@bigo
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I think this happens sometimes in the manufacturing of PCB’s. I had the same thing happen to me with an Aion PCB for a Mk3 Tonebender. It just didn’t work right after building it, so I took out my diagnostic tools and spent nearly 2 freaking days trying to figure it out. I discovered that there was no connection between the leg of one of the transistors (Q1 Collector) and another part of the circuit (R3 Resistor) that was supposed to be there. I reviewed the schematic and the PCB, double checking everything and reflowed the solder joints twice with no success. Knowing where the problem was through continuity testing, I made a jumper for where the missing continuity was and voila – the pedal worked! Just a bad PCB. Aion has a solid reputation. I’m just glad this wasn’t my first ever project because I would have never figured it out and would have given up. You can see my jumper on the back of the board going underneath a pot. Stuff happens.
Mick Ronson combo idea. Fixed wah circuit + Si TB Mk1 + Marshall amp emulator. Rono used the “Pig” aka a Marshall Major with his wah and Tonebender. Reportedly he ran only two output tubes on his amp so it wasn’t so loud and clean. I don’t now if there is any Marshall Major emulator circuit out there, though.
A couple of other combo ideas (i.e. Nostalgiatone): Ritchie Blackmore/Deep Purple with a Hornby Skewes treble booster circuit into a Vox AC30 emulator, and a Michael Schenker circuit using a Fixed Wah into a Marshall Amp emulator. An early GFR combo could be made with the Tone Messer circuit into a West Amp emulator. The Tone Messer portion would have to have a voltage step down feature since it runs on a 1.5V source – I don’t know if you could mix the 1.5V fuzz with an amp emulator that runs on 9V. I’m not an EE or expert circuit designer. As far as I am concerned the HS treble booster and Tone Messer circuits are not proprietary so anyone can have at it. I don’t care if anyone copies what I have done – and maybe the circuits can be improved upon.
The GBOF board provides lots of fun! I have built several pedals with it alone or in combination with other boards. I have built several versions of the Hornby Skewes treble booster (both Si and Ge versions), Rangemasters, Fuzz Face variants and Electra/Trotsky drives. I love this simple, yet versatile board, and actually is the reason I discovered Guitar PCB and Barry years ago as GPCB was mentioned on the BYOC forum.
Congratulations on a great idea for a pedal. When I built my modded Emerald Ring, I tested it out with a One Knob Fuzz (that I also modded as a 1+1 knob fuzz). The two work well together.
Here is my wiring diagram for the HS Treble Booster with Output Pot. Although the 22n Input Cap is the standard, I usually use a switchable Input Cap (not shown here) for more flexibility. Usually 22n (default), 33n (slightly more mids) and 47n (even more mids).
For the output mod, I used a 500K or 1M pot, which worked better for me. The Pot after the output cap will work as a High Pass filter, so the larger the pot value, the lower the 3db cutoff frequency is. For a 100K pot that frequency is about 1590Hz, a 500K pot the cutoff is at 318Hz and for a 1M pot the cutoff is at 159Hz. So with a 100K pot you start losing low frequency content sooner on the pot rotation compared to the larger pot values. Of course this is a “treble” booster and and you don’t care about losing the low frequency content that much. But really a treble booster is really more like a mid and treble booster except for the Ehx screaming bird/tree which has a super treble content to the extent that it is unusable for me.
Actually there is a correct schematic for the Si transistor version in the GBOF build document. It has both input and output caps.
I don’t know what graphics program you are using, so I can’t help you with the resistor appearance.
I will let you know with a couple of component changes and additions you will have a Hornby Skewes treble booster. That was the first breadboard project I ever attempted and now I do quite a bit of breadboarding trying to play around with different circuits/schematics. It has been really helpful in building veroboard and perfboard projects that are not available in pcb form.
This news greatly saddens me. Wilkie has helped me out immensely on this forum with advice, suggestions and tutelage. The loss to this pedal building community is huge. He had an incredible wealth of knowledge with regard to pedal building.
I believe he recently moved for retirement and I had planned on visiting him on one of my long cross country RV trips to California. Unfortunately, that chance to have a verbal conversation with someone I consider a mentor is no longer possible. Life it seems at times is too short. Maybe one of the days I will get to visit with another board moderator if chances permit.
I will always be thinking of him every time I come here for suggestions or advice. My condolences to his friends and family.
Not surprised. I had this issue with a 1-Spot, thinking it was my built pedals, some without power filtering. Then I had the same issue with a commercially built pedal and the 1-Spot. It’s a noisy power supply, although I don’t remember it being this noisy in the past. So maybe something happened to the supply. Fixed the problem by getting a better and cleaner power supply.
Did you sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night?
Sorry I can’t really help you, especially with something that sounds like an active circuit. I know Premier Guitar has a lot of articles on pickup wiring. Dirk Wacker has written a lot about pickup and guitar wiring mods, so maybe you could search there. Otherwise, l’ve got nothing. There are a lot of individuals on this board that have way more knowledge than I do. Hopefully someone can help you.
When I started I think the only places for pedal kits I could find were GGG, BYOC and probably Madbean. Being a neophyte builder, I chose BYOC because of the detailed step by step instructions and great support forum. The other places really didn’t supply detailed instructions. After building a couple of pedals, then you could get the confidence for building pedals with less detailed instructions.
Now there are several specific sites for PCB’s and kits. However, I don’t think any of them provide the guide one along the way instructions like BYOC. I think most of these came about more recently – past 5-10 years or so, BYOC, GGG and Small Bear were sort of the OG back when I started looking in 2006. GPCB came about a couple of years after that (maybe late 2009 or early 2010). Now even the parts suppliers sell pedal kits like Stew Mac, Tayda, etc. Even kits are sold on Amazon. Now it appears the competition is fierce.
The other 4 jacks could be 3 mono and one stereo. That is 2 mono for the Send and Return, one mono for the Output Jack, and one stereo for the input Jack if you are planning to use a battery snap. Be careful with the wiring of the Insert In and Insert Out jacks because the ones I used the wiring was slightly different than the diagram in the instructions, although I’m not sure if the ones I used were Switchcraft.
Below is what I did to correct the wiring problem. It may have been the particular jacks I used that could be or may not be the switchcraft ones called for in the instructions. I sent Barry an email as requested regarding what I discovered.
I also hit a final glitch as the screws provided to attach the bottom plate would not work. I discovered that the screw holes were not tapped into the enclosure. Fortunately I had an old tap and die set from my grandfather who had been the head of the machine shop at Youngstown Sheet and Tube. This was maybe the second or third time I ever had to use it, but I am glad I held on to it. It came in handy and now the bottom plate is firmly screwed onto the enclosure.
Actually Tayda is relatively inexpensive compared to other vendors, although their shipping costs have significantly increased in the last couple of years.
For me coming up with the artwork is a big part of the fun of building the pedal. But I have time on my hands. Drilling the enclosures is a pain, but it has to be done when doing custom builds. I just use the drilling template I come up with for the graphics layout.
