Building my own clone--part 3

[LK155]

Thanks, Rich, but it was anything but well done.

I made a couple of insanely stupid mistakes errors of judgement on that circuit board. A learning experience, I guess.

Just glad they could be eventually found and rectified.

 

This is my $10,000 pedal. If I was still working (which I'm not), that's about how much client billing I would have had if the time hadn't been spent debugging, fixing, testing, etc.

Oh well, at least it now works. Time to figure out how its unique sounds can be incorporated into some of my music. Tonight Marg (kinda hopefully) asked me if my pedal 'thing' (board) was now full.

"Hell, no" I said, "there's room for at least two more."

 

To anyone contemplating a BYOC pedal build: this has to be one of their more difficult ones; pick a simpler one to start.

 

 

 

[TalismanRich]

 

This is my $10,000 pedal. If I was still working (which I'm not), that's about how much client billing I would have had if the time hadn't been spent debugging, fixing, testing, etc.

Oh well, at least it now works.

 

 

HA! I was thinking the same thing. I could buy a pedal for about 1/20th the cost and not have the frustration. Heck, I often say that I took up golf because I didn't have enough frustration in my life. Debugging a circuit board with that many solder points would reach ULCER status!

 

Then again, it probably would make a really nifty paper weight.

[t0aj15]

Well, in the software business, program bugs are referred to as undocumented features.

I've also heard of them refer'd to as future advancements as yet undocumented,........and most often not understood, until..........

[JeffB]

Looks good. Adversity is beneficial for a healthy mind. I havnt had much.

 

I would call the knob on the upper far right Nigel.

[t0aj15]

Do your self a HUGE favor....dump all your pedals/pedalboards etc,. and just get a Fractal Audio FX-8. It will in one fell swoop end all GAS as far as EFX go.

 

http://www.fractalaudio.com/p-fx8-multieffects-pedalboard.php

[111518]

Thanks for this thread, LK155. I very much hope to one day have time to build an effect or two and/or a tube amp, so, I appreciate the detail of the account and the photos. But, given how much work I seem to always have on my plate these days, I also very much appreciate the realistic appraisal of the time involved.

 

For now, it's great fun to be able to look over your shoulder.

[LK155]

111518, don't be put off by the amount of time this particular build took. It was definitely abnormal. I was spending two to three hours a day building the pedal, and it was done in maybe four days total.

After discovering it didn't work, it was the troubleshooting/fixing/testing part that took all the time. And the fact that the expert helping me was three time zones away meant lots of mornings with no communication, leading to no progress for me. Not trying to be critical at all. On the contrary, the BYOC tech support people were great, start to finish. There's no way I would have a working pedal today if it wasn't for them.

Over the last couple of years I've built a tube amp and two other pedals, all from kits, and none of them took this long. So an anomaly for sure.

 

Amp kits are much easier than pedals, just because of their physical size. You don't need to operate with the help of a huge magnifying glass. And there's space to work--with this last pedal, the PCB connection points are exceedingly close together, as I found out.

 

For really nice amp kits, with excellent documentation and solid support, take a look at Trinity Amps out of Ontario.

 

 

JeffB: so you're saying Nigel's a knob? Should I be making plans for Nigel? (I know, very obscure reference there.)

 

 

 

[JeffB]

Well, we do only want whats best for him.

[LK155]

As promised, er, threatened, here's just over a minute of what this pedal can sound like............

The first 20 seconds or so were done without the pedal: Kirn tele, touch of reverb and delay, Quilter 101, Vox 2x12.

The next little bit used the pedal with the Depth, Feedback, Speed, and Mix all set at 12 o'clock.

And for the last part (from 0:48 on) the Feedback was maxed.

 

As my recordings are mostly done with clean sounds, I can't see using this a whole lot. Would never try to record an entire song with it.

But it'll have its place as an alternative voice, a counterpoint to the clean tracks.

 

 

 

[pressure]

Good recording Lyle.

[sfceric64]

Really nice build, the mid section sounds complimented the cleans very nicely. Cool thread.

[bolero]

that sounded really good!

 

congrats on the working pedal

[DC Ron]

To my ears the pedal provided two very musical and useable options. Nicely done. Remember, build experience is priceless...