Pictures!

[andrew_k]

Heck that looks good Darron! Whoa.

HM-2, right? Would you mind running through the steps you took to get it like that?

[darron]

Heck that looks good Darron! Whoa.

HM-2, right? Would you mind running through the steps you took to get it like that?

thanks! (:

hm-2 indeed. process is very simple. stripped the guts out. removed the rubber pad with a thin screwdriver (not very hard). sanded it back progressively from 80 through to 600-800 with wet and dry. the more effort that you put in here the better the result. i could have put in a lot more effort but it probably would have meant an extra hour or so of sanding to get the roughest spots out. it's not a perfectly flat aluminium cast you see. then the key step is buffing it. i used a metal buffing solution with an 800watt bench grinder fitted with a large soft buffing wheel. if you only wanted to do one, and you had the patience, you could buy some compound and probably use a drill tool for buffing. use a heavy duty drill tough and don't burn it out.

edit: put it all back together.

i suppose the next step would be acid etching some text it! 

[ambulancevoice]

wow, boss pedals look so much better without the crappy one color paint jobs

[andrew_k]

then the key step is buffing it.

Damn. That's the bit I don't have the tools for. I've got a dremel and a big ol' drill, I guess the drill might be usable.

THanks for the info 

[Barcode80]

dremel will buff great, just takes longer.

[arawn]

Dremel Takes lots longer, and make sure you stock up on the buffing pads

[Dragonfly]

if you spray it with clear coat after buffing it will "stay" shiny....

[darron]

if you spray it with clear coat after buffing it will "stay" shiny....

i kind of don't believe in clear coats for metals, in the case of stomp boxes anyway. once you get past 800 or so grit i think you stop staining the surface with your finger acids, sweat etc.. it's true that it will probably gently scuff and loose it's shininess. after all, i did the effect a while ago and it was probably better then. but with a clear coat, even a polyurethane designed specifically to be chip resistant on aluminium car wheels, it's probably going to scratch. i know it was nice when i made it and that it more or less holds up. it's probably easier for me to think in the back of my head that i can rebuff it one day, even though i probably won't, but if it's got a paint chip or scratch i dread the work or repairing that.

if you end up with a really perfect result that you think you won't get any better, and you want to preserve it, then Dragonly's advice is probably really good. use that magic paint that i was talking about too! it's the best stuff for the job, i think.

good call...

[Dragonfly]

I didnt go "highly polished" on this one...just got it to a point where I liked it and then clear coated it.

Still looks like this a year or more later.

[gijimmbo]

hey everyone!  FINALLY finished my Neutron project.  it took me forever and i'm just glad to be done with it. ...   after ordering the recomended enclosure, it seemed excessivly large, so i put it in this one.  trust me, you do not want to see the insides!
thanks again to everyone here for sharing emense knowledge and joy!!!

[tskullt]

Hey Dragonfly,
   Where did you get that cool chicken head knob?  Is that bakelite?

  and gijimmbo - great graphics, very cool font...

m.

[Dragonfly]

Hey Dragonfly,
   Where did you get that cool chicken head knob?  Is that bakelite?

Yep..just one I had in the box...

[tskullt]

very, very cool.
m.

[dano12]

[frequencycentral]

Dano - I love your work!

[juse]

Heck that looks good Darron! Whoa.

HM-2, right? Would you mind running through the steps you took to get it like that?

thanks! (:

hm-2 indeed. process is very simple. stripped the guts out. removed the rubber pad with a thin screwdriver (not very hard). sanded it back progressively from 80 through to 600-800 with wet and dry. the more effort that you put in here the better the result. i could have put in a lot more effort but it probably would have meant an extra hour or so of sanding to get the roughest spots out. it's not a perfectly flat aluminium cast you see. then the key step is buffing it. i used a metal buffing solution with an 800watt bench grinder fitted with a large soft buffing wheel. if you only wanted to do one, and you had the patience, you could buy some compound and probably use a drill tool for buffing. use a heavy duty drill tough and don't burn it out.

edit: put it all back together.

i suppose the next step would be acid etching some text it! 

Hey Darron,
What is the RPM of your grinder? I'm curious because I always thought that regular bench grinders wouldn't go fast enough for polish work. I was a jeweler many years ago & we used an ultra high speed buffer that looked like a bench grinder to polish jewelry with. I've been looking around for something besides Micromesh & Simichrome to polish aluminum with & was wondering what my options were. So a regular drill with a buff wheel on it will work too? It would be nice to have a cheaper way to do it.

[earthtonesaudio]

Hey Dano, I have a question for your Fuzzlab Jr. regarding the "comp" switch.  Have you tried wiring some extra resistance on the top lug of the "pregain" pot (or output volume, whatever works) to adjust the volume in concert with the Comp switch?  On your page you mention that the comp switch lowers the volume, but if you had an extra 10-100k resistor on top of the volume control, you could use a dpdt and switch the cap and volume increase simultaneously.  It might be even weirder to do it to the pregain control, as that would change the frequency response at the same time. 

Just wonderin if you had tried it already... I've been thinking about doing something like this for a long time.


Cool pedal by the way.

[Pushtone]

Georgia O'keeffe had her cow skull period, now I've had my tube-top period.

The last in a series of pedals with tubes on top and roll bars.
This one is Matsumin's Valve-caster done point-to-point style.
I think it look kinda cool.
Thanks Dano for the inspiration(s) and great thread!

This sounds great with an Electro Harmonic 12AU7. ($18.00 CDN)
8-12dB of clean boost with GAIN at min.
Very nice over drive with gain at max.
Put a booster in front of it and it really sings.
And all its got is 4 resistors and 4 caps!
I think I'll build me another.

It sounds terrible with a Yugoslavia Industrija ECC82 ($8.00 CDN)
Slightly less volume than bypass with VOL at max and GAIN at min.
Farty fizzy distortion with GAIN at max. Weak over-all.

Its all about the tube here.
I lower the coupling cap between stages for less bass.






A few more pics here

Here is the P-t-P layout I created.





I have a little collection going...
Bullitt tube tremolo, Shaka Tube and now the ValveCaster.

[Dragonfly]

Here is the P-t-P layout I created.

Very nice...I might have to build one of these. You've inspired me....

Looking at your layout though, you have the "Gain" knob listed as 100k, and the "tone" knob listed as 50k...that's the opposite of the schematic. Is this the way that you built it, or a typo ?

[nico13]

Congratulations Pushtone.

It's a fantastic building and clean point to point wiring on this eyelet board !

I'm really interested in this Valvecaster as it seems such an easy build.

Did you already record some soundclip (clean / overdriven) with it?