bobbass4k

The short answer is no. It could very well be fine, but without checking the components inside, there's no way to know. It could be that the voltage gets regulated down to 12V, in which case it would be fine, but it could also just run on 15V, and if they've used any 16V capacitors, then you're in boom territory... Unfortunately there's no way to know without checking.

I can take a looksee if you want to drop it in the post - the original vactrols are pretty rare these days and sell for stupid money (£10+ for what is a 50p part) but you can get new versions that are exactly the same for a few quid - there's very little mojo in a vactrol and that looks like a new one anyway. Drop me a PM if you fancy it - I may do it for free just so I can clean that LED bezel - the urge to take a cotton wool bud to it is overpowering...

My ridiculous post-rock monstrosity is taking shape. Can't remember how long it's been for me on one of these but it's always a fun way to force me into finishing something.and confusing you all with 7/8 guitars over 5/4 drums...

Have you taken any readings on the opto? Check the LED side with the diode tester mode if you know how. You'll struggle to test the LDR side as those have massive dark resistance, but you could test the voltage while it's on if you're comfortable with live testing.

Order has been restored - an oc-2 has returned to its hallowed place. Selling it is on my top 10 list of life mistakes. Overall, not just pedal related. I love the whammy but octave down sounds are not it's forte. Annotations for the DIY Frankensteins in signal order, they're basically all clones though many with heavy tweaks - 1 - DOD 250 dual channel clone with diode options - basically an Earthquaker Grey Channel with an extra switch to stack channel 1 into channel 2 2 - BJFE Blueberry Clone - I'm a late convert admittedly, but a simple tweak to the tonestack makes it super useful for me 3 - Tweaked IC Big Muff - altered tone stack - very much a one sound box, but that sound is just pure bone-crushing doom. 4 - EQD Data Corrupter Clone - couple of mods on the sides for extra woo-woo craziness. 5 - Ulti-Muff - Regular (non-IC) big muff with every mod I've ever found useful, mids, pre-boost, diode choices etc. 6 - Ridiculous Noise Box - started as a 4ms Noise Swash but It's become something else. Goes between splatty velcro fuzz and self-oscillating lunacy 7 - Phase inverter - All the drive pedals are in the ls-2 loop for clean blend and depending on what combos are on there can be phase issues. 8 - Auto-Wah - Honestly couldn't tell you which one as I built it so long ago. Maybe a modded FX-25B? 9 - Pumpernckel Compressor - Schalltechnik Kit - does everything I've ever wanted a compressor to do 10 - Boss Slow Gear - mod added for release time 11 - Chorus - EQD Sea Machine Clone 12 - Mid-Fi Pitch Pirate, mods added for internal delay and CV input 13 - CV Output Sequencer - Puts out a controllable sequenced voltage for the LFO based effects - I've got 4 but the Phaser and tremolo are currently out on loan. 14 - Death By Audio Echo Dream - Heavily modified to make it actually work properly. 15 - Mid-Fi Clari-Not - modded to put the fuzz on a switch for a cleaner version, also modde for CV input. 16 - Death By Audio Reverberation Machine - again heavily modded to actually work - second gain control to make it cleaner and feedback control to extend the decay (and self-oscillate if you're into that sort of thing). Not pictured are the Preamp and cab-sim that live on the desk. Quality of decoration is a big indicator of when they were built. The drive section changes fairly regulary - there's another 10 or so in the pedal box.

It lives! Finally abandoned the £15 diago rip off PSU I've had for 10 years. With the bulk of it being DIY the PSU is now the most expensive thing on the board by a long way. Half ambient nonsense, half bone crushing distortion.

Traditionally square pads on diodes are for the cathode (-) leg, including leds; a lot of old PCBs don't have any silkscreen markings for diodes, just square pads. Bear in mind that square pads on electrolytics are for the anode (+) leg. Don't ask me why the potentially explosive inconsistency, I've learned there are no satisfying answers to these questions. But yeah, in this case it doesn't matter as long as they're opposite.

I hear heavy guitars for everything - makes life a lot funner.

For what they cost 2nd hand an LS2 is a really handy thing to have around if you're gonna be using more than a few pedals. It's not just parallel blending, it's a clean blend, a bypass looper, a boost, a guitar switcher, an amp switcher, a mixer. Once you get your head round it it's indispensable.

I know one guy who had a HOG (gigantic EHX pedal) but the rest of his pedals were all small Boss sized. He got a board big enough for his small pedals and added a tiny bypass looper where he wanted the hog, then carried the HOG in the pocket of the board bag and set it up on the floor and connected it to the looper. Far from an ideal solution but it'd give you room to expand without changing boards.

Pedlatrain have an online layout thing - http://pedalboardplanner.com/ I haven't used it in a while but you may find that not every pedal is in there - but a lot of pedals use standard size enclosures so you could always make substitutions if you just want to check sizing.

Personally I would put the doom before the MF, running a filter into a fuzz basically destroys the dynamics that the filter creates and you won't hear much ofthe filter at all. Fuzz into filter produces the classic synth sound and is a much more distinct effect. The cali is personal choice but yeah, in that position it will work as a peak limiter (on higher ratios).

This is true, I forgot to add that I assumed you wouldn't be using the FI and the Octavre/Doom/MF101 combo at the same time, but yeah that'd be a cool thing to try.

That's an amazing bunch, especially to start out with. There are people who'll say "there's no rules just try them in every order and see what you like", but that isn't particularly helpful when there's 5040 ways of ordering 7 pedals and there definitely ARE at least guidlines. The general guideline for effect types is: Pitch > Drive > Filter > Modulation > Time The ditto is an in interesting one, it depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want the ditto to play loops with effects on while you play other stuff over it? (The end) Or do you want to be able to add effects on to loops as they're playing? Same with the tuner, do you want it to act as a master mute (at the very end) or do you want to be able to tune while a loop is still playing? (the very start). Compressor again depends on what you want from it, if you're wanting it for peak limitng then it could go straight after the MF101 and the FI or at the end, if you're wanting it for general smoothing/colour then it should probably go at the start, but beware if you have it set too heavy it'll make the MF101 less lively. If it were me the first thing I'd try would be: Tuner > Cali76 > Octavre > Doom > MF101 > FI > Ditto

A bypass looper is a super simple pedal thats basically just an off switch for a pedal or chain of pedals that you connect in its effects loop. So in this case you could put the EHX pedals in it and then when the looper is off, those pedals are out of the signal chain even if they're on, so you could have them always on and switch them in/out with the looper. Tbh that would be quite an extreme solution for this case, but a bypass looper is quite a handy thing to have around anyways. If they have a true/buffered bypass switch internally that should take care of it completely (I'm not too familiar with these ehx pedals or that would have been my first suggestion).

It's a common problem with simple true bypass switching, it's caused by DC offset in the input/output capacitors - I'll spare you all the jargon but essentially when you hit the switch the voltage in these capacitors (which is part of the signal path) changes dramatically very suddenly, which you hear as a pop (kind of like how if you plug a lead into your bass while the amp's on). It's a pretty easy problem to avoid or at least mitigate and to be honest I'm really surprised these EHX pedals are doing it. I've never heard of a speaker/amp being killed by it though, it's a very quick spike. Short of modding them you could put them in a bypass looper (with a better bypass) so the pedals themselves are always on.

£15 from the sadly defunct dodgy guitar shop in Leeds, I bought it to gut for its parts (the BBD chips) but it actually sounds really good as a silly special effect, super hollow and metallic.

Finally got something resembling a board back together, relatively straightforward signal chain. The 3 off the board usually live on the desk for easy tweaking when going into the interface, cabsim, bass pre (logic clone with mods) and guitar pre (Hudson broadcast clone with mods).

Muchas Gracias, didn't find the extra frequency very useful but the siren mod very much leant into the "crazy woo woo noises" territory i enjoy, and the tracking mod was pretty handy. I'm impressed at how good a straight fuzz it is, though obviously it's all about the crazyness -

Got any details on those mods? Google has failed me. Just built the mini version, currently trying to stuff it into a 1590N...

I'd say have a look at the earthquaker pitch bay, not sure of your budget but it'll do simultaneous harmonies totally clean,with the option of adding gain on board. The only compromise you'd have to make is it only does 1 up and 1 down harmony, so you'd have to play the fifth in the chord you want to play and set it to a fifth below and a fourth above.

It's a fairly simple job, depending on what you want putting in where nand why. A lot of pedals are the size they are for a reason though, i haven't seen that many professional pedals recently that have acres of pointless space. There's other reasons to do it though, some great circuits come in flimsy plastic cases (*cough* Behringer *cough*), or if you want controls rearranged, true-bypassing etc. The sticking point will be graphics, most of us DIYerrs can't match the finish on professionally produced pedals (silkscreening is very expensive and time consuming for one offs or small runs so most of us don't bother). But if you were flexible on graphics it might be an option. We'd need to know more specifics though.