Some pics and notes of the pedals you guys have helped me build!

[deadlyshart]

Hi, I found this forum by chance when I wanted to start making pedals, and everyone has been incredibly friendly and helpful with me, not to mention patient with all my often dumb questions  I wanted to post a few pics of the ones I've done with help from here and also some comments on them for other beginners who make them that could possibly help.

All the fonts I used were from http://www.1001freefonts.com/ (though any font site would work), and all the designs were done in GIMP.



This was my first chassis design. It is just a Bazz Fuss circuit, but slightly modified. The circuit I looked at has a pot for the volume, but I'd rather have control over an effect, so I made the pot control the dirt by putting it in between the transistor and ground. I had to stagger the jacks because of the narrow chassis. I used the sticker method, where you paint, apply the (clear) sticker, and then lacquer over that. It's a very easy way to have a design, but you're kind of limited to the background color/black.



This was my second design. The circuit was Craig Anderton's Ultra Fuzz. To be honest, I really hate the sound of this effect... I just happened to make it because I had all the parts around. The way it works makes it have a really abruptly stopping sustain, which sounds crappy in my opinion. Thus, I gave it a fittingly gross name. I also used the "sticker" method for this one, and it's more apparent with this one than the last one, if you look at the border of the sticker. Most of this pedal was a failure imo; I put the pots too close together, the way the meat got rendered, it made it really unsharp, the butt is hardly visible in most light because I should have increased the line thickness... the one neat thing I'll say about it is that I wanted it to be red (for the meat), but I didn't want to do solid red yet, so I tried a "marled" look where I co-sprayed silver and red spraypaints, and it came out decently, I thought. Overall a really crappy project though.



This was the first one I tried the etching method with! It's the "really cheap compressor" circuit, and compressors often make stuff sound "beefier", so I gave it this name. This pedal really got me hooked on the etching method; I just love the detail and contrast you get with it. It's a little difficult to see in the pic, but you can actually make out the tiny names of the cuts of meat in the cow, and the cross hatching in the knob words. Also noticeable if you look close is some patches in the black that I had to touch up because I scuffed through the paint while sanding. However, they're pretty much unnoticeable in most light. The circuit itself actually may still have a little trouble, so I'll be back for this one maybe...



This was actually the first circuit I made, but a later chassis design (it was just sitting in a blank box for a while ). The circuit is just a BYOC BTDR-3 Reverb circuit. I actually laid out the traces with Diptrace, and etched my own circuit board, which was a hellish little project in itself! I just copied a famous MC Escher picture and used a "wavy" looking free font. If you look at the original picture, cause of the shape, I was originally planning on having the rounded parts "fold" over the sides of the chassis and do a multi-side etching, but it proved to be far too difficult for me to iron around the corners and stuff, so I chickened out and just did the top. Maybe someone more competent can do it? 




This one is my favorite, my baby. I heard a friend's Small Clone in person and just fell in love with the sound, and had to make it. I'm using the Tonepad circuit layout, which I also etched. I'm not using the capacitor switch mod, because I wanted more real estate for the design. I wanted a theme that was kind of "stormy", but also paying tribute to the Small Clone, when I came up with "Squall Moan", which is kind of close to a spoonerism of Small Clone (M<->Cl). The ship and waves are from an old ship painting I found (I searched for many!). The circuit was relatively easy to build, aside from having a million parts, but the one word one warning I'll give is that I got a batch of dud MN3007's from ebay. 5 dead ones. Getting ones from Amazon (they came in a little plastic vial) were slightly more expensive, but worked perfectly.




This is... well, you know. It's a Red Llama clone, but I went for the other type of Lama :p . At this point I had two fuzz circuits I didn't especially like the sound of, so I wanted to make a good one, which this was. It has a really pleasing fuzz, and I love the contrast between the solid red and aluminum chassis. The pic I had of the Lama had a bottom left corner, so I wanted to put it in the corner of the chassis, but unfortunately that meant the bypass stomp couldn't be centered, so I had to offset it. Normally my desire for symmetry would drive me nuts, but it kinda looks like he's praying to it here and I don't mind



This was my final (form). I wanted to make a phaser, so someone here suggested the MXR Phaser 45. The circuit was mostly straightforward, but there was slightly annoying part. You have to "match" the two JFETs, using an external test circuit. I did, and used two different pairs of matched ones, but for some reason it didn't work (was using MPF102's). Luckily I had some J201's, which worked perfectly, and now it has a great sound. The trimpot setting wasn't actually as difficult to find as I thought, at least with a scope

I wanted to do something special for the chassis design since I knew this was my last for a while. I had seen this design on this site a while ago and loved two things about it: the color changing gradient, and the different colors in different sections, so I wanted to try something similar. So I made the leopard spots change from red to orange, and masked it several times so I could do different painting steps. Slightly crazymaking, but I really like how it looks. My one regret is that I used yellow for the leopard; while I wanted it to be yellow (...cause leopard), the low contrast between it and the chassis isn't that great



Here are all of them together. Again, thanks to everyone for all the help and getting me into this stuff. I'm sure I'll be back as soon as I hear more pedals I want to play with!

[J0K3RX]

They look good! FYI: There is a "Pictures" child board for build pics.. 

[Kipper4]

Great job.

[Jdansti]

Definitely a set of builds to be proud!   

[EBK]

While I was reading, I kept thinking, "Please don't tell me I helped make Ass Meat." 

Nice builds.  Love the knob choice on Beefy Boy.

[deadlyshart]

They look good! FYI: There is a "Pictures" child board for build pics.. 

Ahhh I feel a fool now... I'll remember for future use...

[deadlyshart]

While I was reading, I kept thinking, "Please don't tell me I helped make Ass Meat." 

Nice builds.  Love the knob choice on Beefy Boy.

Oh buddy, you probably helped with it, you've helped me with almost everything at some point 

Seriously though, thank you for all the help with this. Not that I know much, but I'll try and pass the knowledge on to anyone I can!

[thermionix]

Nice looking builds!  Makes me wonder when you're gonna name one The Shart.  Maybe a sub-octave gatey fuzz of some sort.

[EBK]

Nice looking builds!  Makes me wonder when you're gonna name one The Shart.  Maybe a sub-octave gatey fuzz of some sort.

Don't forget the wet/dry blend.

Also reminds me of a pedal very very low in priority in my design queue.  An April Fools' Day prank called the B♭us (B flatus), which has notch filters around B♭ frequencies* and inserts rude noises proportional to the amount of signal cut.  I might actually grow up before designing/building that one, but I hope not. 

*Yes, I realize there is a difference between frequency detection and pitch detection.

[alfafalfa]

They look fabulous these pedals and I look the graphics a lot.
Thanks for all the info you wrote about the sound they had. Great info !

Alf

[duck_arse]

they all look great, and much as I like the lama, and the oranges, this one is my personal fave:




and The Shart? Brown Sound in a Box, no doubt. with wet/dry mix.

[thermionix]

Don't forget the wet/dry blend.

Rost.

[PRR]

>> FYI: There is a "Pictures" child board for build pics.. 
> Ahhh I feel a fool now... I'll remember for future use...

No big deal. Click the "Report to moderator" link under your post. In the "Reason" box, write "Please move this thread to Pictures section-- thanks! deadlyshart".

It takes Aron or staff(?) just a few seconds to move a thread. And it is the nicest work a Moderator usually gets. (Sure beats mopping-up many copies of offensive spam in strange languages).

[stringsthings]

Those are some really nice etches!