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Human Gear Animato


Allex

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Use a 2.2uF cap. If that fails, use 2 x 1uF caps in parallel. The 22uF will not get you the original sound but it will sound like a Big Muff on steroids. Feel free to play around with that one.

 

And yes, it's a trimpot. I allowed for standing trimpots or low profile ones, hence the holes in the middle. When it comes time to adjust it, what I recommend is turning all the knobs to about 12 o'clock/half way, turn the trimpot off, then slowly bring it up while playing real soft. When it sounds like it starts to clip a tiny bit, stop. Of course, experiment with that all you like.

 

I tried to etch a board yesterday. Magazine paper works for the transfer (really well) but the home made etching chemicals did not work. How it burned the copper looks fucking awesome but useless. Also, my real etching chemicals, all my PCB drill bits and any decal transfers are in storage so yesterday wouldn't have been a good idea anyway... Going to be a long search ahead of me tonight to find them. I might get a print shop to print the waterslide decals. Lots of trial and error ahead.

 

Fingers crossed it works for you Dave. The parts for mine should arrive today or tomorrow but I won't get around to doing it until the weekend. Blame EP recording and assignments for that. :LOL:

 

I'll pay that price too, the previous pedal is doing well and I vouch for your quality. :happy: Would love a compact sized pedal over one with switch :happy:

 

Glad people are seeing the switch as useless. I mean, I probably could fit it in but at the cost of adding a switch for no real purpose other than "keeping it the same", I don't want to. The PCB's will have the option ready to go if people really wish to do so though.

 

Thank you. :D For those that don't know, this is what Matthijs got off me a while back. First attempt with decals so I learned a lot from that.

 

311806_10150886425865122_2027045792_n.jpg?oh=1a33bb3adc0de034f5f9b703bd1fc06d&oe=54F5E021

 

298089_10150884466485122_283634630_n.jpg?oh=6a7ce97f9ab28f87d60fd424e4aa4b3d&oe=54F80965

 

302442_10150886433430122_1386052841_n.jpg?oh=1669759cc53521c13e78d8f5ae5acc03&oe=54E66E31

 

Also, going on record to say, I'm loving the original pedal with our band. It's very nice sitting on top of the clean blend and has been the most useful distortion for bass in a long time for me... mainly because of that blend. It just does wonders.

 

To add to this too... making a PCB for a Russian Big Muff. :ninja:

 

EDIT: Fuck off... I ordered parts from overseas 36 hours ago. They've arrived today. :eek:

Edited by Crowella
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Dave, one quick thing with the PCB, one resistor has the wrong value on it. The first resistor below the screw mount on the right hand side of the board should read 470 instead of 100.

 

I discovered one issue I'm going to have too and that is board mounting height. I might halve the number of capacitors from the power filtering because that makes sense in my mind and means I can push the caps down. The rest should fit in. Tight, but should. Just need 15mm standoffs for the board and to do some final measure ups of the enclosure and I'll make a start tomorrow.

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Use a 2.2uF cap. If that fails, use 2 x 1uF caps in parallel. The 22uF will not get you the original sound but it will sound like a Big Muff on steroids. Feel free to play around with that one.

 

And yes, it's a trimpot. I allowed for standing trimpots or low profile ones, hence the holes in the middle. When it comes time to adjust it, what I recommend is turning all the knobs to about 12 o'clock/half way, turn the trimpot off, then slowly bring it up while playing real soft. When it sounds like it starts to clip a tiny bit, stop. Of course, experiment with that all you like.

Ah okay. I might hook up the two different values with an internal switch or an external one.

That square was the one thing that was confusing me with the layout :LOL:

Dave, one quick thing with the PCB, one resistor has the wrong value on it. The first resistor below the screw mount on the right hand side of the board should read 470 instead of 100.

I changed it on the diagram just to be sure.

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Well I made my PCB today so fingers crossed it works. Ran out of solder too, which is a pain. I wont get it working until Sunday. I stuffed up the enclosure painting so I will sand it down and retry tonight after work.

 

EDIT: The enclosure is way too small. I'm going to do my tests with this PCB on its own in a tester box I have but I might redesign this to fit specifically in an enclosure like this. Might involve standing some resistors up and being a little bit less conventional but it's definitely possible. Also done goofed with the drill and the DC jack. Learning experience once again.

Edited by Crowella
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Bleh. I'm not happy with this only because it doesn't look very tidy but it's functional which is all I really want right now. Very soon it'll be done. I'm going to bed.

 

10629834_10154852871815122_5915766900749140722_n.jpg?oh=62f116926ae312587e16bf72f2a85114&oe=54E1E592&__gda__=1425318185_ff9af0fdcd17530890855dd4d7d44c53

 

Not making the PCB's this small for "production" nor using those gigantic capacitors again. Nor am I painting enclosures again, at least not while I have nowhere clean enough to paint them (outside won't cut it). I'll be planning ones to send off a bit more than this.

 

EDIT: Dave, if you are using C2240s, watch the pinout. It is not what I wrote on the PCB. I'm rather annoyed because I need to desolder 5 transistors on my mini board. One of them lost the copper trace in doing so. Bleh. I really don't care about this pedal now, so long as it works.

Edited by Crowella
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Very good job !

 

I have made a Diefet pedal this summer and I think that this one will be the next pedal I make on December. I will keep an eye on this thread to see if there are changes in the PCB or components until this date.

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Cheers. I'll need to redo the mini PCB. I'm fairly sure. I wired up my mini board yesterday and nothing worked. I don't have time at the moment to play the debugging game so it'll have to hold off for another week or so, which is frustrating. I think the worst thing was working on this in the late evenings where I'm not exactly at my sharpest, missing obvious things like the pin out orientation of the C2240's, which swaps the base and collector around in a strange fashion.

 

Also, those jacks I bought. Errr. They aren't great. They feel like a very loose connection even though they are safely in. Hmm.

 

Just a terrible week for me. *derp*

Edited by Crowella
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So freaking close, I'm getting sound but one transistor is playing dirty.

 

I have an inkling, that I've been handed a batch of terrible capacitors. The layout is correct, I'm just one voltage correction off getting one working, in perfboard form (basically, connecting the leads all together)

 

At least with that layout confirmed, I can get some PCB's made for production. Might start with a batch of 15 and see how it goes from there.

 

I'm also considering a matte black finish rather than gloss white. The prototype is just in a belted enclosure because it sums up the process so far. :LOL:

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Okay, so the clone works. Here's a list of things about it.

 

- SO MUCH LESS NOISY!

- Clone sounds midscooped but has more bass coming through. I'd say more defined.

- Slightly blatty at the absolute end of the decay

- About comparable in tone controls

- Quite a bit more gain

 

Demo to come as soon as I'm done frothing over it. I actually prefer the clone hands down even if it's not perfect. I'll play around with the transistor combination for the booster as I think the change to a much higher gain silicon pair really opened it up. If it didn't have that issue with decay I would say we have a winner.

 

(Guess for the decay issues is a poorly biased transistor somewhere, I will look later)

 

997073_10154887226275122_1022612611664302841_n.jpg?oh=e8a85afed78a288342aa4f58b99e80d0&oe=54E5FA02&__gda__=1425280139_4c1fef26b25b53783506c9c79ad4f94e

Edited by Crowella
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It is true bypass.

 

Holy fucking sheeeeit! It works. It has more gain than the original meaning I'll need to dial back that trimpot but job done! It functions just like the real one. I'll get a video up at some point today or tomorrow.

 

I'll organise a proper video style demo soon but for now, just a very hasty comparison between the two.

[soundcloud]

[/soundcloud] Edited by Crowella
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You know how when you're a kid you could buy like the Kaiba version of Yu-gi-oh cards with all his ones in it? I wish you could do that for pedalboards. Just go onto Thomann and see "The Chris Wolstenholme Origin of Symmetry Board! Complete with working inhaler! Only €1499.99!"

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Going to set up a pre-order page later tomorrow. If you want to guarantee one first, let me know. The pre-order will be $200 AUD including shipping and will be limited to 20 between this site and everywhere else. After pre-order, I will start to charge for shipping on top of the purchase which is approx $20 AUD. Basically, jump in now and its approx $175 USD, or £110

 

The pedals, if all goes to plan, should be ready and be shipped out early December. The enclosures and pcbs will be painted and etched externally to speed it up and make the builds consistent.

Edited by Crowella
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