Thanks for this forum from a newbie

[Hooch]

I just wanted to drop a line to say thanks to the forum.  This is a wealth of knowledge.  I want to say a special thanks to Aron for the switches that showed up extremely quick.  Another thanks to   bwanasonic for answering my questions.  

My background is that I just finished training at work in electricity mainly dealing with 3 phase 440 power but starting from the very basics.  I refret guitars and have always wanted to fool with amps.  But I found this and I think its going to be an addiction.

My first build and I am going to do a ts-808 with the Mosfet Boost all in one pedal.  I have the switches from Aron and the parts on the way from Small Bear and Mouser.  

I have been searching the forum for weeks looking for info and have learned plenty.   It may get embarassing but should be a whole lotta fun.  Any pointers would be much apprecaited.  I might just start a build thread.  Anyway thanks and I will be looking forward to hanging out here.

[The Tone God]

My first build and I am going to do a ts-808 with the Mosfet Boost all in one pedal.

That can be a tall first build. My first piece of advice would be not to try to build the whole thing in one shot. When you increase the complexity of something you make trouble shooting harder. Build each effect by itself, debug them, then put them together.

Andrew

[nightingale]

welcome!!!
best luck on your 1st project...
~ryanS

[Marcos - Munky]

Welcome. Hope you'have a good build for your first project. Anything, just ask.

[Peter Snowberg]

Welcome and best of luck on your project!

As Andrew was saying... that's quite a project for a first build, but if you treat it as two parts it souldn't be too bad. If your box is large enough, think about putting both in the same enclosure, but adding two more jacks so you really have two pedals in one. If you use a switching jack that puts both effects in series when nothing is plugged in you still get the same result you were looking at before, but now you can insert an EQ or other filter in-line.

In any case, I would make one work and then the other and then both.

I'll be looking forward to seeing the success report of your build.

-Peter

[Mark Hammer]

As others have noted, welcome.  Some folks would prefer fewer newbies than more.  For me, every chance I have to explain things to someone else that I understand in a gut-sense way but have never formally articulated, makes me smarter and a better resource.  So bring on the newbies, I say!!

Depending on your tolerance for frustration, your chosen first project could be what the doctor ordered...or what the doctor warned you to avoid.

Here's what you stand to learn from it, though:

1) The importance of knowing and verifying your transistor pinouts.
2) The interaction/relationship between gain and clipping.
3) The importance of pre-vs-post distortion tone shaping.

If you want to move into DIY pedals, these are all extremely valuable lessons and insights to gain.  In that respect, I would encourage you to make the best use of this opportunity by building this on perfboard and allowing lots of room for additiona components, switches, and the like.  Alternatively, install sockets for certain critical components. There is much to play around with here, and so many learning opportunities.  If you like what you make, THEN you can shoot for a compact PCB that you can stuff into a small chassis.

[Hooch]

Thanks guys.  Mark putting things like the opamp chip and the diodes in with sockets is exactly what I was going to do.  I ordered several opamps and several diodes including a Ge diodes to try.  I am also going to put in a switch with a parallel capacitor in order to choose the amount of bass the thing retains.  It will be perfboard.  

I was going to wire the ouput of the TS straight to the input of the Boost.  I am not exactly sure of how but I will cross that bridge when I get there.  I was thinking of putting the Boost on the same perfboard of the TS. Waiting on parts.  Should be a lot of fun or a trainwreck!!!!!

[Peter Snowberg]

The TS effectively has a boost built in (the output buffer) so adding a second one to boost the level is somewhat redundant unless you are looking to make more distortion by overdriving the booster. An overdriven JFET or MOSFET boost would be a good choice there. If you just want higher output level from a TS, the first thing I would try would be to raise the 100K resistor across the output to 470K or 1M. The second thing to try would be to raise the value of the level pot from 100K to 250K or 500K.

One way to get some real utility from a post-TS boost would be to run the booster from 18V, but alas, you could also run the whole TS from 18 volts too.

http://www.montagar.com/~patj/ibnzts9.gif

They're both great things to have around, but I see them as much more useful if you could put stuff inbetween the two circuits.

That's just my 2 cents. (may be less depending on exchange rate)

Take care,
-Peter

[Hooch]

Thanks for the advice Peter.  What I had in mind starting out was a Ts-808 clone only.  I have a Blues Devil and Fulldrive 2 but I wanted to build one.  I noticed that a lot of people run a clean boost in their setups ie. Fat Boost, etc. at the end of their chain.  So I figured why not just combine the two?  I have always felt a little so so about the Fulldrive's Boost anyway.  At first I though I would wire it up so both would be contained in the box and I could "switch positions"  like Boost/TS and  TS/Boost with a switch.  I thought that was a little overboard and would be extreme for the first build.  So I settled on the Ts/Boost thing, sorta like a Fulldrive but with a cleaner boost.  What would the 18v thing do? Make the Boost cleaner?  Please explain the switching jack.

[Peter Snowberg]

If you run a transistor based booster at 18 volts you can get a lot more boost out of it. The diodes in a TS have the effect of reducing gain from very high to about 1 when you exceed the clipping threshold, so they're much less affected by running at higher voltages, but any input or output amps/buffers will get more headroom. If you run an 18V transistor based boost into another overdrive, you'll be able to overdrive it much more. An IC based boost will just give you more headroom (cleaner) with higher voltage.

Having both in one box and being able to switch bewteen TS and boost or between boost and TS+boost would be very cool.

Overboard and extreme can be good things too.

On the switching jack thing... you can get jacks that have a switch in them that is closed when nothing is plugged in. That way you have the option of patching more boxes inbetween the circuits. Check out SwitchCraft style 12A (Mouser part 502-12A) at this link:

http://www.mouser.com/catalog/616/622.pdf

I have a couple designs like this. The order of SwitchCraft jacks are...

guitar -> #12B input (for switching the battery on) -> circuit 1 -> #11 output -> #12A input -> circuit 2 -> #11 output -> amp

I hope that helps,
-Peter

[Hooch]

I'm going to build it as planned right now and if things go well I'll add the switching later.  I'm sure I'll have lots of questions in the near future but I'm stoked about diving right in.

[Arn C.]

Welcome aboard Hooch!  
Peace!
Arn C.

[Ansil]

welcome aboard my friend..  one piece of advice that i can give is this..  make sure you are grounded when you play with cmos
make sure you don't kill yourself with high voltage stuff.
everythingelse is a toy feel free to hook up and fry as much stuff as possible..
(don't forget to salvage what you can from junk unless you are rich.)
take everything in stride as working with guitars and electronics is 85% knowhow blood sweat and tears and such..  and the last 15% is pure VOODOO!!.. if you don't believe in magic then you are in the wrong room   LOL>>>>  Don't beleive me ask Aron about VooDoo hum.. .