newest stupid pedal project

[pinkjimiphoton]

so a bud calls me up, hey man, remember that thing tom scholz used in boston to do the spaceship sounds?

i'm like, yeah, he hooked up a servo or something to control his echoplex, right?

well, he wanted a work alike. for not a lotta bread.

so i told him get me a crybaby and two of them dirt-cheap dano fab echos, the slapback ones with no delay time adjustment.

so he came over... long story short, i killed the first echo. ooooops. smd stuff. not my forte.

on the last try, i managed to graft a piece of capacitor lead to pin 6 on the 2399, and secured it with a glue stick and a lighter. did the infinite repeat mods and mix volume mod too, so we could actually get the slap louder than the dry if needed.

i took the jacks off the input board to give more room, and mounted them plastic enclosed 50c tayda wahwah jacks inside the shell, then wired the whole mess up... with the delay time pot controlled by the treadle now, a dunlop hot pots 100k unit... took a little while to get it working, cuz originally i true bypassed the whole mess.... i jumpered the ring and sleeve of the input jack on the pcb and set it up so the new input jack would turn the power on instead...

the bypass switch is a momentary on, which i didn't realize. i had hoped i could just turn it on and leave it on, but no can do. a regular dp3t meant you had to stomp on it 3 times to get it on , tho only once to turn it off. so i said screw it, and went with the buffered bypass and jfet switching. i had an old school momentary push switch, but the actuator was too low... so i cut off one of the rubber bumpers from the crybaby and glued it to the actuator. now ya could turn it off or on easily by pushing down hard on the toe once.
turned the oscillation up full, and the mix so the slap was the same volume as the guitar, wrapped the whole mess in duct tape plugged it in and fired it up. had to play with the sweet spot of the pot a little, llike adjusting a crybaby, but it worked out well.

now when ya turn it on, it immediately begins swelling into feedback. as you rock it back towards the heel, the repeats slow down and bend, and sound just like scholz's spaceship landing and taking off. it's way hipper than it may sound at first... and you can still play guitar over it which makes it even more fun. you can dial in notes you want to feedback just by playing them and letting the delay do it's thing. shorter (toe down) delays are easier to do the controlled feedback thing with, and longer ones can get pretty lo fi and grungy.... but for what the guy wanted?

i think i nailed it.  there's just about enough room in a crybaby for the two boards and the battery toward the heel if ya put the boards in in line with the long part of the pedal. in this case, i just wrapped the hell out of 'em in black electrical tape.

so we have 3 mods basically, and a rehouse.... and created something that tho it's fringe, is still pretty cool... kinda like what the dano shift daddy should have been.

you get about the same range of delay times as an echoplex.

i'm gonna sacrifice my fab delay i think and do the same thing with it, but add external mix and feedback pots, the pots aren't too bad to get off the board if ya use a solder wick... and i imagine that may work a little better.

should work with any pt2399 based echo out there, as long as ya can fit it in the crybaby shell.

if you're bored and feel experimental, check it out... it's a trippy and useful effect once ya get the hang of it.

my boy left before we did video, cuz it took about 7 hours from start to finish to get the working prototype going, but when he posts me some video, i'll snipe it and up it to youtube and put it here.

anyways.,... stupid pedal tricks may be evolving more towards tricks than builds... stay tuned!

[bluebunny]

Intriguing!  The words sound great.  I'm sure the video will be greater.  <subscribe>   

[pinkjimiphoton]

a different stupid pedal trick... my bro Matt Stanco

[Kipper4]

Very cool. Good work guys

[pinkjimiphoton]

i've actually got a bunch of peeps asking me to build these for 'em now... i tell 'em find me a crybaby shell, buy me 2-3 o them dano fab echoes, a 100k hotpot and about a c-note for my time. it is kinda cool for what it is. hard to work on, but the guy was pretty psyched and it seems to capture the essence of what he was going for, so it's all good!!

[stonerbox]

Perfect for that psychedelic-satanic-drug-stuff. Great work Jimi.

[pinkjimiphoton]

well, perfect for a couple boston songs, maybe lol

[brianq]

a different stupid pedal trick... my bro Matt Stanco

[notnews32]

Pinkjimi, this is super cool!

Rather than having you spend your time and me spend more money to have you do the work, any chance you'd be willing to make up a basic wiring diagram block diagram type thing of how to hook up the delays and the extra pots inside the wah shell so I can do it myself? Not sure a full-blown schematic is necessary.. just something simple that shows how to wire things up. Aside from saving the extra hundred dollars for your labor and time, which I'm sure you don't have unlimited amounts of, I'd like to personally have the experience of building this up and troubleshooting it myself for the sake of improving and widening my DIY skills.

I love when cheap circuits and innovation come together to create something great. Thank you for sharing with everyone!

[pinkjimiphoton]

hey hey,
you don't need me for that. smart people have already done the work for ya. google dano fab echo mods. you can't miss 'em. for max delay repeats, ya short out one resistor to a cap next to it. you shunt one other to get more delay wetness. and ya remove the resistor going from ground to pin 6 of the pt2399 and solder a wire to pin 6. connect it to the center lug of your treadle's pot. connect the other side to a ground point on the pcb. you only need two connections, you're using it as a variable resistor, not shunting signal to ground.
https://www.google.com/search?q=danelectro+fab+echo+modifications&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8



http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1577099

read my original post about it. you want to remove the two jacks... i use desoldering braid for that. get 'em out of there. one side on the output connects to ground. that will go to the ground lug of your output jack. the hot terminal (where the tip of the plug would be connecting) goes to the tip of the output jack. (mounted in the shell as described.)

why output side first? so you can see which of the three terminals is which easier when ya do the input jack. you wanna fun a lead to the "tip" of the input jack. you want to jumper the SWITCH (the third solder pad on the input jack) to the ground pad. then run a wire from there to the ground of your input jack. make sure if you don't use the crybaby style jacks you use a stereo 1/4 inch jack. the crybaby ones are good cuz they're cheap and you can do a tip ring sleeve connection with them still.

at that point, your audio wiring is done. connect a power  supply - choose your fav, i like the stuff on beavis's site, or you can find diagrams in the gallery here or with google...

i use the 2.1mm x 5 mm power plugs that tighten externally myself. you have one big lug on it. connect to the sleeve on your input jack. above it is the 9v battery positive connection, if ya wanna use a battery.  connect the unused lug on the power jack to the same place the red lead on the battery connector is/was. now when ya plug in, the input jack will automatically connect the circuit.

finally, the bypass is easy. you need a momentary on stompswitch. if aron doesn't have 'em, smallbear or tayda will. take the original switch, snip or desolder, and connect it to your new switch. mount in shell. done deal.

turn the trimmer for the repeats up full, turn the mix up about 3/4's of the way... done.

not to be a buzzkill, but this is all stuff you can find easily on this website using the search function. search for how to connect a power supply and basic layout. there's tons of graphics to help you out here.

you're really only gonna have a few wires to connect. an input, an output, the two wires for the switch, b+ and ground. i think you're gonna be better off looking for stuff first than asking for it. not to be a dick or a buzzkill or anything... but i see no point in me drawing up stuff that's already there for the looking. if ya get stuck, be glad to help if i can.

make sure you power down and test at each of the stages of the mod....  be careful... and you'll nail it. just like that.

[Mark Hammer]

Sounds like it would be great for playing "EXP" from the beginning of the Axis: Bold as Love album.

[pinkjimiphoton]

WELL, MR HAMMER, HAVE I TOLD YA LATELY HOW I LOVE THE WAY YOUR MIND WORKS?

took a look at a dano fab delay, one of the 600ms cheapos to see if i could use one of them, but i don't think it will work the same. i figured the feedback loop had to be similar, but i couldn't figure our which resistor was which... these suckers are small!!! but the board is a bit bigger, so may not work as well. i miss thru hole stuff!!

just seemed like the three knob would be easier, but in reality the cheaper more primitive one is the only way to fly for this.

[Electron Tornado]

Here's Mr. Scholz himself:

[Jdansti]

Hey Jimi, why not just make a simple delay instead of jacking with the Danelectros? I just tested my Ersatz Verben psuedo reverb by culturejam found here:  http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2012/03/ersatz-verben-psuedo-reverb-by.html and it does the space thing. You could substitute trimmers for two of the pots, or maybe even experiment to see if you could use fixed resistors or just jumper wires in place of the two pots. I've built three or four of these and have never had any issues which them freezing up using Tayda PT2399s.

Edit: This effect will work great with the 100k treadle pot you're already using.

[pinkjimiphoton]

simple answer is price and time. at 15 bux shipped,  it's cheaper than building them, sourcing parts, and assembling. that's why.
every 2399 i've ever used that i bought anywhere had lock up issues. i don't etch my own boards, so that means vero. which means a lot more time and effort, and like aron and mark and countless others have said over the years sometimes it's cheaper to buy commercial units than to buy them.
in this case, if i had him buy a complete echo kit from somewhere, (i don't wanna deal with ordering parts and crap, and pretty sure he doesn't wanna pay me for all that time and i don't blame him) it would, at the cheapest kit i found, cost him more than buying 2-3 of them cheap danos and an old crybaby. he had 55 bucks shipped into the 2 danos and the wah. yes, i killed one of the danos... as i expected to, having done this before... well, modding them, anyways... and between everything had about 7 hours into it from start to finish.  i can't possibly charge the cat my normal rate for repair work (generally 60 an hour, about 2/3rds the other guys around here who WILL charge you the full amount for their time, too) so i told him 80 bux would be sufficient... he was happy and paid me 120, which i felt was fair enough.  at 60 an hour, it would have been too pricey - and i never charge friends anywhere near an hourly rate, usually i'll flat rate a gig.
so in the end, simply price, ya can't beat it.
i re-used parts from the crybaby, including the 100k hotpot on the treadle. i kept the pcb for it intact in case someone needs one down the road.
but, i mean, a 15 dollar delay? i had to short a resistor and cap together, add a jumper and hack in a pot. the hardest part was taking stuff apart, fitting it in and wiring it all really.

so.... ease, price and effort figured into the equation. originally i was gonna use an actual hand - stuffed board as you suggest, but it was cheaper and easier to go this route. why build a 2399 delay when for less than the build expense i can buy one ready to go?
was a no-brainer bro. same circuit, already built, for a lower price.  had to do it.

[anotherjim]

Why not add and expression pedal socket to a delay? I thinking the other day how few fx have this, though there's room in all but the smaller enclosures. For a PT2399, you have a resistance to ground setting the delay, so a switched socket that leaves the existing control connected until you plug in the expression pedal. For an expression pedal, anything with 100k or so pot would do? Even a volume pedal using the output jack to get tip-ground control.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yeah could do that easy enough jimmy. but then ya gotta haul around 2 pedals and maybe a cord to patch them. it's easier to just put the delay inside the crybaby shell for this, i don't think it's an effect that would get used enough to merit the hassle. but with a pt2399 you could even do the switching remotely, or do what i did with my casality built... wipe out part of the track so when the pedal is full toe down there's no physical connection and it will default to the settings on the pedal.
but to me and matt, this is pretty much a one trick pony.
watching scholz, it appears he did the same. it's a trippy effect and kinda neat.
but absolutely could be done with ANY delay pedal. i'm just a big fan of Keep It Stupid Simple.

[Jdansti]

Makes sense, Jimi.