The Effect Builders Club!

[Sir Edward V]

Interesting. To control what?

Also, PCB design is done!!

it controls a digitech jamman. the up and down switches through saved banks of recorded things, the mode changes recording modes.

very simple circuit. TRS input, the down switch is when you connect R to S, mode is T to S, up is T and R to S (connect a diode from T to the switch and another from R to the switch so the current goes only to the S)

only cost $9 to make. I could totally sell these considering the digitech ones are $40-$50, if I sold 'em for $20, more people would buy 'em. haha

that probably wont happen, but its nice to dream. my build quality kinda sucks though, so I would feel bad about selling them for money. When drilling through that plastic, everything got really messy and it just doesn't look that good.

I mean you can't tell unless you look closely... but still

 

[nellie48]

I thought I would copy this tutorial to this thread, since it is for effect builders.

Last night I added an LED to my Ampeg SubBlaster. I decided to put a little tutorial together for anyone wanting to add an LED to their subBlaster. This pedal is discontinued but is pretty popular on Talkbass. The only complaint I heard on this pedal was the lack of an LED. Hopefully this will be helpful, as their is nothing about this mod anywhere on the net.

1) Below you will see that the stock switch has a wiring harness hooked up to it. Cut the the wire group at about 3 inches from the switch like I have done. You will also have to cut the ground wire that is connected to the frame of the pedal enclosure. You are done with this switch. It cannot be used with an LED.

2) To make things simple, I have numbered all five wires. With the black wire being #1. Connect these wires (the ones still connected to the pedal, to your new 3PDT (9 lug) switch.

3) Now shear these wires off and solder them to some new wire about 3"-6" long. This will give you more length so that you can reach the switch ("cough.. that what she said") and will make soldering easier.

4) Now for making the proper connections. Obviously you do not have to use colored wires, but I will refer to the colors to help identify the proper lugs.

Yellow Lug goes to Wire 1 (FX send wire)
Blue Lug goes to wire 2 (Input wire)
Orange Lug goes to Wire 4 (Output wire)
Red Lug goes to Wire 5 (Return FX wire)
Brown wire gets wired (Bypass)

5) Grounding
The Black Lug will get wired to the ground nut. You can see it attached at the bottom of the switch. Also attach Wire 3 to this spot.

6) LED
The White lug will get wired to the negative of your LED. The Negative lead on an LED is the shorter prong. The longer prong on the LED is positive. Wire it to a 400-600 ohm resistor. Then from the the other end of the resistor run a wire to the top of the circuit board. Look at the white wire in my pic. This is the positive lug on the circuitboard which goes to the AC jack. Besure not to overheat this lug as you could start melting the circuitboard.

7) There is a hole already to go for your LED. You will just need to to finish up the drilling through the thin aluminum label. Use a nice LED bezel and you are all set.

Walah! You have an SubBlaster with a cool new LED! I love the look of orange on this pedal.

 

[B.C.]

Thanks Nellie, that is nice!

 

[B.C.]

I think it looks pretty good. So you didn't need a microcontroller or anything to control the up and down? That is really clever, cuz my way would cost a whole lot more.

it controls a digitech jamman. the up and down switches through saved banks of recorded things, the mode changes recording modes.

very simple circuit. TRS input, the down switch is when you connect R to S, mode is T to S, up is T and R to S (connect a diode from T to the switch and another from R to the switch so the current goes only to the S)

only cost $9 to make. I could totally sell these considering the digitech ones are $40-$50, if I sold 'em for $20, more people would buy 'em. haha

that probably wont happen, but its nice to dream. my build quality kinda sucks though, so I would feel bad about selling them for money. When drilling through that plastic, everything got really messy and it just doesn't look that good.

I mean you can't tell unless you look closely... but still

 

[Sir Edward V]

I think it looks pretty good. So you didn't need a microcontroller or anything to control the up and down? That is really clever, cuz my way would cost a whole lot more.

I was trying to figure out how the thing worked for about a half hour before I did a TB search and found a schematic posted. Tip = mode and Ring = down was easy, Up was throwing me... I did find that both the tip and the ring are at about 3.47 Volts compared to the ground...



I am making another one for the guy who posted the schematic, because I was so gracious to find it.

 

[Sir Edward V]

I thought I would copy this tutorial to this thread, since it is for effect builders.

Very nice.

instead of cutting the wires of so short, then adding new wires for more length, I would just have cut the originals as close to the switch as possible and then separated them from each other and soldered those directly to the switch. I feel everything would be cleaner that way, and any time I solder a wire directly to another wire, things go to ****. Might just be me and my crappy soldering, but its no good for me!

 

[B.C.]

Very nice.

instead of cutting the wires of so short, then adding new wires for more length, I would just have cut the originals as close to the switch as possible and then separated them from each other and soldered those directly to the switch. I feel everything would be cleaner that way, and any time I solder a wire directly to another wire, things go to ****. Might just be me and my crappy soldering, but its no good for me!

+1 certainly weakens the wire IMHO and IME.

 

[Sir Edward V]

Both are done!

soldering iron seamed to work much better today, I think I was more 'in the zone'. It only took like 45 min to do it today... of course I already had it drilled because I did that yesterday... but still... I had no problems with it... maybe I'm finally using the correct methods...

AND I only made one mistake! I mixed up two of the switches, but it was actually really easy to fix, just switched the wires connected to the tip and the ring.

 

[B.C.]

Both are done!

soldering iron seamed to work much better today, I think I was more 'in the zone'. It only took like 45 min to do it today... of course I already had it drilled because I did that yesterday... but still... I had no problems with it... maybe I'm finally using the correct methods...

AND I only made one mistake! I mixed up two of the switches, but it was actually really easy to fix, just switched the wires connected to the tip and the ring.

Wow, I give you a lot of credit for that. I would of made that much more difficult and probably unusable.

Edit: Are those latching SPST switches?

 

[Sir Edward V]

Wow, I give you a lot of credit for that. I would of made that much more difficult and probably unusable.

Edit: Are those latching SPST switches?

momentary SPST switches

if you tap the up or down switch it moves one bank, but if you hold it, it switches one, then cycles faster.

I am happy with it. Compact. Simple. seams like it will be pretty resilient against anything... other than the radioshack switches breaking!

all my other builds I have had tones of excess wires everywhere, lots of open wires floating around that could easily touch one another... I'm proud of this now I just need to re-build my blender for the fourth time using some ideas I learned and tested with this guy.

#1: only solder one wire to one hole. If you need more to go to that location, use a circuit board.
#2: well... basically use a circuit board for every little thing and don't leave wires exposed or loose. #1 helps with the nothing loose part!
#3: no more radioshack perfboards where I use solder blobs and random wires to connect components. I did that with this last build, but it was a simple circuit so it worked well enough

 

[B.C.]

momentary SPST switches

if you tap the up or down switch it moves one bank, but if you hold it, it switches one, then cycles faster.

I am happy with it. Compact. Simple. seams like it will be pretty resilient against anything... other than the radioshack switches breaking!

all my other builds I have had tones of excess wires everywhere, lots of open wires floating around that could easily touch one another... I'm proud of this now I just need to re-build my blender for the fourth time using some ideas I learned and tested with this guy.

#1: only solder one wire to one hole. If you need more to go to that location, use a circuit board.
#2: well... basically use a circuit board for every little thing and don't leave wires exposed or loose. #1 helps with the nothing loose part!
#3: no more radioshack perfboards where I use solder blobs and random wires to connect components. I did that with this last build, but it was a simple circuit so it worked well enough

Lol I agree. A lot of the Radioshack stuff is good, well built, and fairly cheap, but I wouldn't use one of their stomp switches

Well, I am printing the PCB's now, just got done cutting the copper. My dad and I went out to the hardware store and bought a diamond cutter for the dremal. Holy crap that thing does not mess around! So tomorrow should be drilled circuit boards with some soldering(pictures too ) but tonite, I am going to take a break and finally go out to see the Dark Knight

 

[Sir Edward V]

I'm currently working on my blender's circuit... probably not going to finish everything tonight, but I'll probably get the circuit board done

 

[Thunderscreech]

hey

i am wondering how a fuzz can be "tuned" for bass? I'm planning something insidious involving an octave fuzz DIY kit, but reversing the octave so it goes down instead of up, and wiring in a blend knob. it might work for bass as-is, but i'm curious just in general.

 

[B.C.]

hey

i am wondering how a fuzz can be "tuned" for bass? I'm planning something insidious involving an octave fuzz DIY kit, but reversing the octave so it goes down instead of up, and wiring in a blend knob. it might work for bass as-is, but i'm curious just in general.

Well, to make an overdrive bass friendly, it generally is in the input capacitors. Generally, heavier caps(.47 micro Farats and up.) Now for switching the octave, that can be kind of tough. Generally, to make an octave down effect, you need to convert your signal into a square wave to shift the octave down, and that will require some digital processing. Heres an article on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_effect

 

[Thunderscreech]

i should have mentioned it's a transformer-based kit (this kit, to be exact), unless that only works for up.

Although, it might be possible to wire in something?

 

[B.C.]

i should have mentioned it's a transformer-based kit (this kit, to be exact), unless that only works for up.

Although, it might be possible to wire in something?

First of all, that looks like a really really nice kit, I'm impressed!

Hm, I think I know how this works and I *suppose* that reversing the value of the transformer. A transformer works by having two windings of coil on each side, if you didn't know. However, I'm thinking the only way to do this is some DSP. You might want to P.M. Nifty Dog to see if he has any advice, but I don't think you can do it.

Changing the values for the caps is completely do-able making it pretty bass friendly.

 

[niftydog]

You might want to P.M. Nifty Dog to see if he has any advice, but I don't think you can do it.

Octave up and down are traditionally done in completely different ways - up using rectification diodes, down using flip-flops (a kind of digital logic chip.) In this case the transformer is just providing some isolation and 'sonic mojo' and it actually has nothing to do with directly implementing the octave effect.

Transformers only alter AC voltages, they don't have an effect on frequency in the sense that is being discussed here.

 

[B.C.]

Octave up and down are traditionally done in completely different ways - up using rectification diodes, down using flip-flops (a kind of digital logic chip.) In this case the transformer is just providing some isolation and 'sonic mojo' and it actually has nothing to do with directly implementing the octave effect.

Transformers only alter AC voltages, they don't have an effect on frequency in the sense that is being discussed here.

Ok, thats what I thought. Thanks for you input Niftydog!

 

[chicago_mike]

I just etched 8 boards tonight. Super easy and simple process too. I use the muriatic acid / hydrogen peroxide method. very easy to use too.

The next batches will include the pedal version of the interstellar overdrive that I have been talking about making. Its going to be a cool idea, as long as she works.

Might even turn this into a business. Its actually kinda fun to be this geeky.

 

[Thunderscreech]

Octave up and down are traditionally done in completely different ways - up using rectification diodes, down using flip-flops (a kind of digital logic chip.) In this case the transformer is just providing some isolation and 'sonic mojo' and it actually has nothing to do with directly implementing the octave effect.

Transformers only alter AC voltages, they don't have an effect on frequency in the sense that is being discussed here.

...hence why the fuzz circuit has two seemingly-random diodes in it. For rectification.

I guess just retuning it for bass will be the way to go, which is cool enough on it's own. It's an octave up fuzz!

Thanks for all the advice!