Amps
I got everything moved in to my tiny space and hooked up and it does not look half bad. I got the 2 bassman’s running in stereo off my pedal board. more info to come.
Patches
My wife got me these awesome patches for “electronic achievements”. They are made really well and will find a home on my workbench soon.
Parts are here
Bunch of pots and a few packs of resistors came in today. Now I can finish a few pedals I started. To the garage!
Enclosures got here today
I bought 10 enclosures and 10 foot switches. I can’t wait to get my PCBs in some homes.
Got a few synths hooked up
Finally got around to hooking up a few of my synths and get the midi routed. I just love how the Juno sounds. The filters are so fat sounding.
Workbench Update
New Gear: Electro-Harmonix The Clone Theory
This just got here today and I am very excited about it. I played around with it for about and hour on the guitar and about an hour on the bass. This pedal is very usable and can have a very lush chorus sound to extreme warble in one move of a knob.
Workbench up and standing
I got my workbench built last night and I started to populate it with my tools. Tonight I will be labeling my parts drawers for all my passive electronics.
Parts should be here by Friday and then I can get started on a few projects. Can’t wait!
Workbench Notes
I am just taking some notes on what will be on my small workbench for this winters projects. Here we go.
- Metal workbench with 2 drawers from Harbor Freight.
- Pref board hangers for smaller tools. Screw drivers and sockets and hand tools.
- iPad stand and charger. I use my iPad for all my schematics and build notes.
- Small basic speakers for when I play music from my iPad.
- 2 40 drawer parts holders from Harbor Freight. I will be storing all my passive parts in these drawers.
- Weller soldiering station with accessories.
- Portable oscilloscope.
- Pedal breadboard test unit with battery powered amp to test pedals with.
- Small vice for soldering and holding parts.
- Bench top craftsman drill press.
- Drill press vice.
- Metal or plastic strip with 1/2″ and 3/8″ holes to hold jacks and pots and switches when soldering.
I’m sure I will think of more….till then.
Pedal Build Process Part 1
A rundown of how I start to make a pedal. I wanted to document this so I can learn better ways of doing it along the way.
- Mark “cuts” and “links” on the VeroBoard with a sharpie.
- Cut strip side with a blade so the traces will not lift.
- I use a drill bit to drill through the PCB and “cut the trace” that way.
- Test traces with a multimeter to make sure cuts are correct.
- Soldier on links first.
- I like to shoot on some flat or satin spray paint to the PCB just to get rid of that ugly brown color.
- I like to place the IC/Transistor sockets first.
- I then mount all the resistors.
- Next up, capacitors. I start with the physical smaller caps since they can/will be a pain to install once the physically larger caps are installed.
- Now on to the larger caps.
- Install the ICs or transistors in this case, into the sockets.
- PCB layout is complete.
More to come…