This should be fun!

[alanp]

Still waiting on parts for the Lowrider.

Going to drill a loop stomp into the 1590A I have lying around. I think I should be able to work an indicator LED in as well, God willing. A 3PDT, 4 mono 1/4" jacks, a power jack, and an LED Nothing to anyone else here, but I'm going to go easy.

[alanp]

Drilled up and soldered the loop stomp I was thinking of doing.

Not much to say, really. It switches whatever's in the loop in and out of the signal chain. It's quite happy with no power, that's just for the user's benefit.

Had to disassemble and repair the Dymo labeller halfway through. I think the wiring came out a bit tidier than in previous efforts. Oh, and it's stuffed in that 1590A I had floating around.

[Bg]

I love the dymo labeling, it's old school but in a non ghetto way

[alanp]

This'll be the last pedal made, at least until Affco pull their head out of their proverbial and start negotiating (at all) with the union.



It's messier than I wanted -- Tayda didn't have the PCB mount pots suitable for the board, and I decided to try 1uF film caps in place of 'lytics. I had originally planned to take advantage of this and lay it out down2 - down1 - clean - up1. I found I couldn't be bothered. A battery should fit, I just don't have any spare lying around right now.

But man O man does it sound nice! It sounds nothing like (in my fists of ham), but the sound puts me in mind of 'Thumb', from Blues for the Red Sun. (It used up my last 2 germanium diodes, it had better sound good hehe!)



It even sounds good through the MG15 and the ratty old cables of static! It's very touchy, though, I have to be careful with my chording.

[alanp]

Spent a couple hours drilling the Rangemaster box, cutting veroboard, and getting puzzled.

It now has a switch to go between Treble-boost (stock) and Treble-to-Midrange-boost. Hard to tell with the MG15 how much difference that makes.

More importantly, thanks to a charge pump MAX1044 chip, it can now run off a stock standard +9V power adaptor. I soldered the battery snap and the 9V wire on the power jack the wrong way around, which puzzled me for awhile as to why it didn't work. The veroboard snapped while hacksawing it (luckily not on the small piece I actually wanted to saw off). But I win, it can now run off either a 9V battery or a +9V daisychain power adaptor with negative ground, +9V effects.

[Cdog]

Woo! I usually 'score and snap' all my boards... pcb vero perf etc
Craft knife and a ruler = nice clean break. Except that pcbs need good scoring on both sides first. Easier than hacksaw IMO

[alanp]

I have in my hot little hands a Madbean Dirtbag Deluxe, and a Current Lover PCB. These are Madbean boards for the EH Memory Man Deluxe, and EH Electric Mistress.

Unfortunately, I can't order anything else until I get back to work and get money for parts >_< I got these mostly to get while the getting was good.

[Cdog]

Woah... dirtbag looks like a scary-epic build! So many peeps having trouble getting it to work... will you do V3205 wersion?
'On ya mate, current lover looks cool too

[alanp]

Definitely V3205 version. I really don't want to get into that tarpit of "is it real or not?" when it comes to the MN3005 thing. It's all theoretical at the moment until the lock out issue gets worked out.

When I do order parts for the DMM and EM, I'm going to order some caps to replace the 1uF box film caps, take out the battery snap, and also put proper PCB mounted pots in the Lowrider. It's niggling at me in the back of my mind, plus the wires could be tidier. Hell, I might just rewire the thing. Might even improve the tracking a bit.

Been playing with the pedals at That-Place during practice and service. The LaVache is cool, but gets a bit lost in the mix with Dad's somewhat boomy acoustic-electric prominent over it. The tremolo gets a bit lost for the same reason, so I'm going to stick with the phaser for the songs where something synthy fits better than sharp.

The compressor works well with finger picking some slower songs, levelling out note volumes a bit. I've got the Rangemaster hooked up after it, since that seems to reduce the ice-pick that the Rangemaster can do sometimes. I had been using the Chunk instead of the Rangemaster to get a bass cut and slight EQ'ing, but got sick and tired of the gain getting nudged off one percent on and massive distortion going on when I didn't want it.

[alanp]

Had a couple pennies (no car payment means that if I live like a student, I can afford resistors and capacitors), so I had a busy afternoon.

I'm going to have to save up for enclosures, jacks, Special Unobtanium Small Bear Only IC's (v3207 and 3205) and whatnot now.

[alanp]

New Tool Day



It's a tool, Jim, but not as we know it. This is so I can hook up populated circuit boards to a guitar and amp without having to box them up, and also so I can poke around with an audio probe (which has strain relief via zip tie.) The switch on top switches amp output between the effect board in the IN-OUT loop, and the audio probe. (The effect continuously receives the guitar signal.)



The box is from when I laid out my first attempt at a LaVache pedal quite badly -- I'm glad I found another use. The cliff jacks are simply because they're what I had lying around.

[druz15]

very clever, seen a few builds of those and they seem so helpful but I'm always like ahh that's boring I wanna build something COol!

So keen to try the Dirtbag Deluxe, not sure if I should until I get a couple other pedals working first.

[alf]

Cool idea, looks really useful. Have been thinking about something similar so might have to steal some of your concepts there

[alanp]

The Dirtbag LIVES! I still have to box it, though, and I don't know why but it overloads VERY easily, so rolling back the gat volume is a must.

[Kev77]

I have a couple of these.,.,. very touchy little pedals =- but great sounding