Yes, the BC1 use also the CA3280 and 3080.
Yes, I could try to create a new version. But I cant find the schematics...
Thank you!
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Any DIY pedal builders on TB? Strut your stuff!
- Thread starter SubHuman
- Start date
Depth Charge clone, I used 2N2222 instead of 2N3707 and a pair of unspecified 1N34 workalikes instead of 1N270s.
I have noticed even in the originals there are some different component variations
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
I just noticed your post about the Depth Charge on the previous page. Did you make many changes to the circuit to make it sound like the original?
No I didn’t make any changes. I went by the schematic I found on-line. I compared the schematic to my original and found it to be correct. Just like any pedal, Results will very from pedal to pedal due to tolerances. My clone side by side with my original sound pretty much identical. The gain , tone and blend and volume may be at different positions , (but still very close to each other) due to the tolerance issue.
I used the same transistors as the original and JohnK. 2N3707. I did not use the germanium diodes. I used what was in my original though I’m not near it right now and I can’t remember. They were silicon. 1n4733 or 1n4933 something like that.
Matt
Edited for spelling errors
I used the same transistors as the original and JohnK. 2N3707. I did not use the germanium diodes. I used what was in my original though I’m not near it right now and I can’t remember. They were silicon. 1n4733 or 1n4933 something like that.
Matt
Edited for spelling errors
Last edited:
Thanks! I made it from the online schematic too, and ended up with a 390K blend resistor. I'm going to try out some 1N4148 diodes and see if I like them.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
So long overdue that the project is discontinued, but better late than never, right???
The Sushi Box Space Heater was my first-ever tube pedal build, and I was a little bit apprehensive due to the potential dangers but also very excited because it's quite amazing to have DIY-friendly full-voltage tube circuits. Since this was a special build, I took some time (and spent way too much money) to pull out all the stops for it. Hence:
Stop number one is, of course, the graphics. I went with the '30s gangster interpretation of the term "heater", such that "Space Heater" gets translated to mean "sci-fi-esque ray gun/energy blaster", which leaves us with the concept you see above. In particular, I thought it would be cool to stylize the art around the tube vents so it looks like the tube inside the pedal is the source of energy for the blaster; I decided to try to make it look like there was a glass bulb encapsulating the "energy source". This was probably my most ambitious graphic design undertaking to date, although I can't take much credit because I templated heavily off of this really nice piece of concept art by Stephen Chappell (thanks and sorry). Being a huge fan of the Borderlands video game series, I also took some inspiration from there; for those familiar, I was going for a sort of "Maliwan incendiary" colour scheme. The title and controls text is in a font called "Silent Lips" which was used in several places in Borderlands 3 (no spoilers, I haven't actually played it yet!). And of course the scope is a nod to Han Solo's DL-44. I spent probably multiple days worth of uptime in Inkscape laying this out and tweaking details.
Stop number two is the enclosure itself. I bought a pre-drilled 125B from Nathan along with the PCB, hoping I could get it powdercoated with a swanky Prismatic Powders colour of my choice; I was torn between Invalid Link Removed (which you're all familar with) and Invalid Link Removed. I quickly discovered, however, that no one would do custom powdercoating for me for any cheaper than an arm and a leg (one shop I contacted wanted $300 to powdercoat this single enclosure ). It turned out to be most cost effective to purchase a StompBox Parts 125B Pro in Peacock Ore and send it directly to Spencer to be drilled/milled and printed. (This means that I have a leftover 125B with holes and slots that fit a Space Heater if anyone has any idea what I can do with that ) The limitations of UV printing meant that the "glass bulb" didn't come out quite as transparent as I was hoping for/it looked on my screen, and I made the "9-12V DC" text hard to differentiate from the underlying art, but I cannot complain about these things and he knocked it out of the park with this really strange project. I could not be happier with the results.
I also left myself and any bystanders a little reminder of the potential hazards, with style:
Stop number three is the professionalism of assembly. Nathan's engineering made this extraordinarily easy, but this is easily my cleanest build ever in terms of interior clutter:
Since I'm a sucker for relay bypass, but I really liked the idea of the "Thwitch" 3PDT daughterboard that was included with the Space Heater PCB, I designed and had fabricated a PCB for Invalid Link Removed, but in the same form factor and relative size as the Thwitch board. I used these as a guinea pig to test-drive OSH Park's "After Dark" service. The clear-coated ground plane looks less bomb than the black substrate with the clear-coated traces, but nevertheless I think the result looks amazing and I'll definitely be using this more going forward.
The board is then mounted directly on one of these fancy PCB-pin soft-touch switches:
I made a mistake with the LED mounting after having taken this picture and and had to run some flywires from a LED in a bezel back to the bypass board instead of direct mounting it, but I think the bezel looks better and is more stable. This thankfully did not do too much to negatively impact the neatness of the internals.
To tie it all together, I used teal Magpie knobs from LMS and a cyan LED from The Electronic Goldmine. The colour isn't what I'd call truly "cyan" but it works. Strangely enough, the 5-pack of LEDs contained four pieces that I would call "more green" and one that I would call "more blue", and I used the "bluer" one in this build. The tube backlight comes courtesy of an orange LED for the "fire" effect:
So how does it sound? In a word, spectacular, except for one problem. After reading a bit about people's experiences with Space Heater, I decided to go for a JAN-Phillips 12AT7WC as it was relatively inexpensive and robust and had what I believed to be a desirable amount of gain. This turned out to be a great choice as having this pedal in your signal chain brings all sorts of fat, loud (and I mean LOUD, I have to keep the volume below 9:00 almost always) clean tone enhancement. I play (bass) mostly into a DAW with IRs and this pedal makes one question why need an amp at all. I have one bass, a vintage Ibanez RB680, with super low-output (and maybe broken) pickups, and this pedal gives it back all the balls plus much more. The low-end response is expectedly great and turning up the gain lets you get a little bit of round grit.
But therein lies the problem - I get the dreaded squealing/self-oscillation with the gain above 3:00. I tried a few flavours of buffered pedal ahead of it, which didn't help. I also tried swapping the tube for an EHX 12AY7, thinking that the lower intrinsic gain would allow me to use the entire pot sweep without getting to enough gain to squeal, but this didn't really help that issue at all and I didn't like the tone as much as I did with the 12AT7 (the 12AY7 was a lot cleaner and more sterile-sounding whereas the 12AT7 had more character and could let you get a bit into overdrive territory). I think that the 12AY7 also draws a lot more heater current; for testing and short bursts of playing I use a Warwick Rockboard power pack to power my pedals, and I noticed that it drained the battery very fast with the 12AY7 installed. Although I'd like to get that little bit of the pot sweep back (and have more overdrive on tap!), it's not a great loss as most of the gain sweep is usable and the setting that gets me the nice bit of drive happens right before the oscillation starts.
Overall I'm super happy with it and think that it's one of my best-looking pedals, and was certainly a lot of fun to build and play!
The Sushi Box Space Heater was my first-ever tube pedal build, and I was a little bit apprehensive due to the potential dangers but also very excited because it's quite amazing to have DIY-friendly full-voltage tube circuits. Since this was a special build, I took some time (and spent way too much money) to pull out all the stops for it. Hence:
Stop number one is, of course, the graphics. I went with the '30s gangster interpretation of the term "heater", such that "Space Heater" gets translated to mean "sci-fi-esque ray gun/energy blaster", which leaves us with the concept you see above. In particular, I thought it would be cool to stylize the art around the tube vents so it looks like the tube inside the pedal is the source of energy for the blaster; I decided to try to make it look like there was a glass bulb encapsulating the "energy source". This was probably my most ambitious graphic design undertaking to date, although I can't take much credit because I templated heavily off of this really nice piece of concept art by Stephen Chappell (thanks and sorry). Being a huge fan of the Borderlands video game series, I also took some inspiration from there; for those familiar, I was going for a sort of "Maliwan incendiary" colour scheme. The title and controls text is in a font called "Silent Lips" which was used in several places in Borderlands 3 (no spoilers, I haven't actually played it yet!). And of course the scope is a nod to Han Solo's DL-44. I spent probably multiple days worth of uptime in Inkscape laying this out and tweaking details.
Stop number two is the enclosure itself. I bought a pre-drilled 125B from Nathan along with the PCB, hoping I could get it powdercoated with a swanky Prismatic Powders colour of my choice; I was torn between Invalid Link Removed (which you're all familar with) and Invalid Link Removed. I quickly discovered, however, that no one would do custom powdercoating for me for any cheaper than an arm and a leg (one shop I contacted wanted $300 to powdercoat this single enclosure ). It turned out to be most cost effective to purchase a StompBox Parts 125B Pro in Peacock Ore and send it directly to Spencer to be drilled/milled and printed. (This means that I have a leftover 125B with holes and slots that fit a Space Heater if anyone has any idea what I can do with that ) The limitations of UV printing meant that the "glass bulb" didn't come out quite as transparent as I was hoping for/it looked on my screen, and I made the "9-12V DC" text hard to differentiate from the underlying art, but I cannot complain about these things and he knocked it out of the park with this really strange project. I could not be happier with the results.
I also left myself and any bystanders a little reminder of the potential hazards, with style:
Stop number three is the professionalism of assembly. Nathan's engineering made this extraordinarily easy, but this is easily my cleanest build ever in terms of interior clutter:
Since I'm a sucker for relay bypass, but I really liked the idea of the "Thwitch" 3PDT daughterboard that was included with the Space Heater PCB, I designed and had fabricated a PCB for Invalid Link Removed, but in the same form factor and relative size as the Thwitch board. I used these as a guinea pig to test-drive OSH Park's "After Dark" service. The clear-coated ground plane looks less bomb than the black substrate with the clear-coated traces, but nevertheless I think the result looks amazing and I'll definitely be using this more going forward.
The board is then mounted directly on one of these fancy PCB-pin soft-touch switches:
I made a mistake with the LED mounting after having taken this picture and and had to run some flywires from a LED in a bezel back to the bypass board instead of direct mounting it, but I think the bezel looks better and is more stable. This thankfully did not do too much to negatively impact the neatness of the internals.
To tie it all together, I used teal Magpie knobs from LMS and a cyan LED from The Electronic Goldmine. The colour isn't what I'd call truly "cyan" but it works. Strangely enough, the 5-pack of LEDs contained four pieces that I would call "more green" and one that I would call "more blue", and I used the "bluer" one in this build. The tube backlight comes courtesy of an orange LED for the "fire" effect:
So how does it sound? In a word, spectacular, except for one problem. After reading a bit about people's experiences with Space Heater, I decided to go for a JAN-Phillips 12AT7WC as it was relatively inexpensive and robust and had what I believed to be a desirable amount of gain. This turned out to be a great choice as having this pedal in your signal chain brings all sorts of fat, loud (and I mean LOUD, I have to keep the volume below 9:00 almost always) clean tone enhancement. I play (bass) mostly into a DAW with IRs and this pedal makes one question why need an amp at all. I have one bass, a vintage Ibanez RB680, with super low-output (and maybe broken) pickups, and this pedal gives it back all the balls plus much more. The low-end response is expectedly great and turning up the gain lets you get a little bit of round grit.
But therein lies the problem - I get the dreaded squealing/self-oscillation with the gain above 3:00. I tried a few flavours of buffered pedal ahead of it, which didn't help. I also tried swapping the tube for an EHX 12AY7, thinking that the lower intrinsic gain would allow me to use the entire pot sweep without getting to enough gain to squeal, but this didn't really help that issue at all and I didn't like the tone as much as I did with the 12AT7 (the 12AY7 was a lot cleaner and more sterile-sounding whereas the 12AT7 had more character and could let you get a bit into overdrive territory). I think that the 12AY7 also draws a lot more heater current; for testing and short bursts of playing I use a Warwick Rockboard power pack to power my pedals, and I noticed that it drained the battery very fast with the 12AY7 installed. Although I'd like to get that little bit of the pot sweep back (and have more overdrive on tap!), it's not a great loss as most of the gain sweep is usable and the setting that gets me the nice bit of drive happens right before the oscillation starts.
Overall I'm super happy with it and think that it's one of my best-looking pedals, and was certainly a lot of fun to build and play!
Okay, one more from me, hope no one minds 
I've been at the pedal building game for quite some time now, and I feel like I've come a huge way from my dad helping me solder up my very first Big Muff (love you, Dad) wherein I overpaid for every component, didn't understand the concept of positive ground and built it with 2N5087s, and burdened it with a completely awful purple rattle-can paint job. After having discovered the magic of PCBs, UV printing services, powdercoating, etc., seeing some of my more recent builds next to the older ones was making several of the older ones look pretty sad. With that in mind, I thought it might be a nice exercise to revisit a few of my older builds with a fresh, more experienced perspective, and bring them up to today's version of my standards.
The first victim of this improvement quest is my Fuzzhugger Doom Bloom clone. Here's the original build:
I built this back in 2017 on veroboard, and honestly it's not that bad, but hindsight has made it obvious that there was absolutely no need for a 1590BB-sized enclosure for this tiny circuit, and the plain black Tayda enclosure and hand-drawn labels aren't the prettiest or most interesting look for a pedal that I really like. I of course used the PPCB Death Cap PCB for this build. Although I've used UV printing services before - namely AmplifyFun and Obscura MFG, both highly recommended - I had never used Tayda's service, mostly because I was sort of deterred by the strict rules, apparent specificity for Adobe Illustrator, and lack of support in preparing the artwork. Seeing how the service had improved over time and finding excellent tutorials from people on the PedalPCB community forum detailing how Inkscape and Scribus could be used to effectively prepare artwork to Tayda's standards, I decided I'd use this build to test out Tayda's drill and UV printing service. So, through the magic of Retrospective, we obtain the New and Improved Doom Bloom:
I thought that "Doom Bloom" invoked imagery of some sort of poisonous plant, but one that looked beautiful despite its danger. An alternate interpretation might be a flower that appears before or after some great disaster, like the first new life after a wildfire, or something like that. Searching for something that reflected these ideas, I found a great blog post by Adrian Storey describing the symbolism of lycoris radiata, the red spider lily:
"Highly posionous, the bulbs contain toxic alkaloids that if ingested cause paralysis of the central nervous system and ultimately death. For this reason they were often, in pre cremation times, planted in graveyards to prevent wild animals eating the corpses."
"In Japanese mythology it is the flower that grows along the banks of the river that one must cross after death or the flower that grows in hell."
Perfect.
That same blog post also contained a beautiful picture of this flower, which I used as the basis of the graphic printed on the pedal. The text is rendered in a font called Eternal Call, which I thought gave a nice contrast of elegance to the otherwise dark symbolism. I'm not sure why I decided to go for the specific look that I did on the original pedal but I liked the vibe, so I ported it over to the new build, giving the Bloom [gain] control a red knob to match the graphics while leaving the others black. I used the A-5766 and A-5755 aluminum knobs from Tayda and was pleasantly surprised by how nice they are. If you look carefully, you'll notice the ghostly flower icon in the gloss layer around the LED, which I was hoping would sort of reflect the light from the LED (it does not, the LED is much too bright ). I am very satisfied with the result of the drill and print job and the price is good; it's a good tool to have in the box. I didn't use any fancy/mojo components, mostly just things I had on hand already. I also think this build is a serious improvement on my historically terrible spaghetti inside boxes that I'm ashamed to show.
So how does it sound? I like this pedal a lot. It's an extremely versatile and tunable fuzz with an enormous amount of available gain and a sometimes overwhelming low-end presence. One should note that the Bloom [gain] control does not have a bottom-out resistor so zero gain means zero signal (which is a bit weird). The Bias control lets it go from full, sustaining fuzz into gated velcro territory. The Head control adjusts the compression and "openness". Body allows you to tame some of that low end or let it go free for Big Doom Tones. Despite being such a simple circuit, all the controls have very distinct effects (though there is a level of interactivity, especially with Body, Head and the gain). It's quite quiet despite being such a high-gain circuit and I feel it sounds just as great on bass or guitar with no modifications between. Five-star build and an easy recommendation.
I've been at the pedal building game for quite some time now, and I feel like I've come a huge way from my dad helping me solder up my very first Big Muff (love you, Dad) wherein I overpaid for every component, didn't understand the concept of positive ground and built it with 2N5087s, and burdened it with a completely awful purple rattle-can paint job. After having discovered the magic of PCBs, UV printing services, powdercoating, etc., seeing some of my more recent builds next to the older ones was making several of the older ones look pretty sad. With that in mind, I thought it might be a nice exercise to revisit a few of my older builds with a fresh, more experienced perspective, and bring them up to today's version of my standards.
The first victim of this improvement quest is my Fuzzhugger Doom Bloom clone. Here's the original build:
I built this back in 2017 on veroboard, and honestly it's not that bad, but hindsight has made it obvious that there was absolutely no need for a 1590BB-sized enclosure for this tiny circuit, and the plain black Tayda enclosure and hand-drawn labels aren't the prettiest or most interesting look for a pedal that I really like. I of course used the PPCB Death Cap PCB for this build. Although I've used UV printing services before - namely AmplifyFun and Obscura MFG, both highly recommended - I had never used Tayda's service, mostly because I was sort of deterred by the strict rules, apparent specificity for Adobe Illustrator, and lack of support in preparing the artwork. Seeing how the service had improved over time and finding excellent tutorials from people on the PedalPCB community forum detailing how Inkscape and Scribus could be used to effectively prepare artwork to Tayda's standards, I decided I'd use this build to test out Tayda's drill and UV printing service. So, through the magic of Retrospective, we obtain the New and Improved Doom Bloom:
I thought that "Doom Bloom" invoked imagery of some sort of poisonous plant, but one that looked beautiful despite its danger. An alternate interpretation might be a flower that appears before or after some great disaster, like the first new life after a wildfire, or something like that. Searching for something that reflected these ideas, I found a great blog post by Adrian Storey describing the symbolism of lycoris radiata, the red spider lily:
"Highly posionous, the bulbs contain toxic alkaloids that if ingested cause paralysis of the central nervous system and ultimately death. For this reason they were often, in pre cremation times, planted in graveyards to prevent wild animals eating the corpses."
"In Japanese mythology it is the flower that grows along the banks of the river that one must cross after death or the flower that grows in hell."
Perfect.
That same blog post also contained a beautiful picture of this flower, which I used as the basis of the graphic printed on the pedal. The text is rendered in a font called Eternal Call, which I thought gave a nice contrast of elegance to the otherwise dark symbolism. I'm not sure why I decided to go for the specific look that I did on the original pedal but I liked the vibe, so I ported it over to the new build, giving the Bloom [gain] control a red knob to match the graphics while leaving the others black. I used the A-5766 and A-5755 aluminum knobs from Tayda and was pleasantly surprised by how nice they are. If you look carefully, you'll notice the ghostly flower icon in the gloss layer around the LED, which I was hoping would sort of reflect the light from the LED (it does not, the LED is much too bright ). I am very satisfied with the result of the drill and print job and the price is good; it's a good tool to have in the box. I didn't use any fancy/mojo components, mostly just things I had on hand already. I also think this build is a serious improvement on my historically terrible spaghetti inside boxes that I'm ashamed to show.
So how does it sound? I like this pedal a lot. It's an extremely versatile and tunable fuzz with an enormous amount of available gain and a sometimes overwhelming low-end presence. One should note that the Bloom [gain] control does not have a bottom-out resistor so zero gain means zero signal (which is a bit weird). The Bias control lets it go from full, sustaining fuzz into gated velcro territory. The Head control adjusts the compression and "openness". Body allows you to tame some of that low end or let it go free for Big Doom Tones. Despite being such a simple circuit, all the controls have very distinct effects (though there is a level of interactivity, especially with Body, Head and the gain). It's quite quiet despite being such a high-gain circuit and I feel it sounds just as great on bass or guitar with no modifications between. Five-star build and an easy recommendation.
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,079
- 46,050
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
Third and (hopefully!) last test build of the Tayda-friendly OS hybrid filter preamp tangent:
I'll be signing this off to someone else to finish up now, assuming it sounds as expected tonight at my usual test jam. It's a very easy build compared to most of my non commercial DIY oriented designs.
I'll be signing this off to someone else to finish up now, assuming it sounds as expected tonight at my usual test jam. It's a very easy build compared to most of my non commercial DIY oriented designs.
bones91
Commercial User
I dunno if I 100% count as "DIY" anymore as I actually sell them (have a website and everything), but I am still a solitary (wo)man making pedals at my house on a desk.
This is my first official launch, brassmaster clone with all the modern goodies (pedalboard friendly, master volume knob, 9V, relay bypass), with a couple more on the breadboard and hopefully coming by September/November respectively.
Here's some from when I was still doing hand-painted one-offs on commission for people, may still do occasional hand-paints/small batches of weirdoes from time to time:
This is my first official launch, brassmaster clone with all the modern goodies (pedalboard friendly, master volume knob, 9V, relay bypass), with a couple more on the breadboard and hopefully coming by September/November respectively.
Here's some from when I was still doing hand-painted one-offs on commission for people, may still do occasional hand-paints/small batches of weirdoes from time to time:
Nice! The paint on the Spaceboy looks really cool (they're all really cool, but that one really caught my eye)
I usually make a comment if there's no gut shots, but since you're building to sell I get it.
Just got around to buttoning up my Aion Maelstrom yesterday. This pedal is, of course, a riff on the legendary Darkglass Microtubes B3K, but with some elements lifted from its sister, the Vintage Microtubes. The B3K has been the de-facto sound of prog metal bass for years now and given how much influence that style has had on me, I felt like I had to have one. Hence:
maelstrom (māl′strəm)
noun
Internally, I would say this build is very neat, but not the most pretty. There's still some flux residue because the densely-populated board made it difficult to get in there with a Q-tip to properly scrub away all the leftovers and I'm sure there are still some fibers kicking around in there despite my best efforts. The board, however, is nice quality and handled rework well (I had to desolder and replace two resistors because I installed the wrong value).
So how does it sound? I know that the "Darkglass tone" is somewhat polarizing, but I'm a fan of this pedal and it'll probably find its way into my signal chain as a long-term fixture. The tone with all controls at 12:00/center is perfectly serviceable straight out, and I found a great "Meatplow" tone right away. Unfortunately I am bereft of Dingwall (and also skills) so I didn't give the prog tones a fair crack, but I could definitely get the high-gain modern metal thing going on with my SRMS805. Although the native drive tone is pretty good even when pushed to high gain, the real magic of this pedal is in the Blend control. I found myself keeping 40-60% of my dry signal at all times which allowed me to get the perfect balance of attack and power from my unaltered signal with the overdriven tone adding richness to the background; it's quite amazing. (Yes I know I'm just describing the function of a blend control
) The Grunt switch controls the bass that's fed into the clipping stage; the middle position has the least bass and the right position has the most. At first I thought the middle position was a little anemic, but if you mix in more of your dry and bump the level and gain a bit to compensate it lets you get a nice distorted edge behind your low strings. The rightmost position comes with a big level boost but surprisingly the load of extra bass doesn't muddy up the tone too much. I tended to like it best in the intermediate leftmost position. The Attack toggle controls the treble response, with the leftmost position being the most treble boost. I found these frequencies to be well-tuned and didn't give a big boost at uselessly high frequencies like I've seen some circuits do, which just introduces noise and makes your tone clanky and unpleasant, though I tended to keep it in the middle position. The Era control is supposed to be a sort of mid-response control and it does do the warm-vintage-tones-to-modern-hi-fi-esque range quite well. I found nice tones at every position of this knob. Weirdly, this pedal works great as an always-on tone enhancer if you want to add some grind to your sound - I spent a lot of time with the controls set as Vol [as needed], Drive 2:00, Blend 1:00, Era 10:00, Grunt left, Attack center.
maelstrom (māl′strəm)
noun
- A violent or turbulent situation.
- A whirlpool of extraordinary size or violence.
- A celebrated whirlpool or violent current in the Arctic ocean, near the western coast of Norway, between the islands Moskenäsö and Mosken, formerly supposed to suck in and destroy everything that approached it at any time, but now known not to be dangerous except under certain conditions.
- Hence Any resistless movement; any influence or passion which makes victims of all who come within its power: as, the maelstrom of fashion or of speculation; the maelstrom of dissipation or of crime.
- A celebrated whirlpool on the coast of Norway.
- An uncontrollable agitated or confusedly disordered state or situation.
- A large and violent whirlpool.
- Any violent or turbulent situation.
- A powerful circular current of water (usually the result of conflicting tides).
Internally, I would say this build is very neat, but not the most pretty. There's still some flux residue because the densely-populated board made it difficult to get in there with a Q-tip to properly scrub away all the leftovers and I'm sure there are still some fibers kicking around in there despite my best efforts. The board, however, is nice quality and handled rework well (I had to desolder and replace two resistors because I installed the wrong value).
So how does it sound? I know that the "Darkglass tone" is somewhat polarizing, but I'm a fan of this pedal and it'll probably find its way into my signal chain as a long-term fixture. The tone with all controls at 12:00/center is perfectly serviceable straight out, and I found a great "Meatplow" tone right away. Unfortunately I am bereft of Dingwall (and also skills) so I didn't give the prog tones a fair crack, but I could definitely get the high-gain modern metal thing going on with my SRMS805. Although the native drive tone is pretty good even when pushed to high gain, the real magic of this pedal is in the Blend control. I found myself keeping 40-60% of my dry signal at all times which allowed me to get the perfect balance of attack and power from my unaltered signal with the overdriven tone adding richness to the background; it's quite amazing. (Yes I know I'm just describing the function of a blend control
) The Grunt switch controls the bass that's fed into the clipping stage; the middle position has the least bass and the right position has the most. At first I thought the middle position was a little anemic, but if you mix in more of your dry and bump the level and gain a bit to compensate it lets you get a nice distorted edge behind your low strings. The rightmost position comes with a big level boost but surprisingly the load of extra bass doesn't muddy up the tone too much. I tended to like it best in the intermediate leftmost position. The Attack toggle controls the treble response, with the leftmost position being the most treble boost. I found these frequencies to be well-tuned and didn't give a big boost at uselessly high frequencies like I've seen some circuits do, which just introduces noise and makes your tone clanky and unpleasant, though I tended to keep it in the middle position. The Era control is supposed to be a sort of mid-response control and it does do the warm-vintage-tones-to-modern-hi-fi-esque range quite well. I found nice tones at every position of this knob. Weirdly, this pedal works great as an always-on tone enhancer if you want to add some grind to your sound - I spent a lot of time with the controls set as Vol [as needed], Drive 2:00, Blend 1:00, Era 10:00, Grunt left, Attack center.
Very nice, love the graphics!Just got around to buttoning up my Aion Maelstrom yesterday. This pedal is, of course, a riff on the legendary Darkglass Microtubes B3K, but with some elements lifted from its sister, the Vintage Microtubes. The B3K has been the de-facto sound of prog metal bass for years now and given how much influence that style has had on me, I felt like I had to have one. Hence:
View attachment 5107651 View attachment 5107652
maelstrom (māl′strəm)
noun
So, aesthetically, I decided I needed something that evoked imagery of a restless and treacherous ocean, and found the above graphic fit the theme perfectly. It is a piece of free-to-use-with-attibution vector art designed by macrovector_official / Freepik, which I modified a bit - although it's hard to tell, I made all the "water" negative space so that the enclosure colour comes through. This is a Stompbox Parts 125B Pro finished in Invalid Link Removed from the special PedalPCB group buy that happened recently. It's a lovely colour and looks amazing in the right light (which, of course, the above picture does not represent). All the text is rendered in the font Rimouski. I used a quartet of silver Obelisk knobs from LMS and dressed up the toggle switches a little bit with some dress nuts, and the LED is a waterclear orange to match the dragonfire. Though I normally prefer to put relay bypass modules in my builds, I didn't really feel like having a special board fabricated for this one project just because Aion decided to put a lonely two of the power filtering components on the daughterboard (this is insane, and my only gripe with this build), so I used one of the extra-soft-click Pro 3PDT switches from LMS. These have become my go-to switch when I need an actual 3PDT because the light action is almost as good as a soft-touch switch and they are well-made.
- A violent or turbulent situation.
- A whirlpool of extraordinary size or violence.
- A celebrated whirlpool or violent current in the Arctic ocean, near the western coast of Norway, between the islands Moskenäsö and Mosken, formerly supposed to suck in and destroy everything that approached it at any time, but now known not to be dangerous except under certain conditions.
- Hence Any resistless movement; any influence or passion which makes victims of all who come within its power: as, the maelstrom of fashion or of speculation; the maelstrom of dissipation or of crime.
- A celebrated whirlpool on the coast of Norway.
- An uncontrollable agitated or confusedly disordered state or situation.
- A large and violent whirlpool.
- Any violent or turbulent situation.
- A powerful circular current of water (usually the result of conflicting tides).
Internally, I would say this build is very neat, but not the most pretty. There's still some flux residue because the densely-populated board made it difficult to get in there with a Q-tip to properly scrub away all the leftovers and I'm sure there are still some fibers kicking around in there despite my best efforts. The board, however, is nice quality and handled rework well (I had to desolder and replace two resistors because I installed the wrong value).
So how does it sound? I know that the "Darkglass tone" is somewhat polarizing, but I'm a fan of this pedal and it'll probably find its way into my signal chain as a long-term fixture. The tone with all controls at 12:00/center is perfectly serviceable straight out, and I found a great "Meatplow" tone right away. Unfortunately I am bereft of Dingwall (and also skills) so I didn't give the prog tones a fair crack, but I could definitely get the high-gain modern metal thing going on with my SRMS805. Although the native drive tone is pretty good even when pushed to high gain, the real magic of this pedal is in the Blend control. I found myself keeping 40-60% of my dry signal at all times which allowed me to get the perfect balance of attack and power from my unaltered signal with the overdriven tone adding richness to the background; it's quite amazing. (Yes I know I'm just describing the function of a blend control
I bought the PedalPCB version, which uses 1/8W resistors (which means I had to buy an 1/8W kit....) so it's nice to see there's a 1/4W layout out there.
What did you use to clean the board? I usually submerge mine after soldering in 99% isopropyl And give it a gentle scrub with a small horsehair (or maybe it's boar?) brush. Give it a little rinse with clean isopropyl and compressed air leaves it super clean.
Edit: assembly the board minus components that shouldn't get submerged, like pots and switches. Clean it and dry. Then do a spot clean after those pots/switches are installed.
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Those Maelstrom graphics are great! Love how the colors contrast and the thin lines looks like metallic foil.
All my old worn out toothbrushes go into my toolbox. They are useful for cleaning pcb's, bolt threads, and any thing else with tiny cracks and crevices.
Here's a gut shot of my two Aion/DG builds from earlier this year. Maelstrom on the right and Binary on the left
All my old worn out toothbrushes go into my toolbox. They are useful for cleaning pcb's, bolt threads, and any thing else with tiny cracks and crevices.
Here's a gut shot of my two Aion/DG builds from earlier this year. Maelstrom on the right and Binary on the left
Always nice to hear about people having fun with SpinCAD. I wrote it about ten years ago on top of an FV-1 simulator ("ElmGen") written in Java by Andrew Kilpatrick.
SpinCAD Designer's turned out to be my "life's work", which is not to say that I am constantly working on it, simply that it's something that I dedicated a lot of time to that other people have used to further their creative impulses and I find it doubtful I will do anything else like that in this life. I wish my music touched that many people! You take what you can get. It is still immensely satisfying.
While I don't spend much if any time working on SpinCAD these days, I've decided to chip away at documenting it. It's still missing quite a bit of detail but the basics are there. If there's something specific you are wondering about I can try to answer it. Welcome to SpinCAD Designer! - SpinCAD Designer
DL
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You did an awesome job and I plan on writing some new program to upgrade the sounds of my current pedals.
I put together a SpinCAD cheat sheet for the various modules and it helps me when making new FX. Thank you for your excellent interface. Good job and if anyone here wants a great sounding programmable pedal the FV-1 is a great platform with your SpinCAD!
Arachnid MultiFX Platform - PedalPCB.com
Thanks!
Yeah, I decided to go for the Aion version because I wanted the Era control, as it is this is sort of partway between a B3K and a VMT which is kind of interesting. Like I said though the only thing I don't like is the two components on the 3PDT daughterboard, I feel like with a bit of layout massaging those could have fit on the main board and then the whole daughterboard could have been done away with. Different strokes I guess.
99% isopropyl for me too, similar process, although I just sort of rinsed it using a flux dispenser bottle then scrubbed any problem areas with a Q-tip. I have acid swabs that sometimes work but these tend to just spread the flux around instead of really removing it. In the end it's not strictly necessary because I use no-clean flux-core solder, but it does look a bit nicer if you don't leave it
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