What are your weekend projects?

[Chris60601]

This goes along with the previous music thread. I'm curious what y'all are working on.

Me, I had 2 epic fails on small projects so I packed up the gear and opted to etch up a dozen PCB's.
Maybe Saturday will be better for building. In any event, here's a preview.

[Ciaran Haslett]

Here's my next week tied up...



Fitting and wiring an EDM production/training studio.  Bit of a learning curve with regards to CV inputs and, well, MIDI in general, but good craic all the same.

They're a local promotion company who also run some great "Off the Streets" youth programs and they finally got funding to make a studio.  Check out some of the boxes!

Currently laying out the workflow and making up some cables. Looking forward to Monday to open up all the toys and have a play

[Silver Blues]

Damn that's some project

[Travis]

Can you smell what the rock is cookin?

[bogey]

Travis,
I have no idea what you're building there but I just wee'ed a little bit and then went green with envy.

SUPERMOJOTASTIC

[rocket88]

Travis wrote

Can you smell what the rock is cookin?

i'm actually cooking a whole roast chicken right now for dinner.

[Chris60601]

If I heard correctly, I think rocket just invited us all over for dinner

[Travis]

lol ok a little progress. I don't have the enclosure I'm going to use yet though so maybe I can finish it next weekend :P it's a MKII tone bender



Rocket, that sounds tasty. I'm imagining it like a straight up ronco commercial

[Chris60601]

Good Lord! Look at that!
Look at that!!!!
Look at that AWESOME piece of Vero!!!!

LOL

[Silver Blues]

Duuuuude that looks so awesome!

[bogey]

It's not an enclosure you need......it's a frame...........that's ART mate!

[Chris60601]

As you recall, I etched a Sabbra Cadabra PCB. Here's my first attempt at etching an enclosure.

I found a nice image of Tony Iomi that I hope will work. If not, I can always decal it.
So, here's the original image along with the blue'd enclosure.

[motterpaul]

That is a great looking circuit, Travis. I can see the TGP crowd creaming over that pic. Are you getting your  Mullards from that guy on eBay in "Great Britain?" - I noticed a lot of his old Mullards have insulated wire on the leads.

Have any of you bought from this guy? He seems to have a lot of good stuff.

I personally built two pieces from "Germanium Giant" thread (the original Rocket one, and then the last one in the thread) yesterday. Both work but my AC125s are not optimized for that circuit (I need to try measuring more of them, all I have ready now are pretty high in hFE). Actually, I think I need a different Ge tran.

[Silver Blues]

motterpaul wrote

Both work but my AC125s are not optimized for that circuit (I need to try measuring more of them, all I have ready now are pretty high in hFE). Actually, I think I need a different Ge tran.

Perhaps, but depending on what aspect of the tone you're not satisfied with you'll likely be able to remedy something by tweaking the emitter resistor as suggested in that thread. Use like a 5K trimmer and start testing.

Also Travis what are the chances of putting that in an acrylic or polycarbonate box? It deserves to be shown off

[Travis]

Thanks. I'm not sure which seller you're talking about really. I've gotten Mullards from multiple sellers in the UK. They're uncommon to find in the US



Did you invert the polarity for your AC125s? Most of the layouts in there are for NPN transistors

[Travis]

Thanks. I'm just gonna throw it in a nice powdercoated Hammond. I don't really have any idea of where to buy a see through box that's durable and nice and the right size and everything

[rocket88]

travis is correct. all of the layouts, except the one that i made with the built in power inverter on i think page 2, are NPN. if you build the last one from neil, and the main one from me the effect wont work right with PNP transistors.

[motterpaul]

Hey - you are right about the UK sellers, when I was doing a search on Mullards I only happened to click on one guy, but I see more now. I messaged that guy because he had about $5.25 shipping fee to the US, so I asked if he combined orders under one shipping. he said his shopping carts does it automatically.

As far as polarity on the Germ Giant - yes, I have been inverting them because otherwise they didn't work. The last one with two Qs doesn't specify polarity - it only says Q1 & Q2, I saw that it was a neg ground build with no inverter, so I assumed it was built for inverted PNPs, I did not see where it specified NPNs.

I will have to read up on NPN Ge trans. I keep running into surprises with these builds  

PS: the first one I built has an inverter built in.

[motterpaul]

Chris - I was never able to get rid of the noise with the Sabra build. I am using PN2393s - it sounds good, but I feel the noise floor is too much.

Did having a PCB or boxing the effect lower the noise level?

[rocket88]

if you read the whole thread, we started with the regular green giant, which is an NPN Si based effect, which we then subbed the NPN Si for an MP38A Ge transistor which is NPN. it was kind of implied that the effect was still NPN since it's not mentioned as being PNP. also, you mentioned that you built it, and saw it was negative ground that means it would use an NPN transistor. PNP means that the effect has a positive ground.

if you built the one with the inverter then you should still have it as a positive ground. so make sure you didn't accidentally mess up the power.

 as it grew in design, neils is a variation of the same concept based on the schematic i drew above it. i think he even mentioned in his write up of it that he changed Q2 from a MP38A for a tesla NPN because 2 MP38A's were too dark. i believe most of us are using transistors with gains between 60-80hfe. i haven't tried anything higher, but that could also be part of the issue, but not sure.