Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Any DIY pedal builders on TB? Strut your stuff!
- Thread starter SubHuman
- Start date
Boxed this Chunk Systems Brown Dog clone this morning. Vero board, mismatched knobs and footswitch hole too big, lol.
Recently I needed some of those breadboard adapters for the plastic-shaft 9mm pots from Madbean, but felt silly paying the shipping cost just for those. I had been wanting to try the VFE Mini-Mu so I grabbed a kit at the same time and managed to build and box it yesterday:
I was very lucky to have most of the parts for this build in my stash already, including, miraculously, the optocouplers. A long time ago I purchased some random vactrols from The Electronic Goldmine, thinking they might be useful someday, that in a great stroke of fortune turned out to actually be NSL-32s. I then spent some time matching them and chose the two that matched the most closely that also had the right resistance characteristics that the circuit seemed to like. I read a lot about how to best tune the vactrols in the Mutron circuit and decided I would change the 100K stopper resistor that limited the current going to the vactrols to 4K7, given the particular resistance characteristics of the vactrols I chose. This turned out to be partway a good choice, as the sweet spot of the trimmer to my ears was almost (but, crucially, not quite) to the maximum (?) rotation of the trimmer (you can see in the picture above). Sourcing some of the weirder resistor values was a pain in the butt and now I have 14x 1/8 W 14K3 and 14x 1/8 W 65K resistors that I have no idea what to do with. I managed to find an OPA134 and substituted an LM324 for the specified TLE2074 like I did in my Triumvirate and it works just fine.
The enclosure is the August Special Run colour from Love My Switches called "[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]", which turned out to be quite a bit darker than I was expecting; in hindsight, I should have gone for white or otherwise light-coloured labels. Printing was done by Spencer at AmplifyFun. All the text, including the big Mu, is rendered in my (probably) favourite font, High Tower Text. The accent circles and lines are a nod to the original Musitronics logo. Switches are short-bat Taiways from LMS (lovely things), knobs are black Tall Boys from LMS, the LED bezel is a "Warp Pipe" from LMS (very cool) with a cyan Electronic Goldmine LED.
I'm giving this build 4 stars mostly because of the unreasonably large number of esoteric parts it requires. I was lucky that I bought multiples of all the parts needed for the bypass/power daughterboard when I made the Triumvirate because I would not have wanted to deal with that again. This plus the vactrols, 2.5mm-pitch 100 nF MLCCs, unusual-value 1/8W resistors, and the bougie op-amps is a bit of a headache in terms of parts sourcing. The board itself is also quite tight, although soldering the switches and pots was not as big of a hassle as I thought it would be. There's also an error in the build document, you only need 4x of the 2.5mm 100 nF MLCCs, not 5x. It took me a while to dial in the trimpot and I believe a multi-turn pot would have helped here, because moving the wiper just a hair in either direction made a dramatic difference to the sound. I can't help but feel like I landed on the right (???) value purely by luck. The rest of the assembly though was quite easy and enjoyable.
So how does it sound? This circuit has a lot of tunability, but this is a double-edged sword. The high-pass option is completely useless for bass and the bandpass option is only usable at very specific settings of the other controls. The low-pass sounds great, though, and I don't mind keeping that switch parked there indefinitely. I also found the "down" position of the Drive switch to be largely useless so that one will stay at "Up" for the foreseeable future. However, you can get a nice range of filter responses out of the combination of the Gain, Range and Peak controls, and it was fun to see what would happen with different combinations of settings. The thing has quite a lot of level on tap and easily clips my recording interface if you set the resonance too high. It's a nice, smooth filter, but I think that I like my envelope filters to be a little bit "synthier"/deeper "bwow" than this circuit can give, though that's not its fault at all. I think it sounds good and it will be fun to play with.
I was very lucky to have most of the parts for this build in my stash already, including, miraculously, the optocouplers. A long time ago I purchased some random vactrols from The Electronic Goldmine, thinking they might be useful someday, that in a great stroke of fortune turned out to actually be NSL-32s. I then spent some time matching them and chose the two that matched the most closely that also had the right resistance characteristics that the circuit seemed to like. I read a lot about how to best tune the vactrols in the Mutron circuit and decided I would change the 100K stopper resistor that limited the current going to the vactrols to 4K7, given the particular resistance characteristics of the vactrols I chose. This turned out to be partway a good choice, as the sweet spot of the trimmer to my ears was almost (but, crucially, not quite) to the maximum (?) rotation of the trimmer (you can see in the picture above). Sourcing some of the weirder resistor values was a pain in the butt and now I have 14x 1/8 W 14K3 and 14x 1/8 W 65K resistors that I have no idea what to do with. I managed to find an OPA134 and substituted an LM324 for the specified TLE2074 like I did in my Triumvirate and it works just fine.
The enclosure is the August Special Run colour from Love My Switches called "[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]", which turned out to be quite a bit darker than I was expecting; in hindsight, I should have gone for white or otherwise light-coloured labels. Printing was done by Spencer at AmplifyFun. All the text, including the big Mu, is rendered in my (probably) favourite font, High Tower Text. The accent circles and lines are a nod to the original Musitronics logo. Switches are short-bat Taiways from LMS (lovely things), knobs are black Tall Boys from LMS, the LED bezel is a "Warp Pipe" from LMS (very cool) with a cyan Electronic Goldmine LED.
I'm giving this build 4 stars mostly because of the unreasonably large number of esoteric parts it requires. I was lucky that I bought multiples of all the parts needed for the bypass/power daughterboard when I made the Triumvirate because I would not have wanted to deal with that again. This plus the vactrols, 2.5mm-pitch 100 nF MLCCs, unusual-value 1/8W resistors, and the bougie op-amps is a bit of a headache in terms of parts sourcing. The board itself is also quite tight, although soldering the switches and pots was not as big of a hassle as I thought it would be. There's also an error in the build document, you only need 4x of the 2.5mm 100 nF MLCCs, not 5x. It took me a while to dial in the trimpot and I believe a multi-turn pot would have helped here, because moving the wiper just a hair in either direction made a dramatic difference to the sound. I can't help but feel like I landed on the right (???) value purely by luck. The rest of the assembly though was quite easy and enjoyable.
So how does it sound? This circuit has a lot of tunability, but this is a double-edged sword. The high-pass option is completely useless for bass and the bandpass option is only usable at very specific settings of the other controls. The low-pass sounds great, though, and I don't mind keeping that switch parked there indefinitely. I also found the "down" position of the Drive switch to be largely useless so that one will stay at "Up" for the foreseeable future. However, you can get a nice range of filter responses out of the combination of the Gain, Range and Peak controls, and it was fun to see what would happen with different combinations of settings. The thing has quite a lot of level on tap and easily clips my recording interface if you set the resonance too high. It's a nice, smooth filter, but I think that I like my envelope filters to be a little bit "synthier"/deeper "bwow" than this circuit can give, though that's not its fault at all. I think it sounds good and it will be fun to play with.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
i just finished this one yesterday (Shoe Pixel with all top jacks & relayed true bypass):
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
I'm back ... to posting something. I never stopped building stuff, but got lazy about posting. I recently finished this one and it deserves a post, as it is really special.
AMNESIA, Deadend FX doing the rare SS/BS No Memory, modulated delay. It uses the good old PT2399 chip and places a lot of magic around it.
It's a box full of wonderful and/or weird sounds, there are so many sweet spots, it's mind boggling.
It can do (worn out/on fire) tape delay, white noise type wind sounds, pitch shifting, all sorts of warbling, even some sort of enveloped looping ...??? I don't know .... listen to the 2nd snippet.
(Sorry, skinny strings.)
And that's just a few sounds while testing and scratching the surface.
AMNESIA, Deadend FX doing the rare SS/BS No Memory, modulated delay. It uses the good old PT2399 chip and places a lot of magic around it.
It's a box full of wonderful and/or weird sounds, there are so many sweet spots, it's mind boggling.
It can do (worn out/on fire) tape delay, white noise type wind sounds, pitch shifting, all sorts of warbling, even some sort of enveloped looping ...??? I don't know .... listen to the 2nd snippet.
(Sorry, skinny strings.)
And that's just a few sounds while testing and scratching the surface.
Been awhile. I have a 3d printer so I figured I give it a go and see what happened. Printed out of ABS. This is my first drawing on Fusion 360. Took me a little while but I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Haven’t labeled it yet. I had the pcb made from schematic using Eagle CAD.
The circuit is the Agent 00 Funk. It sounds pretty good. No noticeable difference from using an aluminum box. Made the knobs , foot switch nut and jack nuts as well. I love DIY.
Matt
Haven’t labeled it yet. I had the pcb made from schematic using Eagle CAD.
The circuit is the Agent 00 Funk. It sounds pretty good. No noticeable difference from using an aluminum box. Made the knobs , foot switch nut and jack nuts as well. I love DIY.
Matt
Today was a rainy day so it was a good time to tinker.
Here is a dual loop parallel blender, think JMK Paralyzer. I’m thinking of adding a clean blend so I can blend between clean and the loops. Hmmm.
Happy almost Friday,
Matt
Here is a dual loop parallel blender, think JMK Paralyzer. I’m thinking of adding a clean blend so I can blend between clean and the loops. Hmmm.
Happy almost Friday,
Matt
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
my version of the ultra Rare Sunn Buzz in a 1590B with all top jacks with very rare NOS original 2N2923 transistors. i added a mini switch inside that switches between stock and bass (much more low end) so it can be used with a bass.
Last edited:
All I will say is it’s a shame about the white washers on the fs!!
White washers aren't that visible. They camouflage into the grey and the bright knobs steal all the focus. What effects have you tucked into that box?
just one! it’s aion electronics lab series (norlin/Moog) L4 bass preamp - so think two channels, blue fender tonestack ish, green baxandall with semi parametric mids, into a overdive circuit- into master volume and then limiter circuit.
There’s a family lineage to the Pearce preamps and the Suncoast pedals you see around have similar roots.
Sounds really nice so far, not calibrated the distortion or limiter parts and my amp went pop this week so not been able to play much since finished the enclosure this afternoon
nice - what are they called? When I’ve looked all the M12 washers that weren’t massive were made of copper!
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
i just finished this one, a Maestro FZ1-B ( V2, 4 transistor version). It was pretty tricky to get it to sound right (as all F1's are). I used vintage 2N3391's (same as the original) and a 1N457a diode (also same as original). the originals were notorious for have very low output so i added a clean booster to it.
Last edited:
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
BTW, i also made a FZ1-B V1 pcb (2 transistor version). i used original vintage 2N3860 transistors in it (which are almost impossible to find anymore) and it works perfectly but it also has low output (like the original pedal). i'll probably add a clean Jfet 3 db booster on it's output and box that one up too. it sounds completely different than the V2 and the V2 (4 transistor version) sounds more like an FZ1-A to me.
The preamps are not different. On the 700er Contour and Presence are added.
