Product wanted!

[ZtaRDuZT]

I'd like to be able to switch board and use the same enclosure.
What I need is something to connect off board pots and switches
to the circuit.

I've looked around at my local electronicstore but with no luck.
The things they had were too big and clumsy, I'm more intrested
in something you solder to the board and then connect pots and
stuff connect to.

Anyone know were I can get something like this? Productnumber?
Smallbear? Mouser?

Is it smart or just plain stupid?

[soggybag]

I have a PCB that I have designed that mounts the switch, in and out jacks and DC power jack all on the board. The board with all parts mounted fits into a 1590 B or similar sized enclosure and is held in place by the in and out jack mounting nut and the switch.

I mount the post to the board. This way everything comes out in one piece. If you wanted to leave the post in the case you use typical header or even one of those Milimax sockets on the PCB where the pot connections would go.

Here's a link to a thread about some projects I made with the PCB.
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=37606.0

I have some more pictures and information on my website.
http://www.webdevils.com/stompbox/

I have offered the boards for sale on the sale trade page:
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=37711.0

I'm thinking of offering to sell input output jacks and DC power jack along with the PCBs pretty soon.

If you have any more questions or want to see some more pictures let me know.

[ZtaRDuZT]

Thx very much for the input!


My idea is to switch only the PCB or Perfboard, whatever is the case, and leave pots and input/output jacks in the enclosure.
In your case one could switch pretty easy but I would like to keep pots n stuff still in the enclosure.

Saves me a couple of bucks this way
They still need to fit inside, propably with one end soldered to the board where the connections supposed to be.

If anyone knows something that would fit my idea, let me know!

[soggybag]

I kinda like the PCBs I have made and I have plenty so it makes them easy for me to use. If I wanted to do what you are saying, like I said earlier, I would use some sort of header like this:

http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?&handler=data.listcategory&D=*575193316*&terms=575-193316+&Ntt=*575193316*&Dk=1&Ns=SField&N=0&crc=true

If you put it on the board where you would need connections for your pots, the pots could be attached to the enclosure and you could run the wires into the socket. If you planned carefully you could use pots with stiff wire PCB leads and the two would sort plug one into the other.

The switch is a problem as the leads are too big for this type of socket. But! you could easilly solder some short wire leads to the switch leads and these could plug into your header.

I like these Mill-Max headers, but there are many different kinds look at the Mouser catalog you may find one thhat better suits your needs.

[waldo041]

you could use headers and plugs  like the dunlop wahs.

peace,
waldo

[TryingToDo613]

I emailed you soggybag a while ago to buy some of those boards. Just tried again today through your site. I think this isn't what he wants. He wants to be able to plug different boards into the same enclosure. Problem is different boards use different value pots. You could just put one of every pot into a larger encloser and use clip leads. I got mine I think at electronics express. They are much more solid than aligators. -ph

[ZtaRDuZT]

I thought of an ic-sockets before, got some at home and tried to come up with a way to make it work, I even got what seems to be
the pins from an ic-socket stuck to som form of holder that looks like an ic-socket. The whole idea is lacking counterpart, what do
I put in the pin that will stay there. Probably another one of those pins. Solder one to the wire and one to the board, voilá, a solution.
The thing is that there's gotta be a product that's made for this. I can't find one though on my one I'm sorry to say.

My plan was to be able to switch between circuits that shared pot values. But I guess that it wouldn't be a problem to change pot
if you wanted since it's not soldered on the board.

Headers and plugs? What do they look like, can I find them anywhere? Never seen the inside of a dunlop wah-wah before.

[waldo041]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/s.castledine/greenfuz/wah.html

check out the vox v847.  you'll see the plug in the top photo, scroll down to see the header(pins)

peace,
waldo

[R.G.]

For some background, you may want to read the articles on "Wrappers" at GEO.

It's very tempting, isn't it? Just reuse the box, the jacks, the battery clips, even the controls and only pop a new board in. Great idea. There's even one one semi-commercial place that does this, offering interchangeable distortion boards for the same box.

And why isn't it already being done? Why doesn't everyone do it?  As always, the devil is in the details.

And in this case, the devil's details are the pots. The controls on a pedal vary in number and value, and also in how they're hooked up, whether they're variable resistors or voltage dividers, and if voltage dividers, hooked up in which way. They there's the issue of pot taper.

I thought about this quite a while when I was doing the article on Wrappers and also when designing the FxBus experimenters setup. The controls, and to a lesser extent the switches are highly customized to each effect circuit, in number, value, taper, and connection. Maybe it's just my limitations, but I didn't see any practical way within the somewhat severe constraints of the 9V battery powered, small-box, floor mounted stompbox to make the same set of pots and switches work for all circuits. I solved this for the FxBus by defining a control per module, and changing with the module.

The truly standard stuff like box, jacks, battery and stomp switch can easily be made swappable. The box is a modest problem, because you have to have enough holes in it for the unique controls, or alternatively have a big cutout in the panel that a subpanel of controls unique to the circuit at hand mounts in.

There's one way around this. Make the effect on its own front panel that bolts to what we'd normally think of as the bottom of a box, and put the common stuff like jacks, power jack, battery and so on in the bottom. Wire the stomp switch to the bottom circuits but leave a hole for it in the face plate so you can unscrew it from the old faceplate and screw it into the new one.

More adaptable is some thing like a mini-rack (See "Some thoughts on effects enclosures and rack mounting",  http://geofex.com/Article_Folders/FXRack/fxrack.pdf). These work very well. The PAIA Frac-Rack is another alternative, but it's oriented to 19" relay racks instead of floor pedals.

[ZtaRDuZT]

Primarily I wanted to change between different fuzz face boards, hopefully both NPN and PNP.
It was mainly to be able to switch between labboards without buying so many pots and enclosures.
There's about 1001 different fuzz faces with the same pots and connections out there
and I'd like to build more than I can handle. I won't need them all but that doesn't mean
it wouldn't be fun to build. Since most of the money lies in the enclosure, pots and switching
it would be nice to be able to switch in some easy way, at least between boards with the same
layout.

Headers and plugs seems to be the thing I'm looking for in a way. I'm not using PCB's at the
moment. When using PCB headers and plugs is a really good solution. I've seen similar solutions
on TV's I've demolited for parts. Right now I'm using perfboard, coppar traced, haven't come to
making PCB's yet. What I really need is to be able to place them one by one, not in a bunch like
on the Wah picture. That would be perfect.

Think I've seen a producer somewhere with interchangable boards using the same casing.
Don't remember what it was though.


Maybe there's a different "Wrapper" coming out of this, who knows.

//Ztar