roland funny cat advice?

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok, got this puppy meowin' like a kitten on acid at the bottom of a canyon beneath an ocean on europa now. yeah. much nicer.
turns out the "kit" or "pcb's" shitty instructions not including a damned schematic proper TO this particular variant sure didn't help any.

as it turns out, i did socket the jfet socket, and i did try a whole bunch of them. some barely worked like a severely mis-biased transistor kinda horrible blat. some, reversed, would KINDA work, but the whole thing would shriek uncontrollably.

that was when my dumb ass figured out that MAYBe  the pinout i was assuming was  wrong. i was sure the silkscreening on the pcb was wrong anyways.
so i tried the one freakin fet i hadn't tried yet. a NOS radio shack n channel jfet marked
M 3821
pinout
1 s
2 d
3 g
I =0.66ma
vgs=0.46v

and popped it in, reversed from the silkscreening on the kit. bingo.
it still oscillated, but the fuzz suddenly kicked on, and actually sounds really good. the knobs don't need to be pegged to get it to pass signal, either, let me tell ya what. holy shit. plenty-o-bawlz now. about 9:00 on the fuzz level and the filter sensitivity is good with a les paul, and it sustains much better.

i used a 1458 for u1, on the left, and a 5532 for u2 on the right. seemed to give the best balance of volume, quack, distortion and headroom.

the "kit", if ya got the "new version pcb with 9 pin header" like i did has some @#$%ed-up instructions.

for one, they have the switch and pots mounted on the component side of the board, which is dumb. hopefully this will save some other poor soul a lot of wtf'ing...

flip the damn board over, mount it to the solder side, and solder from the component side.

also, mount the pots with the body of the pots facing toward where the pcb cutouts are, and the terminals roughly in line with the big switch.

its spaced for 9mm board mount pots, but they won't compete with the height of the switch. so take a little solid core wire or resistor leads or whatever, and solder them to the pins of the pots. if ya get them alpha styles with the snap in bullshit on them, snap off the long parts that would mount in the pcb, you won't need them. don't mess up the metal backplate however or the pot may get f'd up.
anyways, once ya solder longer leads to them, i like about a 1 inch extension, stick a tiny piece of shrinkwrap or electrical tape or bubble gum or some kinda shit and insulate the leads a little. ya wanna ballpark 'em so that when stuck in the pcb holes, it about matches up with the switch.

mount them to the board first, no solder, then to the case and sock 'em down snug. that way ya don't have to try and fish 'em thru afterwards.
the switch stopper thing is gonna wanna fall off on ya, and make the switch have too many stops. save yourself a heap o time and put a little piece of masking tape on the mother@#$%er so the washer/stop thing doesn't fall off. i know i swear a lot, but that's ok, cuz i'm a @#$%in electrician

the led's are actually backwards from as advised too. they as well should mount to the same side as the freakin switch and two pots so the damn led's will show up thru the holes you gotta figure out where to drill for in the damn case cuz there's no help in the build doc for that, either, of course.

the pots, if inserted to the board as described, wil sit far enough above the board to not short to it, and from the front of the pedal, will turn clockwise for more.

speaking of which, turn your guitar way down when testing til ya figure out where the sweet spots are on the controls of the pedal, so ya don't spend a day gnashing your teeth over the non-working pos like i did. it works. but, like the people i so often find amusing, i did what i always think they do... peg the damn pedal and expect it to NOT be unruly un-toneful and potentially hideous sounding.

with the guitar about half way up, when ya turn it on, its much more forgiving of the eardrum bleed.

the way the 9 pin connector thing for the footswitching board is a mite @#$%ed up too. as shown in the build doc, it only would work if you have all the components facing the bottom of the case. people wanna see shit inside! not just the damn solder blobules!
to be able to have the power jack as close to the input jack and switching as possible, i had to actually twist the damn ribbon cable i used between the footswitching and main boards like a dang mobius strip.  the connections are, of course, backwards if ya are dumb like me and don't think it thru when ya set out to correct someone else's mistaken vision

hahahha... did i really just write that? ooopsies.. i am a ...anyways..

the whole mess works great now. i didn't bother with tantalums. i did use poly chicklets cuz i like to say poly chicklets instead of the mylar caps specc'd, too, and mono ceramics for the rest, and regular ceramics for the pf's. i don't see the diff tonally with tantalums really, and always thought their main use was to save space over much larger electros.

i don't think a buffer before the circuit is necessary now, like i'd read about searching on the circuit. its got plenty of balls.

rolling back your guitar volume and tone knobs can help a lot.

cranked up, expect it to oscillate and possibly be microphonic-ish

a 3904 is fine for the single q to the left of the board.

but anyways, now its working, sounds really cool, much better than the crappy demos i've heard on youtube, and no singing, either.

i'll get some video for me droogies soon, its gotta be a while since the last epi-pen-o-sode of bring on the stupid...

and when i click "post" i'll scan the damn build doc for to save some other poor bastard a bit of aggravation in the future. yes, i was bad, and rebellious, and put stuff together different from the cheezy ass build doc... but there was no reason to do it the way shown. i mean, why socket shit if ya gotta pull it out of the damn case to swap any components out? its ridiculous. plus, its just.... not sexy that way. its gotta have the sex appeal under the dang hood, right? when ya open the hood of a muscle car, its SEXY. when ya open the hood of my crappy suv, its a big sheet of plastic covering shit so you don't get in trouble monkeying with it. about as sexy as a chastity belt and a nun with a big freekin' ruler.

anyways. jesus. its 142 am again. i never sleep. be right back. lol

[pinkjimiphoton]

there's the build doc

[Rob Strand]

there's the build doc

Be interesting to compare that parts list with RG's project (the link I posted above).

[pinkjimiphoton]

i intend to do just that, near as i can figure, he took RG's project and re-jigged the pcb layout, but other than that i believe its the same as RG's modded circuit.

it really sounds good now tho. i am surprised at the change between last nite and the day before. really went from unuseable without a booster or fuzz before it as so often reported to totally useful and kickass!

[pinkjimiphoton]

messed with this thing some more. it was oscillating like crazy. so i decided to try and snub it with a cap or two.

on the pic of the pcb from the project, the node at r16 to the bottom left of the board and the pad marked Sw, solder one leg of a 3.3n ceramic cap to ground.. i used the jack ground cuz it was convenient.

also add another 3.3n cap between pins 3 and 4 of u2, that should eliminate the oscillation completely and knock out most of the noise while de-harshing the filter and distortion slightly. it will now quack right on its own, with or without the sds circuit engaged, and it mellows out the distortion a little bit, too. i can get the full range of both pots useably.

for what its worth, it looks like r 16 on this would be r15 on RG's schematic, and it looks like r15 and r14 are swapped, so its the 22k going to the switch instead of the 220k. i dunno how that affects the circuit, but may be why its got a good bit more distortion balls to it than Mark said his had.

it really kinda sounds like a cat now. the distortion can stand on its own, and the filter is nice and meeee-owwwwweeeeeyyy

in case anyone else ever runs into the oscillation nitemare dealio... and if ya need more volume from the sds, add them two caps, and swap them two resistors.

peace!

[pinkjimiphoton]

here's a super shitty pic from my uber shitty phone, i circled the two added parts and where they go.... hopefully will help some other poor sucker some day.