Bloody 1590b's

[nelson]

I am sitting infront of a Rat and a Muff I have managed to stuff them into individual 1590b's. The annoying thing is the Muff PCB and all offboard connections including a battery are in their nicely, whereas the rat which has a PCB about half the size of the Muff has given me problems I have the PCB ontop of the pots and the lid isnt closing properly because of the height of the electrolytics, The 3PDT switch is a tad to low and the battery wont fit where I usually put it under the 3PDT on its side.

I took a trip to maplin the other day, all they had was metal 2.1mm power inputs, so I bought em, thinkin o I will fashion something to stop em shorting on the enclosure  :roll: Its bloody impossible, they are so small. I am thinkin I can use miniscule bits of sellotape? a rubber band? some other thing I may have lying around.

Anyone got any tips for the above problems? :x  :x  :roll:

[Mark Hammer]

Though he uses things generally unavailable to me, I have been inspired by Zachary Vex not to take "No" for an answer when it comes to 1590B boxes.

Some tips...

MXR tended to use tantalum caps for their power-supply decoupling/smoothing, and so can you.  Nice small rounded tantalums can be easily bent to lie on their sides, decreasing the height of the components on the board,  Despite using full-sized pots,  MXR was able to produce nice slim profile boards that fit under the pots without problem.  You may well have smaller pots, and decreasing the board height may buy you the needed space.  

If tantalums are not the answer, then consider leaving the leads of your electrolytics a bit longer and folding the caps over to reduce height.  Keep an eye out for smaller caps too.  I've seen/used  some newer 16v and 25v electrolytics that are half the size of the 10v caps of 10 times the capacitance value that I used to buy 15 years ago.

If your soldering technique is up to thetask, and you are sure of your chip choice, forego the sockets and go directly to the board.  Yeah it is risky and sometimes a bloody inconvenience, but if you have something that works to your satisfaction and needs a little space to be serviceable, it's worth it.

Be picky about your jacks.  Some take up more real estate than others.  Some limit board and switch placement more than others.

Know where your pots are going to sit over the board before drilling any holes.  Drives me absolutely frigging nuts when I find that I've foolishly situated a pot right wherea cap or chip is going to butt up against it.  This creates space problems and increases risk of shorts.  Avoid it by making sure that there is clearance under the pot.

Use mini phone jacks for power.  Yeah the 2.1mm barrel jacks are more standard, and yeah there are some safety issues, but 1/8" phone jacks USED to be close to standard back in the day (so you know they can work) and are SO much easier to positon in a non obtrusive way.  I have a huge bag of 2.1mm jacks but I prefer the 1/8" ones.  You will, of course, need to adapt your wall warts.

[petemoore]

I routinely use insulation substrates [sheet] under boards and elsewhere.
 I get the material from the theft prevention thick clear type plastic alot of stuff comes in...thin, strong [but if you have a dagger point say..cutoff lead driving into it I wouldn't necesarily trust it...find a place with a slight bend in the plastic that'll push right next to the point]..you said you'd try anything, and that's what I'd do.

[soggybag]

I like the 150-B boxes but it's hard to fit many effects into them. I made an easy face with a variable input cap and fit the pots (16mm) in a row along the top. I couldn't find any knobs that I liked that would fit!

I am very impressed by mister Vex's ability to fit so much into some his boxes.

[Hal]

not sure if its reliable enough, but clear nail polish may be your answer for the jack problem.  Never tried it, but it seems like it should work.

[sean k]

Nowadays I spend alot of initial time on paper doing and redoing boards to fit a box.Little things like designing layouts so tall things find gaps like positioning a switch over a bunch of resistors.Also I tend to go over possible placements of things several times to try and get the best placements for stuff and about using two boards,one on top of the other,where space allows.But all this is recent as normally I fold up chassis to suit the build because I did lots of tube amps when I started out though I must admit that fitting to a space is much more entertaining and must mention that I've got to go back to both tonepad and Mesopat....mus or something and check out how Francis did his board and how Meso...fit it into such a small box...for the small clone.Damn fine work!

[RDV]

I took a trip to maplin the other day, all they had was metal 2.1mm power inputs, so I bought em, thinkin o I will fashion something to stop em shorting on the enclosure  Its bloody impossible, they are so small. I am thinkin I can use miniscule bits of sellotape? a rubber band? some other thing I may have lying around.

For these you can buy rubber grommets at a hardware shoppe. 1/2" outside diameter with a 3/8" inner diameter will do the trick. Sorry I don't know the metric equiv.

RDV

[nelson]

not sure if its reliable enough, but clear nail polish may be your answer for the jack problem.  Never tried it, but it seems like it should work.

Now thats an idea! Hope my g/f has some.

Thanks

Gromets could be an idea....Dont have any lying around though.


Thanks for all your tips guys, bookmarked teh thread.

Any more?

That nail varnish one is gold!

[Torchy]

Drill the hole about 1.5 times as big as you need, then fill it with car body filler. Sand it smooth. Now drill the proper size hole ... isolated.

[Satch12879]

I'm the heretic around here; I generally avoid 1590B boxes like the plague.

You might try PCB mounted pots and jacks.  It'll take a bit more preplanning, but you'll get everything in there and no wire mess.

[Doug_H]

Somewhere in RG's faq he mentions that the hardest part of pedal building is in the mechanical design. The electronics is actually pretty easy.

I won't even think about building a pedal or an amp anymore without doing a package design first. Sometimes you can get by using something you have already built successfully as a template. But even that can get tricky. Subtleties can make a big difference, even in a larger RACO box.

I started out just doing simple drawings using Powerpoint. This was unbelievably helpful when it came time to drilling the box. Everything went right where I planned it and fit perfectly.  Now I have moved on to using an old version of Illustrator my wife left on my Mac. The layering feature is very useful. I have amp stuff where I have internal/external components, tag board, wiring, chassis, etc, etc on separate layers I can turn on and off. It's real easy to develop drilling templates, do graphics, faceplates, and etc from this. And once you do the first one, the rest of them are a breeze.

My first experience with a 1590B a few yrs ago was like yours. I just "winged it" and it was a nightmare getting things to fit. I made compromises, like leaving off the dc jack, and etc just to get everything in. I wouldn't think about attempting a 1590B again without some drawings first. If nothing else, use a pencil and paper and a ruler. You can get datasheets for the boxes at Mouser that have dimensions and so forth.

Doug

[nelson]

I have managed to get everything to fit, I am going to use that nail polish idea on the dc inputs. I am going to post pics of 3 builds soon. I am having the same trouble with my MXR noise gate. I even went to the trouble of doing a layout on fireworks for the NG but the 3pdt switch is still about 3mm too low. I may have to put this one in a 1590BB.

[StephenGiles]

Which is why I tend to use much bigger enclosures. I have a very nice 7" x 7" box for my next ADA Flanger, which I will not paint, and write on the pot descriptions with a CD marker! I really can't be bothered once I get the electronics to work. But y'all carry on doing those fine boxes out there.
Stephen