pcbguitar mania poly face build report

[pinkjimiphoton]

this is a self-contained "clone" of the eh polyphaser. they modded it to fit a 1590 n box, and it runs off an lt1054 charge pump.
i had some issues at first with the "sweep" dieing when it would sweep up... took a while to figure out. ended up being a thermal issue... i thought. i had discovered when the sweep stopped, re-flowing the env/sweep switch would make it start again. same with the sweep rate pot.... and q1. or the 4013. wtf?

talked to scruff for a hot second, he said maybe the heat made the gain go up enough to make it fire, and it appears he was right.... anyways...

i built this sucker... was one of the guys who helped reverse engineer it in the first place from my original unit... and this project totally NAILS the original, but is better... less noise, more reliable. the original may as well be ge, it changes every time ya plug it in.
first things first... make q1 a 5089 instead of 5088. it needs a higher gain q there or it can "hang" when it sweeps upwards. shoot for a gain of around 560 hfE or so, and it should work perfectly. mine fired right out of the gate, but took a few days to sort the sweeping issue, which was temperature sensitive... (heating the q with the tip of my iron would make it work, holding it with needlenose would stop the lfo running... )... the higher gain here works better, as the gain goes UP when the original is heated.
so i suggest socketing the q's until such time as you're sure its good, then solder them in.
next up... once biased right, this thing is unstoppable. i never got close to 6.7 volts, 3.7 is more like it on my build, but it works great.
a common misconception with these is that the envelope rate should be an lfo rate... no, the lfo is controlled by the sweep rate control. the envelope rate control is how long the sweep lasts during the envelope function... turn it cw, and it will sweep thru the phaser faster, and turn it ccw and it takes longer for the envelope to sweep. its not supposed to add modulation like a normal phaser. this is exactly like in the original.
crank the feedback pot!! it sounds like a flanger that way, its hip!
when switching to envelope, try it with all knobs half way up to start, and play dynamically. having a bit of od or fuzz in front really makes it shine! too much compression will kill the sweep tho. it should act like a normal auto wah once ya get used to it, and track anything ya throw at it.
pcbguitar mania knocked it outta the ball park on this one, well done, guys!! this is one satisfying and toneful and USEFUL build, that i highly reccomend to anyone who may want the ultimate in controllable phasers.

look forward to my next build!
peace!