SWAH v3 and Other February Builds (and One Aggrevation)

[Chuck]

Somehow I found a lot more build time last month than I expected – hope it holds through March.  Latest completion is the SWAH v3.  Kind of surprised me when I found this board in my stash as I have no memory of buying it.  Straight up build in a 125B sized box (prefinished white from Tayda), GPCB v4 3PDT Wiring Board, GPCB wire and Pot Condoms, hardware and some electronics from Small Bear, and the rest from Tayda.  Fired it up last night then researched what the controls and trimmer do then played with it till bedtime.  If I ever rebox this I will move the bias trimmer to an external pot – all five of my current guitars respond differently to this one.

Here’s face:

And the guts:

Other builds this month include these 1590A builds using Mad Bean boards (with GPCB wire) –

Fritter ( an overdrive originally from New Zealand):

The CFH (an SHO based overdrive with 3 clipping options):

The Flunkee (an envelope filter):

The final one was frustrating.  My very first pedal build was a General Guitar Gadgets MBB that has been reboxed and modified more times than I can remember.  It finally became unrecoverable and I felt a sudden need for a Blues Breaker style overdrive again.  Found an inexpensive one on another vendor’s site downloaded the build document, ordered the board, started marking up the build document for the mods I wanted to make – most of these are native to Barry’s Blues Buster – and ordered stuff accordingly. Got the stuff, got the board, fired up the iron, and discovered the vendor had changed the board but not updated the build document to match.  The newer board has component values printed on the board instead of the number IDs used in the build document and schematic.  The gain mod was a piece of cake, just replace that one resistor and change the drive pot.  Figuring out which 2 of the 4 100nf caps to replace with 220nf caps for the more bass mod was tougher than I wanted to deal with and I was out of sockets at the time so I gave up on that.  Also discovered the drill guide doesn’t match the board either.  Got it done (except for the bass mod) and it sounds good – makes me smile.  Black 1590B, anodized knobs and 3PDT nut are from Loves My Switches.

Here is the face:

[Barry]

Nice builds and thanks for sharing!

[Author]

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