The Sushi Box FX Secret Society

[EastDakota]

Has anyone got a Smoke Signal they'd be willing to part with?

There's one on musicgoround if you can't find one on TB.

PS: the used sushi market is pretty wild. Stuff disappears from reverb within a couple hours of posting, often right at, or even over, original prices. I don't think a price increase with the redesigns will turn anyone away. Saw a More listed at $299 the other day and it's gone already.

 

[Tassieviking]

Between the 2 tubes there are what appears to be 2 resistors between the IC and the transistor, how in the bloody hell could you solder them in place ?
Has the Sushi workshop got electron microscopes now ?
I could not clearly see what they were until I blew it right up in size on my screen.
I saw them on the UA but I dismissed the idea that they could be components because they are so minute, and then I spotted them on the More PCB as well and I realized that they were not specs of dust but actual components.
Very well done.

 

[OneNut]

Between the 2 tubes there are what appears to be 2 resistors between the IC and the transistor, how in the bloody hell could you solder them in place ?
Has the Sushi workshop got electron microscopes now ?
I could not clearly see what they were until I blew it right up in size on my screen.
I saw them on the UA but I dismissed the idea that they could be components because they are so minute, and then I spotted them on the More PCB as well and I realized that they were not specs of dust but actual components.
Very well done.

I think he's have these commercially populated. I've done down to 0805 by hand, but those look smaller than that.

 

[OneNut]

Well July is basically over, I should probably start talking about what I've been up to.

As most of you are aware, I've been taking time off from my typical building to redesign the lineup, and I have most of the lineup right where I want it, there are a few units that just need a couple tweaks and a new circuit boards revision. But basically this is what we're looking at:

• Switched over from all SMD capacitors to all film capacitors in the signal path. These are the same capacitors that were in Nobelium and Neptunium, and I like the difference I'm hearing. This is something I've wanted to look into for a while and had been waiting for an excuse to do it.
• Soft-switch relay bypass. Tubes are sensitive, and are more prone to popping from loud mechanical switches. This isn't as big of a deal with things like preamps that you don't generally switch in the middle of a song, but I still felt like it was an upgrade worth making.
• Attenuation toggle switches instead of trimpots. With my super hot output pedals like UA, Elementary, JC Emerald, Detective, and Dreamcatcher, it always seemed like people used it stock, which was the trimpot set at 12:00, or they ran it fully dimed, because those two settings made the volume control respond well for the application, either running into another pedal or amplifier or running hot to drive a power amp. So I basically made two presets for attenuation, "INST" is a lower level like I've been shipping things for years now, and "LINE" is a hotter output if you need to drive something harder. No more twiddling with a little screwdriver to dial in a trimpot, just toggle the switch.
• Board-mounted jacks. This one isn't going to be as noticeable to the user, but it helps with manufacturability since I don't need to solder in individual wires anymore, and it helps with reliability because you won't need to worry about snapping wires when you tighten a loose nut on a jack.

As I've alluded to in previous posts, these upgrades are coming with a price bump, which as I've mentioned before I take very seriously. Nobody likes when prices go up, myself included, and I will always do what I can to keep prices down, but when I do feel the need to raise a price, I will make absolutely certain that the changes being made justify the price increase, and I feel confident that I've done that here.

Currently I have Underground Accelerator, Elementary, Slampegg Bee Pre, and More verified and ready to go and will start building up some stock of these units to reopen the store. JC Emerald and Black Eye are very close, I expect to have those before the end of August. Dreamcatcher and Detective have been giving me trouble so they have been pushed back while I focused on the others, but I expect to get them up and running around early September.

Finally v2 is the only thing that will not be changed at this time aside from basic manufacturability upgrades, so the price of Finally v2 will stay the same, and as soon as I get the new circuit boards in (they're in the last stage of manufacturing, hopefully have them early next week) I can start offering Finally v2 again.

And because a picture is worth a thousand words (this post comes to 590 total), here's a shot of what these upgrades look like on an Underground Accelerator.

View attachment 6994927

That is one beautiful looking board. I've laid out a usb dac before, but nothing that looked as clean as this.

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Between the 2 tubes there are what appears to be 2 resistors between the IC and the transistor, how in the bloody hell could you solder them in place ?
Has the Sushi workshop got electron microscopes now ?
I could not clearly see what they were until I blew it right up in size on my screen.
I saw them on the UA but I dismissed the idea that they could be components because they are so minute, and then I spotted them on the More PCB as well and I realized that they were not specs of dust but actual components.
Very well done.

Those are capacitors, 0402 size. And as @OneNut mentioned I have these assembled by pick-and-place machine. My pedals would take a lot longer to build and would have to be much more expensive if I was hand soldering every component. When I was first starting out I did solder paste stencils and hand-placed components for reflow in my reflow oven, but even that was taking too much time and had a higher failure rate (usually due to uneven solder placement) than automated assembly.

 

[OneNut]

Those are capacitors, 0402 size. And as @OneNut mentioned I have these assembled by pick-and-place machine. My pedals would take a lot longer to build and would have to be much more expensive if I was hand soldering every component. When I was first starting out I did solder paste stencils and hand-placed components for reflow in my reflow oven, but even that was taking too much time and had a higher failure rate (usually due to uneven solder placement) than automated assembly.

I can't imagine what it would take to do production boards by hand. I hacked away at some stuff about 10 years ago and these were hand placed and soldered as prototypes:

 

[Sushi Box FX]

I can't imagine what it would take to do production boards by hand.

Honestly the main thing that made it work was my wife. She's smarter than me and just generally better at everything, not to mention having better eyesight and steadier hands. We would put the kids to bed and have "soldering dates" where we would churn out circuit boards for the early Sushi Box builds. The fastest I ever got was 10 minutes per board for simpler designs, but pick and place can beat the hell out of that time on anything.

 

[Sushi Box FX]

quite aesthetically pleasing for those of us that nerd out on PCBs and internals

Plenty more where that came from, my dude. I'll grab some more gut pics in a bit, I'm finishing up enclosure pics of the finished pedals.

 

[Tassieviking]

It's good you get some or all of the SMD components done with the PCB, if all you have to do is mount any TH stuff it should free up some valuable time for you.
I have a feeling that the time you think you have saved will soon disappear because of increased sales, but that can be a good thing in the long run for any small business.
Keep up the great work.
Cheers
Mick

 

[Maxi Funkl]

I'm very excited to obtain a UA.

 

[Feral]

I'm very excited to obtain a UA.

The UA is awesome. I can't wait to add a Slampegg to my ever growing collection of preamp pedals (GAS is real my friends )

 

[chiphaleonbass]

New Slampegg may be in my future.. thinking of trying to approximate the sound of my Tyler Flip top using the Slampegg as my preamp and making an IR of my 15, could be fun and time consuming but I love the way that amp sounds and to have it on the go would be stellar

 

[kojdogg]

I would also love to get a Neptunium in the next batch (or if any other early adopters want to sell)!

 

[RavenousPoe]

I would also love to get a Neptunium in the next batch (or if any other early adopters want to sell)!

I'll PM you! Mine works great, I'm just going in a different direction with my board.

 

[bassmahn]

Apologies if this has been answered previously, but besides the EQ options, what would be the difference between a Finally and a Neptunium? Is there a difference with the tube type, or signal path?

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Apologies if this has been answered previously, but besides the EQ options, what would be the difference between a Finally and a Neptunium? Is there a difference with the tube type, or signal path?

The EQ is the big one. Tube type is the same (12AU7), signal path is the same, gainstages are very similar. Finally has a gain control, which on lower gain tubes (like 12AU7) functions essentially as a saturation control.

 

[Aaron Luke]

Had my first gig with the neptunium last night. Amp would exhibit a loud hum when I DI into the mixer so okay, let's flip the ground lift. The hum would then leave my amp and turn into a hiss through our wedges. Ended up just mic'ing my amp for the night (and sounded excellent! Best sound guy experience I've ever had!) but I have another gig this Saturday and don't want this to happen again!

All my gear was plugged into the same outlet and I keep my pedalboard clean and patch connections strong & sterile. This isn't the first time I've had this happen (when I used the finally v1 as my main DI), and there hasn't been a universal solution. Is this potentially an electricity issue? Phase issue?

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Had my first gig with the neptunium last night. Amp would exhibit a loud hum when I DI into the mixer so okay, let's flip the ground lift. The hum would then leave my amp and turn into a hiss through our wedges. Ended up just mic'ing my amp for the night (and sounded excellent! Best sound guy experience I've ever had!) but I have another gig this Saturday and don't want this to happen again!

All my gear was plugged into the same outlet and I keep my pedalboard clean and patch connections strong & sterile. This isn't the first time I've had this happen (when I used the finally v1 as my main DI), and there hasn't been a universal solution. Is this potentially an electricity issue? Phase issue?

It doesn't sound like a phase issue, but could be electrical. What are you powering your board with?

 

[Aaron Luke]

It doesn't sound like a phase issue, but could be electrical. What are you powering your board with?

Powered by a Strymon Ojai and I use an active bass if that provides any more info. I'm also not too sure if our band power source was treated or conditioned last night.

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Powered by a Strymon Ojai and I use an active bass if that provides any more info. I'm also not too sure if our band power source was treated or conditioned last night.

Shouldn't be any problem running it with an Ojai, that's a 500mA output. It sounds like no issues with the 1/4" output though, is that correct? The 1/4" and XLR come from the same tap in the preamp, so if the 1/4" was working fine then the preamp was working fine and the XLR issues were with the house end of things. I've heard some people report unusual noise when phantom power is delivered to Finally, do you know if phantom power was turned on? Phantom power shouldn't damage anything permanently, but as I said some people have reported issues when it's on and it certainly doesn't need to be on for this to operate.