feedback controls, so can you get more of a triple flanger sound out of it also? Are the boards for sale?

I love the eyeball artwork on the ring mod.

I played a cheap Yamaha Portasound through it, and it sounds pretty good. It kind of sounds better than playing a guitar through it because the attack of the guitar makes it very obvious that the chorus is made by cheap delay chips. The feedback controls don't give much of a flanger sound, even though twiddling the depth knobs while playing does give that effect. At low levels, the feedback thickens the sound just a tad, but higher levels creates a long, wobbly tail. It's hard to describe...it sounds like a note is chased by a drunken ghost. When the feedbacks are all up, the warbles rise and fall at different times due to the different phases of the LFO hitting each PT2399. I'm willing to part with a PCB. Just be aware that it's a prototype board, so there will be some needed traces and jumps.

The eye was fun to make. The iris lines are actually hand-drawn and I added a gradient circle in Inkscape to give it color and a black circle for the pupil.

[nzCdog]

Wow man, these are awesome!

[DLW]

Great collection! Thanks for posting these

[m-Kresol]

great stuff all around. really dig the sophisticated multi-board builds and the swapable tone stack in the muff is genius.
how did you do the graphics on the optical ring mod?

[diablochris6]

great stuff all around. really dig the sophisticated multi-board builds and the swapable tone stack in the muff is genius.
how did you do the graphics on the optical ring mod?

The interchangeable tone stacks was a matter of convenience for me. It's difficult to breadboard with three little ones running around, so with a little bit of rethinking the PCB layout and a couple of bucks, I was able to easily try things out and find what I like.

For the optical ring mod, I hand drew the iris, put the image in Inkscape, and added a slightly transparent gradient for the iris color as well as a black circle for the pupil. The rest of the design was made in Inkscape. Before applying the waterslide for the whole top, I blocked off the top half and painted it white.

[Mich P]

Excellent, i really like those graphics.

[jimilee]

Those look great sir!


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[Rockhorst]

Great looking builds outside and inside!

p.s. I'll hook you up with some more stuff to build, hopefully soon! As promised!