@bigo
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I use Paint.net for laying out both my pedal graphics and making drill templates. It is helpful to have measurements for components, etc. You can use guide lines for laying things out and then deselect the guidelines layers before printing. It is easy to use for me. You can add layer on top of layer of graphics and change the order of each layer or delete them. Below is an example of the one I created for my Clean Dirt pedal.
You can use this to also layout where components go on the inside of the pedal as below (mirror image for component placement). Switches in upper left hand side, rototone board and switch in upper right hand side with pots below, all drawn to scale. The boxes near the bottom represent the footswitch and board as well as the jacks.
Holy Moly! I thought I had a lot of boards being on the wait list to be built. About 9 or 10. Plus I have some veroboard projects on the list to be built.
I believe that you may be able to change C4 and R7 to affect the tonal characteristics of the pedal if you look at the part of the schematics of the two circuits that are similar. I modded a version of a Boss OD-1 circuit to add more low frequencies by changing the values.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the R5 and C3 interact–together, they form an RC filter that defines the frequency at which the bass signal through the gain/clipping stage will begin to be rolled off. However, R5 determines the maximum gain factor for the pedal, with smaller values resulting in an inversely proportional higher available gain. For example, going from the stock 4K7 resistor to a 3K3 will raise the gain factor by about 40% (4.7/3.3). The stock 4K7/0.047uf combination of the Boss pedal yields a bass rolloff frequency of 720Hz, which is the typical Tube Screamer rolloff point. Going to 3K3 and 0.33uf will drop this value substantially to about 146Hz, letting a lot more bass through the gain stage. However, going this low may result in a boomy/muddy sound, particularly with humbucker guitars.
You may want to install SIL sockets in the R4 and C7 solder pads on the board, so that different values can be tried without need for desoldering and resoldering. Once you find alternative values you like for R4 and C7, you can put the stock and new value resistors and caps on DPDT switches to select the different values.
You can use the formula calculators at http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/Low-pass-filter-calculator.php for determining rolloff frequencies.
Say if you want to keep the gain the same, you can use the stock resistor value of 1K, but maybe change the cap to 470nF giving a rolloff frequency of 339Hz. A 680nF cap would drop the rolloff frequency to 234Hz and a 1uF cap to 159Hz. You can use the R value to increase the gain if so desired.
For my OD pedal, I used the stock 4.7K resistor switchable to a 3.3K resistor to increase gain, but that resulted in a rolloff frequency of 1027 Hz with the stock cap of 47nF. The switchable cap values were 47nF (stock value), 68nF and 100nF. With the 3.3K resistor engaged, the 68nF cap produced a rolloff frequency of 709 Hz (close to the default standard for the pedal), and the 100nF cap produced a rolloff frequency of 482 Hz.
I was going to leave the 1.8K R7 off the board as above. I was just confused by the diagram in the build document showing the R7 resistor on the board (circled) when using a CLR (arrow) on the 3PDT board. It didn’t make sense to me.
I did a little research on this and not really sure how to do this, but read in a thread discussing how to hook up reverb tanks that you will likely need a pre-amp and amplifier. It was suggested that you may need a low impedance amp at the input and something with pretty high gain on the output. A jury rig setup would be something like trying a headphone amp feeding the input and a mic amp on the output. I know there are headphone amp kits and on the internet and Parts Express has a mono amp kit that might work. But that is the extent of my very limited knowledge on the subject .
A good reason to have a dash cam. We have one, but don’t use it all the time. Too many idiots out there and social media has not helped the situation.
Where I live there is a bicycle trail that crosses a main road that we drive on nearly every day. There is a bicycle crossing with a button to press for flashing lights so you are alerted that someone is going to be crossing soon. However, there are these macho guys on racing bikes that will blow through the intersection without ever looking or attempting to use the crossing button. The speed limit on the trail is 15 mph, however these guys are flying probably going at least 25 mph. I have seen several near misses. If you hit one of these idiots flying through the crossing, it is your word vs. his and he is going to claim the flashing lights were activated even though they were not. You are now guilty and his attorney is going to sue you to the limits of any policy that covers this or more. Unless of course you have it on video. Then he can’t refute the seeing is believing evidence. Just another reason to have a dash cam.
Updated picture with more shelves added. Enough room to display 19 of the pedals I have built. One treble booster, 11 fuzzes, a fuzz-stortion, two OD’s, one OD/Distortion and 3 Distortions. Eight of the pedals have not been posted on this site, although some are in my avatar picture.
Unfortunately I still have 14 more currently built pedals to show off, including 6 fuzzes, two treble boosters, 4 OD and Distortions, one Filter (stuck wah), one Tremolo, one Chorus, and one two-loop Bypass Looper. Also have the parts to build something like 9 more pedals.
Is the Super Tone TwEQ v1 maybe a PCB that has not been introduced on this site? It might have been a premature release of a new board and it definitely departs from the original Tone TwEQ in that it has 2 IC’s, not one like the original. I don’t find a Super Tone TwEQ board or document anywhere on this site.
Barry will have to answer this one.
OK. My experiment is done. Printed out a few copies of the pedal graphics to be applied on my laser printer with dedicated laser paper. Chose the least desirable ones to experiment with. Just coated a couple of these with Armor All and no smearing. So the Barry method works as advertised, at least with a laser printer and laser specific photopaper. Haven’t tried it with my inkjet printer since I will only do water slide decals with that in the future. The better inkjet photopaper I had is gone as well, not the stuff I used with my previous failed attempt. I have a couple hundred sheets of the not so good inkjet photopaper so I am not going to replenish my supply.
Moral of the story – my experience is that Laser printing on laser photopaper works just fine. If using an inkjet printer to do this, use OEM ink and quality INKJET photopaper such as Kodak, Canon et al. Not the generic stuff that may be cheaper but probably doesn’t work.
The old saying is: if you hear hoof beats behind you, think of horses, not zebras. Its a common saying in medicine that basically means – one should focus on the most likely possibilities, not the unusual ones. Unfortunately in this case I first thought this was a zebra until coming to my senses.
Well duh! It was solder. A couple of minutes with solder wick and the tip of my solder iron, I extracted the tiny amount of solder that had been in the eyelet.
In 15 years of soldering components on boards, I have never come across this before. Yes, I have had solder spilled over from an adjacent pad that looked like a small blob in the hole. But nothing like this where there was such a tiny amount of solder in the hole, that there was a meniscus on each side so it appeared like an incomplete punch out with metal bridging the entire eyelet. Even very close up with a strong magnifier there was no evidence of any marks surrounding the soldered over pad to suggest that solder had bled over from the adjacent pad. Probably a tiny drop that dripped off the tip of the iron falling perfectly into the center of the pad.
Before I read your reply Barry, I turned on my iron and then got out my solder braid and removed the solder and was absolutely surprised. Just the way it appeared close up I didn’t think it was wayward solder, but decided to try a removal just in case before I attempted any other more invasive measures.
Ta da! Now I can complete the pedal.
Jimi, it was fun reading your posts. I’m glad you got your issues resolved and found interesting mods to the fuzz. Now you made me want to try building one of these.
I also just realized who you are. I remember a YouTube video from a few years back made by a guy who built a Heathkit TA-28 circuit on vero that made me want to build one. Lo and behold, it was Jimi Photon!
I ended up building my own modified version of the circuit – my first vero build. Thanks for the inspiration!
LOL. If I had 1500 subscribers and put on my jammies, I think that in a short time I would have Zero subscribers and probably be reported to Youtube as a violation of their decency policy.
Maybe you can find a good looking female to do the videos as long as she can fake playing guitar – sort of like the Robert Palmer “Simply Irresistible” video. Just promise her that it would be her chance to become a Youtube star. Alternatively have a cute, young child do the videos. People fall for the kids pretending to do stuff as well.
Well Barry, I have you beat. Last time I played in a band was in 1985. More like 35 years ago. But I did use my new Gibson Flying V in that situation that replaced my Univox Lawsuit Era Les Paul copy. I still have both guitars. Unfortunately my amp at that time was a crappy Marlboro solid state practice amp miked up and run through the PA. Did not own a decent tube amp until 2000 when I started playing guitar after a long hiatus. Kids and life got in the way.
I played one of those in a music store a few years ago. Great amp, although I did like the Hot Rod Deville a bit better. However, that is a much more expensive amp.
I had the same problem with one of my pedal builds, which was made with veroboard. Two transistor fuzzstortion. My own modifications of a Heathkit TA-28 circuit. The Q1 transistor just wasn’t getting it done so I did a substitution with a comparable transistor. The original schematic called for 2n3391 I found out later wasn’t a typical CBE pin out, but since I couldn’t effectively resocket the 2n3391, I went with the substitute 2n4401, which works fine.
I learned that the pin out was different when I got a transistor tester and discovered the collector, base and emitter arrangement was different than the 2n4401 I tested before it.
