Still awake and built a pedal

[Silver Blues]

Early morning shitpost... I had a pre-drilled 1590B and a pre-wired stomp switch left over from a failed project and I got tired of seeing them laying around unused so I decided to challenge myself and build a pedal using only things I had on hand. the major restrictions were a) use three knobs and an SPDT or SPST toggle, b) I only have A1M, A500K and B20K pots and c) don't buy anything. At first I tried designing my own circuit but wasn't into it enough to come up with something sufficiently interesting (as well as worth my time to build) using only what I knew I had. So I looked in my to-do list and fell upon the Fromel D.I.G. At this point I just wanted to build something so I overlooked the fact that there was no switch in it nor is there a place I really want to put a switchable option and amassed the parts. Have no B500K for the volume so I used an A1M instead, and had no B25K for the tone but fuck it 20K is close enough. Only had one open mono jack... found an old 9-lug stereo jack that I shoehorned in there. Surprised I found the right nut and washer for the thing. No 28pF so used a 27. Cut a shard of vero from an almost unusable scrap. Tip on my Pro-Point decided to not cooperate today and I had a hell of a time trying to solder the thing up, was raging so hard at the iron I soldered in more than one component the entirely wrong way and had to redo. I'm sure there's more than one joint in there that isn't up to my own standards. Spent all day doing it... Burned myself a few times... In the end, though, it came out looking alright, but then I realized two things... one I don't have a single DC power jack anywhere, so now I have to spend a whole $1.30 to finish my otherwise free pedal, and 2; I've only got one 1/4" mono cable with me right now.

So I really hope the things works after all the blood, sweat and tears. I guess I'll know Monday. If I have to swap components for low-end retention I'm going to lose my shit. Lol

Yep I had one of those days

[Silver Blues]

Holy fuck it works. And sounds actually nice. Color me surprised.

I didn't really need to make this thread  god I was tired. lol

[IvIark]

Ha ha, awesome.  And I'm glad you made this thread, I may have missed it originally but things like this are a good reminder that you can use something different, or some components that you salvaged from an old television and often the effect will still sound great, and maybe even better than the original did with values selected by someone else based on HIS opinion.

In fact I think we should do a junk build challenge.  Who can make the best effect, be it exact to a circuit, or bastardised to suit values, but only using parts that were salvaged from a broken PC internal power supply!  Last time I opened one up there was a shit load of cool looking stuff in there.  The only thing you can add from your own stash are usual offboard parts and pots.  What does everyone reckon?

[Silver Blues]

Oh man I have a monster stash of old circuit boards, many of them, coincidentally enough, from old televisions  I haven't built a pedal yet that wasn't at least 30% salvaged stuff.

(Actually, that's not quite true, since I finally finished one of my originals (that I will introduce if ever I get the enclosure done) that has all new stuff on it. I love it, I think you guys will too. Standby.)

Plus, tweaking is the best part of building it yourself, you can make it the way you want it. And yes, junk build challenge would be sick  I'd love to see the results of that.

[rocket88]

scared, but i'ld give it a shot. what would be the criteria for judging? neatness? sound? does the enclosure have to be salvaged or at least something else? do the transistors/ic's have to be salvaged?

also, silver got to love the rant about what happened. i've done it too, probably too much. i mean i think i went oh a huge rant about the GT404's i got as soon as i tested them, or the one about spending something like 2 days debugging a pedal only to find out that i had no transistors in it . i think making posts like these helps put things in perspective, plus i think anyone new to the hobby sees that we all drive ourselves nuts, and do stupid shit, no matter how long we've been building.

[IvIark]

Well I think the best way to judge is everyone competing gets a vote but can't vote for himself.  Can't get any fairer than that!

Last time I opened one up there seemed to be quite a few transistors in there, so I reckon we stick to what is there.  Or it doesn't have to be a PC PSU, I only mentioned that because I thought there did seem to be cool stuff in there.  Maybe any salvaged board?

[Frank_NH]

Hmmm.  I have an old TASCAM multi-track recorder that I was going to trash.  That wouldn't be fair, though, since there are a lot of nice op amps and audio grade parts in there .

Actually, one thing I like about the DIY pedal hobby is repurposing old, junked electronics that would normally end up in the landfill.  I love scoring NOS parts from the internet knowing that under normal circumstances someone not knowing any better would have tossed them in the trash pile.  Hey, 100 nF box caps are actually worth something??? Heh!

[Silver Blues]

Yeah, I hardly ever throw away broken/scrap electronics unless the board is all SMD (that's annoying). There's almost always something good.