Look ma, no hands! First completed builds

[dbp512]

I've been floating around here for a few months, learning a ton and having fun. Oddly enough the amount of time I spend playing guitar greatly dropped over the same period of time, I wonder why... I'd been focusing on building new circuits and not boxing them up, but the cardboard box I leave them in can only take so much. I bought a few cheaply painted boxes from tayda to serve as a test, and over thanksgiving I stocked up on some beautifully painted enclosures from mammoth. I only ordered 125B, but I really like the size. Not too small, but not cavernously large either. I don't know if its determination or stupidity, but I've always liked the look of top mounted jacks and I wanted to give that a go. Thats caused a few hiccups with the board placement, but I've managed to shove them in place. So, without further ado, here is the amateur eye candy!




The white box is a madbean kraken envelope filter, and the black is a naga viper treble booster. With the envelope filter, I really didn't like placing the switch in the position as a pot, so I decided to use a diamond pattern as opposed to a square. I didn't realize how much of a problem that would cause down the line, which you'll see. Despite the problems along the way, they turned out alright. These are the cheaper tayda boxes, but they look good enough for me. Lets take a look inside, but if you have a weak heart you might want to avert your eyes. 
 


Here is the inside of the treble booster. Good god, what a mess of wires! I wired everything up before my enclosures arrived (what can I say, patience is a virtue I never learned). I didn't really want to resolder all those connections, so I decided to shove them all inside and hope I didn't need to debug it. Well, the fates must have been smiling, because it worked perfectly on its first try. I did learn a few things, notably to insert the wires into the footswitch board from the other side to make things look significantly more organized. 
 


This is the inside of the kraken. It looks much better, doesn't it? Thats just because you can't see a mess of wires. Because I placed my jacks at the top, the switch had to be low enough to avoid hitting them, which got in the way of the board. I ended up covering the switch terminals with hot glue and securing the board to that, which is why its mounted so high up. Theres barely enough clearance with the lid, but it just fits.



Remember that I decided to use a diamond instead of a nice, normal square for my controls? Well, here you can see the clearance issue between the topmost pot and the power jack. I had to cut off the dust seal to make it fit. I was afraid it wouldn't work and the box would be useless, but luckily I somehow shoved it all in there. I can't wait to start finishing off a few of my other designs.

[amptramp]

You might want to reserve black wire for ground and use other colours just so you can find your way around the circuit if you need to.  Other than that, clean builds and I also put all jacks at the top.  No sense trying to squeeze the box dimensions down to a minimum then have and extra half inch / 12.7 mm taken up by side-mounted cables.

Nice luck on the envelope filter where the pot and the power jack merged.

[GiovannyS10]

Nice dbp512! I want to hear this sound! 

But amptramp are right, on the next organize your wires. Black to ground, red to +9v. And like this. I prefer the 9v Jack on the top and the others on the sides, but its personal. Your builds seems good to me.  Send us videos 

Have a nice day.

[dbp512]

I completely agree I need to get more wire colors. I got a spool of black when I first started because I just wanted to test the waters. I got so caught up in building new things that I spent all my money on parts, which worked fine because I had plenty of it to last. It was only after my 8th build that I started buying some boxes to put them all in when I realized how challenging it is to only use black. 
 
As for demos, I haven't yet because the best camera/mic I have is my iPhone and I'm not sure how well that would work. Plus, if I did then you'd all have to listen to my shoddy playing. I'm not in a band for a reason. Although if anyone has some fun suggestions to make use of the envelope filter I'm all ears. I originally made it to learn how an OTA works, not to emulate a certain sound.

Anyway, this is finals week so I'll be busy until next Monday. After that I'll get some new wire, attempt to record some noise, I mean music, and finally have time to box up some more things. Thanks for the support, this is by far the most interesting and satisfying hobby I've gotten myself into. I'm amazing myself and my guitar playing friends with how much I've learned, not only about different effects, but also the circuitry behind why they make that sound.

[GiovannyS10]

I understand, and i am not on a rock band too. Hahahaha, Now i play acoustic guitar on a Samba band (im from Brazil), is not what i want to me, but all right. So right now, is it, if you need something call us.

Have a nice day!