DIY Effects

[Bigwan]

On 01/11/2025 at 18:19, bnt said:

This morning I thought I ought to make a start on the Parasit Studios Into The Unknown kit I bought a few weeks ago from MusikDing. It might be a bit ambitious for my first electronics job in decades, but I thought I should try and I wanted a 4046 PLL pedal. Six hours later and the board is fully built and fitted to the case.. Which took some doing, what with eight pots, three switches and two LEDs. What's left is to hook up the connectors and footswitch, then hope I don't have a bad solder joint somewhere in there ..!

 

 

You should NEVER spend time building a board and not check it before you stick it in the enclosure...

[bnt]

19 minutes ago, Bigwan said:

You should NEVER spend time building a board and not check it before you stick it in the enclosure...

 

I should clarify - I had to mount it in the enclosure to get all the pins lined up before soldering, since the pots are PCB-mounted. If you solder first then try to mount it, you risk stressing the board. So you put the pots and board in place before soldering the pot connections. 

[Bigwan]

Ah, I've built a few similar projects... Still, there's a huge unknown from mounting the board in the enclosure before testing it.... I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

 

[LukeFRC]

5 hours ago, Bigwan said:

You should NEVER spend time building a board and not check it before you stick it in the enclosure...

go on, you never played effect pedal Russian roulette you've never lived - supreme confidence and you just go for it- like skydiving where you jump out the plane before checking your chute... 

[bobbass4k]

When I built the PLL clone with 25 board mounted knobs and switches I drilled the enclosure so I could solder everything mounted and then just wired it up - worked perfectly first time. The next week I built a simple 4 knob overdrive with maybe 20 components and it took me a 6 hours of troubleshooting to get it to work. The gods work in mysterious ways.