Work in Progress [pics]

[DavidS]

One question about the jacks, did you find any diffuculty/uglyness with those jacks on the sloped sides of the cast enclosures?

I've been following this idea of yours for a while, and I'm planning on building some effects with the PCB mounted jacks and 3PDT. Not the perfboard thing, but everything custom routed. I've been playing with EagleCad for a while, and I'm starting to find it pretty easy to do layouts.

Actually, I have another question, this one about your location for the power jack. Why did you choose to place it in the location you did? It seems like it would work better (from an external cable routing perspective) to have it on the opposite side of the input jack. Of course, alot of commercial pedals put it where you do. But I've never got it. Did you just want more space for the perfboard area?

[achtung jackass]

btw if you're in the uk, your local "friendly"  MAPLINS has those jacks, i got some of them a few months ago.

[smccusker]

I'll do what I can to get some sound clips up but I'm not really set up to record into the computer.

The Rebote 2 sounds like a pretty vanilla delay. I used a 100KB pot for the delay time, the schematic calls for a 50KB, which gives about 1 second or a little more of delay. This pushes the limit of the PT2399 chip a little. The sound is very clean up to about 300ms to 500ms (I'm guessing). After this there is some, not very musical, distortion. I wonder if there is a way to filter some of this out. Maybe this is good for it's own topic, or a search through the archives.

Overall sound is very clean until delay time gets too long. I examined the Tonepad and GeoFex layout and their lead of grounding pin 4 and lug 1 from the dealy pot together to separate the digital ground from the audio ground.

On my layout the FX In and Out are in the center about 5 pins apart. It worked out well to put the TL07 right between these. That way the FX In goes right to the Op-Amp on one side of the chip, the input buffer. The signal goes throug the PT2399 and then goes to the Output buffer on the other side of the TL072 which is right next to the FX out connection.

Of course all of this should be taken with a grain of salt since I webt to art school and have absolutely no education in the subject at all, aside fron the forum and a couple of Forest Mims engineers note books.

That's cool, I was really only planning on using the build for shorter delay times, and or noisemaking. It sounds like the rebote2.5's improved filtering might be to get rid of that distortion on longer delay times.

[soggybag]

Brad, I had posted these PCBs for sale on the Sale/Trade page a while back. If anyone is interested let me know I have some left over.

Davids, I decided to put the DC jack near the input because the input jack uses the stereo connection to disable the battery. If I had put the DC jack on the other side of the switch it would have been hard to get the wiring for this to work out well. I also wanted to give myself as much perfboard space as possible so I didn't want to put the DC jack on the other side of the input output jacks.



As it is there are 21 holes horizontal and 18 holes vertical. With a few holes missing in the two upper corners. The outer holes are all connected to ground. A small strip running down the center to the stompswitch, which is where I usually put the LED and current limiting resistor. There is also a little patch of holes opposite the DC jack which I have been eyeing up as a potentially useful place to put something like a MAX1044 voltage converter for those 18V projects or a millenium bypass or other LED tricks. There is a trace that runs from this corner patch under the output jack to the main area to connect the two areas if needed. Though you could also fly a wire over the top. I would like to be able to squeeze an LFO into this spot, but I don't think it can be done.
One of the holes here also connects to the output through the switch so you could also use this area for an output buffer through the trace on the left under the output jack.

The DC jack is probably the weakest part of the whole system. These types of jacks are problematic. They do look nice and fit flush against the interior of the box for a clean look. But they can break from the traces on the PCB if people are rough with the power plug.

If I do another run of the boards I will use an improved jack. As it is you could use any of the more popular jacks and just solder short leads to the board.
I think the box mounted jack with the threads on the outside would work best since one of my favorite features of the whole thing is that you can quickly and easily pull the PCB and verything out of a box to test, repair. I really like that it's very easy to test everything before it goes into the box.

smccusker, if I had only known there was a Rebote 2.5 i would have made that one instead. It looks like it's mostly just a few component changes. The rebote works well for short delay times.
I also built a PT-80 (on a larger PCB) I hooked an LDR across the delay pot with an LED controlled by an LFO. This made for some very crazy sounds. Working this into a more permanent and finsihed effect is one of the up and coming projects.

[Mark Hammer]

It would seem, both from the ends of them, and from their location, thatthe jacks are not secured to the chassis by nuts.  Correct?

If so, then that means the entire board is secured via the stompswitch?

I have a bunch of those plastic jacks, but they are the threaded type and my first instinct is to want to situate them at the rear skirt so they can be secured to the chassis.  Of course, on a 1590B, this would end up squishing pots and stompswitch uncomfortably close.  On a 1590BB, its another matter and much more feasible.

What does Dunlop do with theirs?  Secured or free-standing?

[WildMountain]

Nice work, Soggybag. I've been watching your "project" for some time now. Finally there's some recognition. Keep up the good work.

[soggybag]

The Neutrik jacks come in two varieties. One is threaded on the outside outside and has a large plastic nut that fits over the threads. The other, and this is the type that I used, have threads on the inside with a sort of domed shoulder washer that screws into the jack from the outside. These are the very similar if not exactly the same as the ones used on the Dunlop Wah.

The jacks come very close to box and have two plastic washers that fit in the inside. The washer makes the inside face of the jack fit snug against the inside of the box. On the outside the domed shoulder washer screws into the jack with a another plastic washer. This all just like the Dunlop set up

This system is interesting in that the jacks do not come in contact with the enclosure. There has been some debate on how to ground enclosures on the forum before. From what I gathered (and I may be wrong) there were two ideas, one the enclosure should be grounded at only one single point, or the enclosure should not be connected to ground at all.

These jacks allow for either since they do not make contact with the enclosure (with a conductive surface anyway). To gound your effect at a single point you can make a make a connection at a pot shell to one of it's lugs that goes to ground. Or otherwise leave the enclosure un-grounded. Note the bottom of the PCB can make contact with the lip of the lower half of the box along the edge if it sits too low. 

The PCB is secured at the switch and also by the jacks with some support from wires connected to pots. I also  included a couple of holes to act as a strain relief for the battery.

Here are a few pictures that may make clear what I have described. I'm at work so I can't take a new pictures right now. If anyone wants to see a close up anything in particular let me know.

here you can just see the side of the jack and bottom of the PCB. Note the chrome nosed nut with the plastic washer.

Here's a better side view of the washer on the outside and the chrome nut. Note the hole for the CD jack must be larger than the size of the DC plug or it will ground out on the enclosure. This doesn't seem to be a problem and it's the same method, and jack, used by dunlop and others. You could paint your enclosure and that would further insulate the area around the hole.

here you can see without the nut the hole for the jack is larger than the nut. Note the washer on the outside has a small lip that fits inside and guarantees the chrome nut does not contact the side of the enclosure.

[Mark Hammer]

Well then that's just plain brilliant, my friend.  Brilliant.  It just doesn't get more pedal-friendly AND generic than that.  I love the way the planning for a battery is already built in.  I guess my only gripe would be that I personally like my battery jacks at the back rather than the side, but that's just me.

You should speak to Steve Daniels about how and where he gets his pad per hole boards made.  If you've seen them, you'll know their very high quality.  Hell, for that matter, you guys should work out a profit sharing deal or something, not unless you make more selling them yourself.  It just seems to me that there are people who would want to buy a couple that wouldn't want to pay for shipping on 2 or 3, but *would* pay for the shipping if 2 or 3 were included with an order of a bunch of other parts from Small Bear.  Just an idea.

[Doug_H]

That really looks great! Thanks for sharing!

Doug

[Paul Marossy]

That's a great idea! Keep up the good work. 

[brad]

It just seems to me that there are people who would want to buy a couple that wouldn't want to pay for shipping on 2 or 3, but *would* pay for the shipping if 2 or 3 were included with an order of a bunch of other parts from Small Bear.

That's what I was thinking. Board shapes to suit both longways and lengthways orientations for B and BB sized boxes would probably sell well too.  Then there'd be a board size for just about anything you'd want to build.

[soggybag]

A lengthwise style board might be a good idea. I really like the layout of the Blackstone Appliances pedal (I can't remember the name). But it's sort of a B box with two switches, one at either end. All of the knobs are flush to the face of the box.

I have a layout finished for the BB sized box. I planned out the wiring with spots for three switches along the bottom. This way you could make a box with one switch in the center or on either side, or one switch on each side, or you could even use all three switches if you felt like it.

I could post a picture of this if anyone is interested. I haven't had any of these made yet since I have some of the first run left to build things with.

[soggybag]

Here's the layout I used. It still needs part values and a look over before use. I redrew it in illustrator from an original done by hand.


I etched up two boxes for this project here they are in progress. I still need to finish drilling one of the boxes and I'm waiting on some more knobs, I only had two I need 4 more. This box got a little over etched. You can see the some extra black marks around the image.

Here's a picture of the two boxes. These got a little over etched. You can see the box on the right has some stray black specks.

[brad]

That's etched?  Amazing

[soggybag]

Thanks, and yes the boxes were etched with Ferric Chloride from RS. I posted a short tutorial on the process at my website. This picture makes these boxes look pretty good. Up close there is a lot imperfections. These didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. The PNP is not a perfect resist. I find that I get little pin holes. I think designs that have a lot of blank space show these off. It's probably better to work with designs that have background patterns that hide these imperfections.