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.

[Goliath_FX]

22 hours ago, LukeFRC said:

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... 

 

I love playing this game

[paul_5]

Just finished a Big Muff 2 using the veroboard layout on dirtboxlayouts and it's GREAT!!

[Homatron]

Ooh, thanks for the heads up @paul_5! I can't believe this already has a veroboard layout.

 

Good to hear it turned out well, and it's now on my build list for the new year!

[LukeFRC]

I got a big cheese Musikding kit for Christmas - which is exciting.

 

ive got a few other things that I would like to try, but kinda want to do another pcb design and assembly again next year - any ideas what it would be good to do? Last year was the mini prunes and custards - and I ended up selling 9 of them … kinda want to avoid that again, but equally pcb A is expensive if you end up with 9 unused and populated boards! 
 

not sure what to make, my guidelines would be

interesting on bass

not in current production

prob not something that I can easily get from Musikding as a kit.

I don’t mind developing have mods or tunings for something. 

 

one suggestion was a mk2 octabvre which someone has and said I could trace in a non destructive way - would have to work out cap values on breadboard though! 

[MartinB]

14 hours ago, LukeFRC said:

not sure what to make, my guidelines would be

interesting on bass

not in current production

prob not something that I can easily get from Musikding as a kit.

I don’t mind developing have mods or tunings for something. 

EHX Knockout? It's surely possible to fit the circuit into a less gigantic box:
 

[LukeFRC]

Oh I should add I want to avoid building pedals for other ppl, not as fun as building for yourself 

[MrDinsdale]

Fancy building my first pedal, thinking of a 29pedals Euna clone. It’s a very expensive pedal I keep eying up so this would be a cool way to stop me splashing out a load of money while having a fun project to help me avoid getting better at playing.

 

Just wondering where people source components?

[LukeFRC]

1 hour ago, MrDinsdale said:

Fancy building my first pedal, thinking of a 29pedals Euna clone. It’s a very expensive pedal I keep eying up so this would be a cool way to stop me splashing out a load of money while having a fun project to help me avoid getting better at playing.

 

Just wondering where people source components?

Buy the kit from Musikding - seriously unless you’re going to be ordering enough to make 6-7 pedals this year Musikding kits work out very good value. 
(I’ve built this one (ppcb skeptical buffer), it’s good. The ppcb frequency interchange is worth building too) 

[MrDinsdale]

Good shout, I was intending to grab it from Five Cat Pedals but that might be a better option.

 

I’m not planning on churning out pedals, I’d quite fancied grabbing a breadboard and playing around with building some circuits to try, maybe experiment with different options. Maybe grab one of those Coppersound DIY boards to play with. 

[MrDinsdale]

A TS50b is high on my want list too, maybe I can treat myself to a couple of fun projects. 

[Stub Mandrel]

2 hours ago, MrDinsdale said:

Just wondering where people source components?

 

Cpc or eBay 

[LukeFRC]

42 minutes ago, MrDinsdale said:

A TS50b is high on my want list too, maybe I can treat myself to a couple of fun projects. 

Aion effects boards are good too - really good documentation on their site 

https://www.musikding.de/TS-50-Bass-Preamp-kit

[LukeFRC]

53 minutes ago, MrDinsdale said:

Good shout, I was intending to grab it from Five Cat Pedals but that might be a better option.

Pedal pcb did the original trace and I can vouch for their quality - they also have isolated the ground pours for the different parts of the circuit which five cats don’t seem to have done.

[MrDinsdale]

7 hours ago, LukeFRC said:

Pedal pcb did the original trace and I can vouch for their quality - they also have isolated the ground pours for the different parts of the circuit which five cats don’t seem to have done.

Ooo good catch, well I think I’ll be popping an order for Musikding. Sadly they’re out of TS50b sets. 

[MrDinsdale]

Excited to build some. At least it should be less faffy than the surface mount DIY mech keyboards I’ve done.

 

Dunno what I’ll do to finish it assuming it works.

[LukeFRC]

27 minutes ago, MrDinsdale said:

Dunno what I’ll do to finish it assuming it works.

This is what I did yesterday 

[MrDinsdale]

46 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

This is what I did yesterday 

Looks great!

 

At some point it would be cool to have a play with acid etching although I’d need to find somewhere away from my 5yo 🤣