Show your pedal guts!

[MAO]

Squier Princeton Chorus

I gutted and rebuilt a Squier 15G amp I've had stored away for years.

The clean channel preamp, power amp, parallel chorus and power supply are direct clones from the Fender Princeton Chorus.

I also added a Cardinal Harmonic Tremolo where the effects loop would be, a paralleled Rub a Dub Reverb, an Audio In jack with a Headphone pan control.

Sparkling cleans and somehow it's dead quiet.

I may have to add a push/pull overdrive at some point.











 

[fx-fidden]

Fantastic!

Can you tell us something more?
What is the clean preamp? And the chorus? And what is the transistor amp?

[MAO]

Thanks!

I created the layouts for the clean preamp, chorus, power amp, headphone out and power supply using a Fender Princeton Chorus schematic I found online. Schematic dated 5/25/88.

The only deviations are I lowered the Chorus voltage to 12v due to hum at 15v I couldn't resolve. At 12v, no hum. I also doubled the Mids pot value for more available mids, otherwise everything else is faithful to the schematic.

I modified the Rub a Dub Reveb so I could parallel it after the tonestack like the original. I killed the dry path, lowered the input gain and increased the output resistor.

For the Cardinal Trem, I used 5457s and omitted the bypass caps to keep the gain in check. And I omitted the bright mode.

The Audio in and Headphone pan are a simpler spinoff of the Jamman I posted a few years back.

[Axldeziak]

Well shoot. I was hoping you had used the layouts I shared awhile back. Mine was from the Revision B. 7-22-88 schematic (and my actual amp.)

Any chance you could share the layouts you made since they are confirmed?

[fx-fidden]

Good job!

[MAO]

Well, the layouts were designed specifically for this project, not sure how useful they will be as standalones.

Might be better if I email them to you as they are not in the typical tagboards format and may be confusing, prompting a lot of questions.

[Schplatt]

Hey everyone. First post (although relatively long-time lurker and audio tech-meddler for a while now).

Thought I'd show something a little bit different / cool / silly. This is a double-drive pedal made of a Barber Gain Changer paired with a Barber Direct Drive with an order-flipper switch in the middle. It doesn't really make sense to pair these as they're fairly similar, however I already own and love the 'proper' DD as I generally prefer humbuckers, but also wanted to try the GC. Then I realized that if I over-built the enclosure I could have an either-or-both pedal in one enclosure.

The enclosure is somewhat oversized and made of birch plywood (I mess around in the workshop a fair bit and often build my own enclosures as I have an 'algorithm' and a lot of birch plywood kicking around from other projects). It would be less good for travel but most of my effects are home-studio / bedroom affairs to begin with, so I don't really care.

[MAO]

Still suck at taking pics, but here are a few oldies but goodies I made last week.

Hamlet Delay with Optotron Bypass



Super Crunch Box with added EQ bypass



Marvel Drive with added Bright Switch and Optotron bypass

[fx-fidden]

Nice pedals!

What's the schematic and the layout of your Marvel Drive? This is the original layout, but I noticed some extra parts.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GcLSnFgwZB4/U9469KPG0kI/AAAAAAAAIa4/50sLoUoukfY/s1600/Ramble+FX+Marvel+Drive+vertical.png

[MAO]

Thanks fx!
I used the schematic from pedalpcb's Marble Drive and then added a switch for the treble bleed cap. 100pf or 470pf. I also put the charge pump down below on the optotron bypass layout.

I can post them or send them to you if you like

[fx-fidden]

Thanks, Mao.
You could share it if you don't mind.

[MAO]

Done

Let me know if any questions

[Silver Blues]

Gonna inject some life into this thread, lol. Just finished this guy:




It's a modified W&C Phat Phuk with the external Bias pot, but I replaced the JFET input buffer section with a Cornish buffer, and wired it for buffered bypass. I call it the "Bubbly Phuk" (inspired by Taskmaster... 5x06 if anyone wants a laugh). It currently contains a GT2307, which sounded best to me when I was breadboarding the circuit, but I may experiment with transistors later on. One of my neater builds with respect to spaghetti!

[MAO]

That looks great!

[Silver Blues]

Thanks! Sounds nice too. Has a lot of "clean" gain on tap at low bias levels but definitely adds a little something - and it works really well to, as W&C says, add some life to one's tone before it gets digitized when playing right into a DAW. I'm pretty happy with it.

[bowanderror]

The Phat Phuk is one of my favorites as well! The external Bias knob is where the real magic is, it's not an overwhelming sound, but I love the little bit of saturation it provides.

[Silver Blues]

Totally agree! I'm enjoying it a lot.

[MAO]

VFE Blueprint + Madbean Moodring '17 + Slostortion Boost
With TH Custom Effects bypass Opto Switching (ICs mounted on copper side)





Dual loop AB+Y switching, with a momentary switch that places effects in series (Y)
Also with TH Custom's Opto Switching

 

[MAO]

5-Knob compressor with added Jangle switch

A CA3080 version I had sold in 2017 come in for service (loose output jack), so I offered to upgrade it to a quieter/smoother LM13700 version.

Forgot how nice these sound.

 

[Silver Blues]

It's the Briggs Diamante compressor (simplified version of the Diamond compressor) but built to the specs of the bass version. I designed and had a custom PCB fabricated to fit inside this enclosure after running into some problems with the circuit. Now it works fine and looks even better! Stonework paint courtesy of my partner again (another great job). Quite happy with how this turned out!

A note also for those that have been having trouble with the Diamante. With the stock build as can be found on the main page, I was getting a hellish, farting distortion at high compression settings (completely unusable), as several people pointed out. I was also using the Xvive VTL5C3 workalike, but neither using a home-rolled vactrol instead, nor switching to an 18v supply, nor trying lower Vf diodes ameliorated the issue at all. After some long-winded investigating on the breadboard, I discovered that the envelope detector in this circuit is simply really cantankerous, and doesn't have very good ripple rejection - what fixed my problem was increasing the ripple suppressor capacitor from 2.2uF to 10+ uF (I ended up using a 22uF), since 2u2 isn't enough to smooth the ripple at high compression settings (if you remove the capacitor completely you can see how terrible it is). Doing this slows the decay a bit too but I'm okay with it the way it stands. I also had good success with a GL5539 and a waterclear green LED.