Your most difficult build

[JaviCAP]

Hi mates!

After dealing with some builds that can be defined a pure pain in the ass, would like to ask you which ones have been your pesonal cross to make it work / build:

My list (from most to less difficult, but all a PITA):

1. Lovetone Meatball: Worked at first try, but dealing with two hand made octocouplers, 4 rotaries, 6 pots and 6 jacks plus the most difficult offboard wiring I've ever faced, makes this build my worst nighmare. Took two days to finish the circuit + wiring and a whole week to get the enclosure and all the jacks correctly wired. Next build will be with a musicpcb board, no doubt.

2. Mu-tron III: More than a month to make it work. Besides, a defective C1M pot was close to drive me mad previous I discovered the problem. Well, this is a very difficult build, now it's maybe my favourite pedal, but can't forget this month of suffering.

3. Fuzz Factory. Not by all means a difficult build, but was my second pedal after the typical Fuzz Face. The board is easy but the offboard wiring left me really shocked. Took a week to build and make it work.


Finally, don't know why, nearly all my bigger builds, up to 80 components, have worked at first try, but i seem to have a big problem with the most easy ones. Whenever I'm going to build a little fuzz or an easy effect under 15 components, no fail: it won't work until a serious and time consuming debug.

BR

[GoranP]

Until I start my set of Lovetone clones that I've been wanting to do for a long time now, my most difficult build has been a Clari+Clari+Deep Blue in a 1790NS.
Other than that it's been mostly brain farts on simple builds and a still unresolved issue with Harald's Oberheim.

I think I posted the pics before but here you go again:

[Stinger25]

Wow Goran, you're not human!!!
My most hadr build was Stone Grey Distortion + Switchable Active 3 Band EQ + Boost. So it was 7 pots, toggle switch and 2 stompswitches. All that in 1590bb

[GoranP]

Thanks Felix!

And you know what's the funny part? That was my third-ever build.
Talk about biting off more than I could chew...

I'd probably do things a bit neater if I were to do it again, but other than that I'm pretty satisfied with it. It fired right up, too! All three of them, I boxed them without ever testing any of them! I figured what the heck....

[johnk]

probably my most difficult builds were the himmelstrutz fetto (because of the 10 contact DIP switch), the Toneczar Openhaus  (over 100 components!), the Magnus Modulus (lots of pots and switches),  and the Pigtronix philosphers twin germanium since I had to add an additional preamp to get it's level up to par.

[alltrax74]

Sansamp GT2 here
But really worth the pain

[Surgeon]

The most frustrating one for me: BlackCat OD-1... for real. I mean, I got all my bigger builds working fine first time around (like the Triple-wreck and such). Still, I had to give up on this one believe it or not... frustrating to say the least.

Also:  everything with Jfets is giving me headaches nowadays. I seem to be completely incompetent with these compared to all of you folks. Maybe it's the quality of the j201s and 5457 I have on hand but I never get them working properly 100%.

[PStevenson]

I don't have a picture because it was before digital cameras were available. but my most difficult build was a 28kbps modem for my computer.
my dad wouldn't buy us one cause he was a tight bastard. so I made one on stripboard - it was almost the size of an A4 piece of paper and it worked for about 3 years (the computer broke at that point) so it was dismantled and used for other stuff

[Madferret]

I think mine's got to be the Nurse Quacky I started to build before the layout had been verified, with some (ok, a lot) of help from Miro I got it to fire up properly after a day or so. In a bizarre way having to figure out the problems made it sound more awesome when it was working.  Oh and Goran - that pedal looks frickin' mental! I've got a box a similar size for a delay/phaser/trem that an old mate of mine's asked for, maybe I'll have something equally nuts by the end of the week.

[GoranP]

Thanks MF! What you can't see underneath is that each led has that little AMZ antipop thingy, each on a separate piece of vero. Now that I think back to it, it was a fun build with quite a lot of cursing. :)
I could have planned it a bit better but I like it nevertheless.

Looking forward to your build, please share when it's done!

[GoranP]

Wow Paul, a modem! That thing takes me back... my first modem was a 2400kbps (internal) and it filled up the entire pc slot...

I also remember a Sinclair ZX81 (a 1kb machine) that a friend's dad build a 16k RAM expansion board for. The board itself was twice the size the entire ZX81 so you had to prop it against something so it wouldn't tip over.

Fun times....

[Geiri]

Sansamp GT2 here too. It's not that it was difficult. It just has SO MANY WIRES! Mine fired up right away and it sounds really nice.

[GoranP]

Did you make this one or a different one?

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/cathexis/Veroboard+Layouts/SansAmp+GT-2/SansAmp+GT-2.jpg.html

[alltrax74]

I made the tonepad version with a pcb

[dexxyy]

Up to now it`s the Lovetone meatball for the reasons already listed, Sansamp gt2 mostly for the switch wiring and cutting the rectangular switch holes, the causality 4 was a sore 1 at the time as it was the biggest board i had done at the time, BUT.....I`ve just etched a board for a seek wah clone, while the 2 separate boards needed shouldn`t be too bad, the 24 holes drilled into a bb box is gonna be a right PITA.

[Ross]

Probably my Sabrotone SVF filter... which also wins an award for being just plain disappointing!

[alex.s]

Call me a coward, but I tend to shy away from build with lots of offboard wiring..! :)

I'd say my most difficult build has been the Keeley 4 knob compressor, built twice and neither worked (though the readings were pretty much the same, so guessing I made the same mistakes twice...). It's been looking at me for a while now but haven't had the determination to pick it up and confront it.

Mind you, I'd be happy to take a couple photos and take a couple reading should anyone be willing to lend a hand..!

[rooo]

Most difficult build was my 5E3 Tweed Deluxe!

The Toneczar Openhaus took some effort as well! Large vero and lots of off board wiring!

[adstrum]

Keeley 4 knob compressor was pretty high on my to-do list. Now I'm having second thoughts.

[johnk]

IMO, the Keeley comp wasn't very difficult and mine worked perfectly the first time.
as with any build, you just have to pay attention to the details and build it properly the first time. IMO, that's a lot easier than going back and troubleshooting it.