Stomplabs Max. O.D. - Humble startups first product demo! What do you think?

[lungdart]

Hey guys, new to the DIY pedal scene, but I've been an electronics hobbyist for many years, and professionally for about 4 years, and I've been playing guitar for about 15 years.

After a move, I started working for a guitar pedal startup. I gobbled up the opportunity immediately. We are a team of 2, working out of Nova Scotia. I have been involved with this project for 1 year now, and we have just finished development! It's called the Max O.D. It's our first product in our XPressLane lineup which gives you advanced expression control over everything. This overdrive is a tweaked model of the TS9. Here's the demo!

We use a hybrid system of Digital and Analog. All analog effect chain, with digital controls. The basic premise is to read physical pots into a micro, and use that to program digital pots on the analog side of things. We had to do a bit of engineering to get the audio chain noiseless and allow for smooth transitions while adjusting the knobs. The benefits of the hybrid system mainly allow us very advanced expression control. The expression input can be mapped to any single or combination of controls on the pedal. Want to adjust the gain up while adjusting the tone down? We can do that. We also incorporated an expression out port, which follows the expression in, letting the next effect think it's seeing the original pedal. This allows us to use a single expression pedal to control any combination of controls across multiple pedals.

The digital control logic is all included on a single 'platform' circuit, which connects to foot switched and knob boards. Then we have an analog effect 'daughter' board that plugs into it. This allows us to just create the different analog effects without having to recreate the digital control structures. We already have a prototype for a Phaser, and a Fuzz, although they are not ready to demonstrate just yet.

Although I have been in electronics for a while, I wasn't in the audio side of things, so I had to do a bit of research, and gained lots of information from this and other DIY communities. So I want to give back. and that's what this post is about. Because we have this multi board system, it can be extremely easy to design effects for. So we are going to open up the interface to the DIY community, and allow you guys to put your designs on it, and gain full expression control over your favourite effects.

So watch the demo, tell us what you think, and feel free to ask lots of technical questions! There are some proprietary stuff I can't divulge obviously (Although I would love to open source the entire hardware and software, it just doesn't make sense financially at this point in time.), but I will do what I can.

Oh and one last thing, as we move from hand assembling each unit, we are looking into doing a kickstarter to get the funds for a higher quantity manufacturing. So keep an eye out for that in the next few weeks!   

[anchovie]

A plug for a commercial product in the "Building your own stompbox" section? That always ends well. 

Popcorn, anyone?

[lungdart]

A plug for a commercial product in the "Building your own stompbox" section? That always ends well. 

Popcorn, anyone?

PMd aron to see if it would be kosher to post this, he gave it a thumbs up. If it's in the wrong forum I'll gladly move it, but I didn't see anything else where it really applied. Any suggestions?

This is a stompbox that 2 people were involved in building. The project was a little more involved than most builds, and we are trying to build around it commercially. I don't see much of a problem with that. Especially that we are opening it up for you guys to play with and build your own effects for. Don't misunderstand, we are not a giant corporation, just a very small startup, trying to get our feet wet and live the dream.

[digi2t]

Post a schematic and vero layout, and all will be forgiven.

Seriously, welcome to the forum, and best of luck on your venture. Always nice to see Canadian content, especially coming from the Maritimes (ahhhh....memories of drunken Friday nights at the Misty Moon ).

Cheers,
Dino

[lungdart]

Post a schematic and vero layout, and all will be forgiven.

Seriously, welcome to the forum, and best of luck on your venture. Always nice to see Canadian content, especially coming from the Maritimes (ahhhh....memories of drunken Friday nights at the Misty Moon ).

Cheers,
Dino

Haha. I think a full blown schematic is something I can't produce. If people really wanted to just see the analog side of things, I could swing that. But it really is just a modified TS9. Not sure how interesting it would be.

And thanks for the invite. Never been to the Misty moon, where is it located?

[mth5044]

Sounds like an interesting design; however, I can't see the video at the moment. I tried that kind of control before and didn't find it too useful for drive pedals, but in mod land it was very fun.

But, you did say 'I don't see much of a problem with that. Especially that we are opening it up for you guys to play with and build your own effects for.' How do we do that if we don't have access to any of your information?

[lungdart]

Sounds like an interesting design; however, I can't see the video at the moment. I tried that kind of control before and didn't find it too useful for drive pedals, but in mod land it was very fun.

But, you did say 'I don't see much of a problem with that. Especially that we are opening it up for you guys to play with and build your own effects for.' How do we do that if we don't have access to any of your information?

Ahh, the idea is to give you access to the information of course. You don't need to know the circuit design and software for the platform to be able to develop an effect for it. We will be releasing the pinouts for the daughter board, the signals and what they do, along with design considerations when we release. We also have a prototype of a DIY breakout board to get this baby working with a breadboard. The signal lines are pretty straight forward. Effect In, Effect Out, Serial communication lines for the digital pots, some syncing lines.

Remember, this isn't released yet, so we don't have the information exactly compiled in a nice little package at the current time, but feel free to ask any questions here. I will answer them. I'll get some extra information up so you guys can get a clearer image of what's going on.

[mth5044]

Ah, so you will be selling the digital boards/pre programmed uC's/etc. I see now.

[lungdart]

That's correct mth. The digital platform boards are a little involved too, so an out of box solution is a little necessary.

http://imgur.com/a/5LwRq Here is a screen shot of the Analog side of the over drive. I tried to take a photo of the Max O.D. out of box, to you show you a little better how the platform, daughter board system works. It wasn't until after I uploaded it that I realized it was one of our Silicon Fuzz prototypes. Oh well, the principle is the same anyway.

The small circuitry on the top side of the analog daughter board is used for syncing the serial data to the pots. The DIY boards we offer will have these pre populated (Those are some small components, they suck to do by hand.. trust me), and the digital pots will come on a breakout board to plug into sockets.