Mounting leds

[Marbles]

After seeing some amazing builds in the 'show your pedal guts'- thread, I was wondering:

How do you guys mount your leds without a bevel? On some pedals I would like to have none, just the led sticking out.
If you use a pcb with the pots and leds attached I can see it happening. But with veroboard?

How do you guys do it? Glue? From the top/bottom etc?

Any tips are welcome! :)

[Ciaran Haslett]

I stopped using bezels a while ago as it was just another expensive part to buy.  I now do it one of 2 ways...

Drill a 3 mill hole and fly wire the LED to it and glue from inside the box or

Fit LED and CLR to a small cut of vero and wire up supply and ground and drill hole.  This small board gives more contact for the glue and is neater looking in general but I've never had a problem doing it the first way.

[Muadzin]

It costs me $0.08 to buy a metal 3mm LED bezel from Tayda, $0.16 for a 5mm bezel. No way in hell that I'm going to fiddle with glue, which also costs money, just to save that. Besides, I like the LED in a bezel look, plus bezels allow me to reuse me the LED's or swap them for different colors.

[Ciaran Haslett]

You've never shopped in Maplin. £1.54 STG

[Marbles]

Thanks! The veroboard is a great idea. I can imagine that saves a lot of time finnicking with heatshrinks.. have the resistor on there as well..hm. Plus it's flatter than a bezel as well, which is more convenient too. Thank you!

It's not really about saving costs to be honest, i just like it better in some graphics. Maybe too busy with aesthetics, but sometimes a bezel sticks out like a sore thumb to me. So I was considering if it's worth to take a different approach sometimes.

[Synsound]

You could always buy the 3PDT boards. Most have a LED hookup.

[Travis]

If you drill the hole slightly smaller than the LED and then push the LED firmly into the hole from the back, you can get it to stick with no glue. If you do it right it will be extremely tight but you could put some glue also

[Marbles]

I did try that... once :D

But, here comes the embarrassing part, I wasn't able to figure it out.. Like, seriously haha.

In my mind, I have a powersupply. I need a resistor from the powersupply to the anode+ of the led. The cathode- is connected to the switch.

In this example, I had to connect the resistor to the switch/pcb. The cathode- to the switch and the anode+ directly to the powersupply. I didn't work that way. My lack of basic electronics just did not understand how this was going to work, so after a lot of soldersucking i could finally pry it off of my expensive 3pdt switch ;)

Maybe in the future I will, I did start with the basics of electronics

[Marbles]

I could try that too. Lots of enclosure that I drilled wrong and you can only have so much testrigs haha

[Kinski]

I usually put the LED near the 3PDT switch. So I just run the LED leg from the 3PDT straight to the LED hole. That alone, keeps it in place nicely. No glue, tape, bezel, etc.

[Kinski]

Check out page 8 of madbean's tutorial. I do this exact thing.

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/downloads/BabyBoardGuide.pdf

[Silver Blues]

I just drill a hole and glue. I like the aesthetic.

[lasermonkey]

Please forgive me for just popping up unannounced, but I finally had something pertinent to share!
I had a pedal build with an intermittent fault that was driving me crazy until I realised what was going on. I had drilled a hole and mounted a Tayda 3mm directly to the enclosure. The LED legs were poking through the side of the LED itself, causing it to short against the enclosure. It took me bloomin' ages to find that! I've also had that happen with a Kingbright pink waterclear LED too.
Maybe something to look out for. Forewarned is forearmed and all that!

[Travis]

Kinski wrote

I usually put the LED near the 3PDT switch. So I just run the LED leg from the 3PDT straight to the LED hole. That alone, keeps it in place nicely. No glue, tape, bezel, etc.

Many players don't like this because it puts the LED under your foot where you can't see it during switching.

This is the kind of shit I start thinking about after building for super picky customers.. Jack placement and switch placement and LED placement.. Who knew it was such a big deal

[Kinski]

Huh, weird. I get wanting to see the indicator LED (obviously), but I dont get why you need to see if for that quick moment your foot is on the pedal to switch on/off.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Travis [via Guitar FX Layouts] <[hidden email]> wrote:

Kinski wrote

I usually put the LED near the 3PDT switch. So I just run the LED leg from the 3PDT straight to the LED hole. That alone, keeps it in place nicely. No glue, tape, bezel, etc.

Many players don't like this because it puts the LED under your foot where you can't see it during switching.

This is the kind of shit I start thinking about after building for super picky customers.. Jack placement and switch placement and LED placement.. Who knew it was such a big deal

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[rocket88]

i do the same thing. i keep the LED right next to the stomp switch. you can still see it when you hit the switch cause i like my LEDs to be bright. but who would have thought people would be that crazy about an LEDs placement when buying a pedal.

[Marbles]

Thanks for all the replies! Really helpful.

Placement of the leds.. Yeah, it's bizarre.. I was amazed when I read an review about a DeathByAudio pedal, and the reviewer said that the placement of the led next to the switch is one of the things that made the company stand out cause they were so thoughtful for placing it there. So it was easy to see if the pedal was in the back of your board.
I like their pedals, but wow...
Some people take it seriously I guess.. In the end a matter of taste I think.

[Travis]

Ultimately, if you can't tell that it's on just by using your ears then wtf is the point?? People, man..

[Beaker]

"Ultimately, if you can't tell that it's on just by using your ears then wtf is the point?? People, man.."

I know what you mean!

I don't like bezels, I have more problems getting LEDs to stay in place in a bezel, than I ever have done when not using a bezel. If someone wants a bezel I will fit one, but I don't use them otherwise.

I'm with Travis - I have a drill bit that cuts just under 3mm, and I use a slot head screwdriver between the legs to push the LED into the hole. Once in, it's going nowhere.

I often hard wire the leg straight to the switch lug too, If not, I use prewired LEDs, that I find more convenient for the minimal extra cost.

[M. Spencer]

I've been debating abandoning the bezel in favor of the small hole/glue method. Anyone have any experience with this method failing and the LED popping back through the enclosure?