Thanks Marbles!
The reason I made this mess was because I was looking for a simple chorus I could place onboard in a cavity and have it available as a onboard efx. I looked for weeks to find a reliable DIY circuit plan, but found only complicated large boards that didn't really offer any cool options. I did find the angel chorus, and a few others (unverified) and the risk was just too great. Also the thought of using a PT2399 just made me sick (aaahh-choo)
After debates to abandon the idea, I found the Donner pedal (nano) that uses micro electronics and came at a cheap price ($25 inc. shipping) it was a no brainer.
The difficult part was the mod, turns out there are special DPDT switch configs I had to reverse engineer, to make a toggle work right. And the not-so obvious 9v power which had reverse polarity than expected. since the battery option is not available for the pedal, I had to figure out where to place the -9v and that was a mess. After extracting the old component hardware that was unusable, I damaged a lot of the connections, and circuit board (micro soldering is not as easy as it seems)
Finally with the help of a jewelers magnifying headset and a microscope I was able to get a working product that could function off a 9v battery. whew.
I guess the hardest part of this was trying to reverse engineer the circuit layout at a nano perspective. then dealing with multi layer boards- that were painted so I could not see the trace route of most of the components.
Not bad for $25 and a weeks work to make it what I wanted, that for sure.
And to add; the Donner product actually sounds fantastic. And there are functions that normally would have taken up much more space than a regular chorus pedal. All in the size of half the pack of cigarettes it took to get through it.
Winning!
Kind regards,
Gibson RD Artist Sunburst 1977
Serial: 73127030
Built in: 08-nov-1977 (serial: 030) (Manufactured in Kalamazoo)
Marshall VS100 Valvestate Combo