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Would anyone know a good online resource for an idiot beginner learning to troubleshoot or test circuits? I'm breadboarding a basic bass fuzz and I have a vague idea what's wrong, bit no idea which part of the circuit would be causing it.
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Jul 4, 2020 04:27
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A package showed up today. I didn't order a package. It has 100 Thonk jacks in it. I ordered that back in February from China. It was from Kentucky.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:48
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Getting Ten of these breadboard style PCBs made and shipped from China, is cheaper than buying 2 smaller [half-sized] ones locally. Last time I ordered boards they arrived within a week, but that was before coronavirus 
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Jul 21, 2020 06:08
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So I paid $600 for a reactive load box (Captor X) and I love it to pieces. I was wondering just what made them different from a plain ol’ resistive load box in terms of circuit design. I already knew it was meant to recreate the resonance/curve of a “standard” speaker like a v30 but was unsure how (I figured LCR). I tracked down the Suhr Reactive Load schematic and was pleasantly surprised by its simplicity. Which pretty much duplicates the design here (except with 16ohm network instead of 8ohm): https://www.aikenamps.com/index.php/designing-a-reactive-speaker-load-emulator Given this, one could easily build their own and with much higher wattage rating for a lot less than $600. Edit: I love that a diode drives a fan when the current crosses the Vf threshold. Clever!
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Sep 13, 2020 17:21
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Newest project just for shits and giggles since I don't think it's worth much of anything just practice.    The bridge and top on this guitar is super hosed I'm removing the bridge and will attempt to reverse the bulging of the top. I think the actual bridge plate (under) the top is in ok shape I need an inspection mirror to see for sure. If that all fails to correct it completely I'll cobble together a DIY version of the bridge doctor that Stew-Mac sells.
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Oct 17, 2020 18:58
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 Couldn't get the top to flatten out just via pressure so cobbled together a bridge Dr like object. Test fitted it last night and it works to bring the top back flat. Getting ready to re-glue the bridge and fit it permanently. Luckily this bridge was already attatched with screws so I didn't have to drill the bridge I just am re-using the holes already present and replugging them with the pearl dots that were covering them previously
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Oct 22, 2020 16:52
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I put together this little bleep bloop machine last week: (edit, it's a Bleep Drum from Bleep Labs: https://bleeplabs.com/product/the-bleep-drum/) I was psyched that everything worked, and it's been a nice thing to mess around with at lunch. Much easier to get into than the pocket operators, in my opinion! I'm looking for another fun soldering project, and think a 'Single Knob Fuzz' pedal might be a good place to start (but would also be up for another little synth type thing if anyone has any suggestions?). For the pedal I found this kit (https://www.pedalpartsandkits.com/okf/), but also found just the board available for much less (https://guitarpcb.com/product/one-knob-fuzz/). Will I save that much sourcing the parts and enclosure myself, or should I just go for the kit? Also, the https://buildyourownclone.com/ kits seem nice but they're almost all out of stock. Anywhere else I should look? frogbs fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Oct 22, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2020 19:26
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Kits can be very expensive so I would suggest sourcing your own parts, especially for something as simple as a fuzz face which is what all the one knob fuzzes are. That said, if you are not comfortable shopping on mouser or other sites, the kits buy you peace of mind that you can just get down to business when it arrives. Btw what is that synth and where can I buy the kit? Lol Dang It Bhabhi! fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 22, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2020 19:33
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Dang It Bhabhi! posted:Kits can be very expensive so I would suggest sourcing your own parts, especially for something as simple as a fuzz face which is what all the one knob fuzzes are. That said, if you are not comfortable shopping on mouser or other sites, the kits buy you peace of mind that you can just get down to business when it arrives. Oh yeah, should have linked it, it's the Bleep Drum from Bleep Labs! https://bleeplabs.com/product/the-bleep-drum/ And thanks, i'll give mouser a try!
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Oct 22, 2020 19:45
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A lot of the expense of kits is the enclosures, knobs, etc... Nobody says you have to use a traditional hammond style box. I use electrical boxes from home depot for pedals all the time. Once you paint and lable them they look fine. If it's just for personal use who cares what it looks like I always paint and whatnot because it's fun.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:56
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Some of the best project boxes are made out of "garbage"
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Oct 23, 2020 23:48
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 Surgery was successful!  In addition to fixing the belly problem I leveled, recrowned, and polished the frets. Fitted a new saddle, cut a new nut, fixed some cracks in the top including along the side where it had come apart that necessitated splicing in a new piece of binding and gave it a good polishing all over. Nut and saddle heights need to be adjusted yet but I'm letting it sit with some tension on it for a few days before I do any more set up.
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Oct 25, 2020 03:57
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Thumposaurus posted:
I love old Japan guitars. That seafoam BC Rich bass looks pretty choice as well. Good job.
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Oct 26, 2020 19:59
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Thanks! It was a fun project I think it still needs a wedge or ramp under the fingerboard extension if not a full neck reset the extension that goes over the body dips down and the action is considerably higher from about the 12th fret down. The acoustic behind the warlock is a Nagoya 12 string I got at a thrift store all I've had to do with it was change out the tuners for some non lovely non broken ones. It stays in tune forever. The BC Rich was a basket case I bought as the body only off of eBay years ago. The guy threw in the neck for free he said it was twisted it looked straight when I got it. The body and neck both were spray painted black with metal studs hammered around the bevels. I stripped it and found remnants of hot pink paint on the neck and neon green on the body. The body was also at some point in its life routed out for a bass kahler trem. It had been filled in with a block of wood when I got it and it looked pretty solid so I left it be. In the last few years that block has started to pull out. I'll either need to re-route and replug it or some how find a kahler that doesn't cost $500 to mount in the route. I finished it with the sea foam just because I thought it'd be funny to have a "metal" guitar that color. Oh also the guy that previously owned it sent a terrible CD of his along with it. He claimed he used to play with Marilyn Manson 
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Oct 26, 2020 20:22
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This is a bummer. If you wanted a great sounding transformer for non-Mercury prices, Classictone were an awesome choice. Heyboer will most likely become the new de facto transformer alongside Hammond. 
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Oct 31, 2020 14:59
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I've never done any modifications to an instrument before, but I've got a Gibson LP Jr. that came with goddamn plastic tuning pegs and I've been wanting to replace them. Is that something a complete novice could handle, or would I be better off taking it to someone who knows what they're doing?
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Oct 31, 2020 18:34
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Dangerous Minority posted:I've never done any modifications to an instrument before, but I've got a Gibson LP Jr. that came with goddamn plastic tuning pegs and I've been wanting to replace them. Is that something a complete novice could handle, or would I be better off taking it to someone who knows what they're doing? A complete novice can do it. I replaced the crap tuners on a low-end SG clone with Hipshot tuners in less than 10 minutes. They make it very easy.
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Oct 31, 2020 19:28
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Hey everyone. I've recently been starting to build my own pedals (just ordering DIY clones and putting them together) and I have a quick question. I'm wiring this PCB and had a question about the instructions: the wires that go from the input/output jacks to ground on the board, do I just solder them onto the part of the board where the ground symbol is, or do I need to do something special to actually ground it? Maybe I'm not understanding how ground works. 
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Nov 8, 2020 20:19
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Kvlt! posted:I'm wiring this PCB and had a question about the instructions: the wires that go from the input/output jacks to ground on the board, do I just solder them onto the part of the board where the ground symbol is, or do I need to do something special to actually ground it? Maybe I'm not understanding how ground works. Assuming the PCB has holes marked ground where the diagram shows, just connect them like every other wire. Technically speaking you’re not actually “grounding” anything here, but it doesn’t really matter.
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Nov 8, 2020 20:37
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Got it, thank you! Just for curiosity/learning purposes, why does the PCB board say ground if its not actually grounded?
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Nov 8, 2020 20:44
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A voltage is a difference in charge potentials. The positive side is going to be 9V relative to the "ground" end (sometimes also referred to as "mass" because "ground" is basically just something really big that can accept a lot of charge). Ideally all your gear would actually be hooked up to the same common ground, but because of a lot of different things that's usually not the reality of it. So you can basically say anything connected to "ground" should be understood to be connected to the negative rail in a DC circuit.
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Nov 8, 2020 21:02
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ah got it, that makes sense. Thank you!
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Nov 8, 2020 21:17
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Election anxiety gave rise to building a “Trash Face” out of stuff I had lying around.     Messy guts but it sounds awesome and took my mind off of things. The enclosure is a repurposed knife stone sharpener thing case and the transistors are old NPN germaniums.
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Nov 9, 2020 18:49
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what material is the "board"? Cardboard? That's wicked cool I love frankensteined pedals
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Nov 9, 2020 18:59
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It’s vulcanized fiberboard for making circuits: https://www.amplifiedparts.com/products/fiberboard-vulcanized-3-x-15-062-thick
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Nov 9, 2020 19:57
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that's the good poo poo right there
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Nov 9, 2020 23:44
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Dang It Bhabhi! posted:It’s vulcanized fiberboard for making circuits: Thats dope! What's the blue gunky stuff on top? Sorry if im pestering you with questions im just new to pedal building and trying to learn all the different ways people build them. So far Im aware of PCBs, breadboards, and terminal strips but havent seen vulcanized rubber before
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Nov 9, 2020 23:54
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Kvlt! posted:Thats dope! What's the blue gunky stuff on top? Lol it’s just Blu-Tack. Not the best solution but it works to insulate the back of the pot on something I’m admittedly calling a trash face. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FGLX72/ Dang It Bhabhi! fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Nov 10, 2020 |
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Nov 10, 2020 02:04
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About a year ago I rolled a Eurorack linear PSU. The circuit is pretty similar to what you'll find for other units like this except mine was broken into these annoying sub units to meet the sub-100mm fab house cut. Great if you need a spare DC regulator unit handy, not so great for things like safety and wire runs. Taking some cues from Doepfer's PSU2 I sent this combined unit to the fab house: It's potentially configurable. Baseline model takes a 2.08A 24V center-tap into LM317 & LM337 but I chose a family of heatsinks that all fit in the same footprint. The thermal math works out for a larger transformer & heatsink but that's a test for later (and a higher current regulator like LM350). The 5V regulator just hangs off the side since it only needs a small slip-on heatsink. Next up are busboards with PPTC fuses. The regulators have some overcurrent/overvoltage protection but I'm going to feel safer with fuses on the DC side as well. E: For those with eyes drawn to the edges, the faston connector width was tested IRL and I insulate my connectors EBB fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Nov 21, 2020 |
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Nov 21, 2020 19:03
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Finally finished my baritone flying V project. It started with a cheap poplar V body of ebay about 8 years ago. I built the neck from scratch 5 piece maple/cocobolo, cocobolo fretboard, Corian nut. 28 1/2 scale I forget how I settled on that number it's been awhile since I worked on it. I wasn't happy with the finish for a long time and just gave up on it. Then I moved a few times and didn't have space to work on anything. I finally got my shop area set up during quarantine and have been whittling down my project pile. The finish cracked in a few places and I can't be assed to strip it down and start over so I drop filled the cracks with super glue and sanded everything flat and polished it out it looks kinda cool now. Pick-ups are some Epiphone ones out of a smashed up SG. Eventually I get something better I just wanted to get it finished and playable.   Have it tuned BEADF#b for now it's got that baritone twang and it can do s good heavy grind too. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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Nov 22, 2020 15:41
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That's awesome. Did you have a template for the neck or did you make your own? Is it essentially a flying v neck, just longer?
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Nov 27, 2020 04:19
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I figured out what scale and how many frets I wanted and used an online fret spacing calculator to spit out the measurements. I got my brother to draw up a slotting guide in CAD cause I'm too dumb to do it myself. It was just a one off so I taped that to the fret board and sliced through it to mark the fret locations and then used the fret saw to get them the correct depth. After that it was just measuring from the nut area to end of the scale to figure out where the bridge goes. I got it almost exactly right even with out adjusting the saddles the intonation is dead on except the 4th string needs adjusted a little. The headstock I made a mdf template to route it out. Same with the truss rod cover. I had to thin the neck blank down at the headstock so I used that cut off piece to make the cover so the laminations lined up. I did realize after I plugged it into my big amp I forgot the ground wire to the metal V plate. I had the hole drilled already I just hadn't run the wire before I screwed it down. 5 mins later I had it fixed.
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Nov 27, 2020 06:16
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Cool. Did you use ekips fretfinder? I've been fiddling around with scales for a DIY bass and that lets you make pdf's. Did you have to angle the neck (relative to the body) or is it pretty much flat, like basses tend to be?
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Nov 27, 2020 07:18
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I used this one https://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator The neck is angled with some washers in the bottom 2 screw holes. The bridge type is usually what determines how much neck angle you need. Fender style bridges can be flatter while Gibson and other bridge/tail piece designs need an angled neck to be able to have low action. There's a formula around for determining the angle needed based on bridge height etc.... but this being a bolt on I just trial and errored my way around it.
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Nov 27, 2020 09:17
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That's a nifty way to shim!
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Nov 27, 2020 17:47
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EBB posted:About a year ago I rolled a Eurorack linear PSU. The circuit is pretty similar to what you'll find for other units like this except mine was broken into these annoying sub units to meet the sub-100mm fab house cut. Great if you need a spare DC regulator unit handy, not so great for things like safety and wire runs. Taking some cues from Doepfer's PSU2 I sent this combined unit to the fab house: This is really cool and yea I was thinking those connectors were close lol. Amazing attention to detail. Also, Baritone project is just so cool I have no words.
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Nov 27, 2020 19:32
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EBB posted:About a year ago I rolled a Eurorack linear PSU. drat, that's quite impressive. I never got around to building a PSU out of a transformer myself, and probably for the best since it would be the first thing I ever made that connects directly to 240V mains. In the meantime I've been struggling to even get my Baby8 sequencer working like I want it to. The idea was to get the incoming clock and AND it together with a 'gate' signal (taken from the counter's active step via a switch) via a circuit that I saw in a module by Yves Usson:  It works, but the problem is that the clock is also what increments the counter. So, on an active step there is a split second between the clock going high for the next step and the 'gate' going low, and I get a little trigger from that at the end of each active step. I've been looking for a way to delay the incoming clock ever so slightly to prevent this, and after a bit of breadboarding and kludging an extra resistor & capacitor kind of seemed to work:  Unfortunately, after building the circuit anew like this it turns out that my problem isn't solved at all: for one, the additional 22K resistor creates a divider that pushes the output to >1V when just the gate signal is high, and I'm probably also delaying the counter incrementing (it is also clocked by the Schmitt trigger's output). Is there any other way I can approach this?
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Nov 28, 2020 17:01
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I chain some hex inverter stages in series whenever I need to marginally delay a clock signal (and sharpen up their edges). Not sure if that would work in this particular instance, though.
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Nov 28, 2020 19:33
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Sick neck. Carpentry like that is neat and having maybe one shot at a piece is what keeps me away. Also, super noisy for apartment life. PSU came back from fab, built one unit that tested fine but need to swap in 35V filter caps. It's not L-1 quality but we're mostly there with maybe a few things that annoyed me post-build. Busboard circuitry is done and I'm just fiddling with art now.  Re: The Baby 8 Scratching my head and reading over this one for a bit now. You can calculate the delay caused by the low pass filter added in the second drawing since it's going to be based on the time it takes for the potential to come back up and push past the diodes. Is GATE just the reset signal coming from the end of the counter? Could we see the rest of the schematic? Check out Ray Wilson's Baby 16, he uses low pass filters after hex inverters. 
EBB fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 22:14
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Thanks for the replies! The GATE is essentially the 'Gate Bus (GB)' in Ray's schematic, a bunch of switches that connect to each of the counter's outputs (a CD4017 in my case). I didn't think of using a Schmitt trigger inverter to delay the clock, if memory serves me Ray did exactly that in his Quantizer as well. To get an idea of how bad the issue was I poked around a bit with my scope, seems like the overlap in signals between CLOCK going high for the next step and GATE going low is in the order of 10 - 20 µs (more than I expected). With a propagation delay of ~300 ns per inverter that's never going to fit on my board and hooking up six stages in series didn't help, but breadboarding a bit more has resulted in this:  (the diode would be part of the AND gate in the previous schematic) Come to think of it I probably wouldn't even need the resistor on the right (the input is high impedance?) but it works like a charm! e: just ran into this very circuit in the datasheet  
Sinecure fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 13:05
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