how many projects have you given up on?

Herr Masel · February 20, 2006, 05:43:13 PM

Quote from: mydementia on February 20, 2006, 05:19:48 PM
Last month, I perf-boarded up my own BSIAB2

Whaa? You perfed it? I'm looking for the materials for making PCBs - never made one before - and the main reason behind it is that I am scared to perf that monster. My head hurts just thinking of trying to debug it on perfboard... crazy.

barret77 · February 20, 2006, 05:47:01 PM

Quote from: Mark Hammer on February 20, 2006, 09:41:07 AM
Enough. http://ampage.org/hammer/files/unfinished_business.jpg

wow. now I'm scared...

nelson · February 20, 2006, 05:48:17 PM

Quote from: barret77 on February 20, 2006, 05:47:01 PM
Quote from: Mark Hammer on February 20, 2006, 09:41:07 AM
Enough. http://ampage.org/hammer/files/unfinished_business.jpg
wow. now I'm scared...

huh, I remember it being bigger.

mydementia · February 20, 2006, 10:37:04 PM

Herr Masel - I'm not all that interested in messing with the etching chemicals and drilling tons of holes - so I perf. The BSIAB2 was probably my biggest perfed circuit so far. Here are a few pics of how mine turned out:
http://www.freewebs.com/mydementia/DIY_Stompboxes/BSIAB2.htm
As you'll see, I used a huge board (my rebuild will definitely be smaller!). My Nurse Quackey build is on that site too - a case of cutting the board a little too small. One of these days I'll get it just right!

If you want to have someone make you boards, I've had good luck with posting in the For Sale/Trade forum. If you decide to perf it up, just take your time and follow a good layout. Even though I'm using 'proven' layouts, I always check them against the schematics to see if anything is amiss (like cap values 2.2uF is a lot different than 2.2nF

).

choklitlove · February 20, 2006, 11:41:17 PM

the non-working blue box was my second project, but my first in the stompbox realm. i'm working on #s 3, 4, and 5 right now. every once in a while, i go back to the bluebox. it still doesn't work. maybe in 6 months it will.

jonathan perez · February 20, 2006, 11:51:38 PM

probably any project that began with WENEED and ended with TOTALK...HAHA!

im kidding. i know this is sort of different, but i began building a guitar about a year ago, because i like the mojo behind playing a guitar created from your bare hands. cool vibe! but shortly after i bought the neck, i ended up striking it rich, and buying a crap load of gear...

just kidding!

but i did buy a crap load of gear...so...i kinda just figured "why the hell do i need this? i gotta REAL strat!"

so...thats about it, although it had a WONDERFUL purple and black swirl...it was BEYOND belief! i think i might have put 50 bucks into the body total, through various "hook ups", but turned around and sold it for a cool $200 to a dealer.

so...im not complaining.

343 Salty Beans · February 21, 2006, 12:58:20 AM

My only advice is that stupid mistakes can be avoided by triple-checking everything you do AS you do it. I check every single one of my vero cuts right after I do it, and examine and yank each solder joint to ensure I've got it right. I triple-check against the schematic AND the layout, making sure I have eveything right. Even after I'm done populating the board, i still triple-check to ensure complete accuracy and no solder splashing/spilling. A hurry = more mistakes...something I learned back in the day when I did XBoxes.

Of course, stupid mistakes are still made. instead of placing the wires on the board and THEN adding the pots, I did each wire from board to pot one at a time. That made it really freaking hard to get the Rat in the box

zachary vex · February 21, 2006, 01:33:51 AM

tons! for every product i've released, i have given up on 2. i actually gave up on the lo-fi loop junkie twice, and finally finished it after 2 years, solving all of the little nagging problems using tricks i discovered in the meantime.

a build project that isn't working most likely has one or two small errors in it... most times you can walk through the thing sniffing for signal with a little wire connected to an amp thru a .1uF cap until you see it disappear and find the culprit right there.

giving up is sometimes the first step towards succeeding. take a break, for a day, a week, a month... come back with a clear head, not caring about how you felt before. sometimes, not-doing yeilds a greater change than doing. of course, banging your head against the problem works too... because repetition is a form of change. (Eno)

gez · February 21, 2006, 04:14:11 AM

Quote from: zachary vex on February 21, 2006, 01:33:51 AMgiving up is sometimes the first step towards succeeding. take a break, for a day, a week, a month... come back with a clear head, not caring about how you felt before. sometimes, not-doing yeilds a greater change than doing. of course, banging your head against the problem works too... because repetition is a form of change. (Eno)

I have a 'crop rotation' approach to circuit design. I have a number of breadboards all with different projects on them. When one doesn't pan out as I expected (sound wise), has a problem or I'm just plain sick of the sight of it... I move on to another. Eventually I come full circle and by the time I have I usually have fresh ideas and am able to finish the circuit off...or at least I make the decision to just strip the damn board and forget what was a really bad idea!

RaceDriver205 · February 21, 2006, 07:24:46 AM

Havent given up on any really.
I started a while ago building every effect there was (minus the bad distortions), so now ive got a box full of big circuit boards (with 1-6 effects on each), of which my digital reverb is the biggest. Some dont sound any good so ill have to do mods to them (PT-90 not quite enough delay and delay level not high enough for steve-vai-style stuff - easy fix I guess; DS-1 sounds rubbish so ill have to mod it).
Neovibe was an absolute pain n still doesnt work yet, but it'll get done.
The trick to getting it all done is to do a bit every day. It doesnt matter how small, as long as u do something, it gets finished at some stage.
Cant wait till my multi-FX unit is ready tho.

Fp-www.Tonepad.com · February 22, 2006, 12:47:44 AM

None!

I don't consider any of my unfinished or tore down projects given up on

They're still in the to do list. (for when I retire or something)

Fp

nag hammadi · February 22, 2006, 06:35:18 AM

i think the "back burner" approach is the best. i was just BEATING my head against a tone bender mkII from GGG. i bought jd's board and everything.

i put a jumper in the wrong place and ended up (i think) frying some stuff. then i noticed i had put in all of my caps backwards (and i, ummm, make amps for a living...).

so i put it in the back of the cabinet and built a script phase 90 in one sitting, right away. it worked on the first fire up and sounds fantastic! suddenly i am not nearly as sad about the tb!!

then i plugged it into an amp of my own design, and felt even better!!!

MAN i wanted that tb t work though. i was just trying to hurry, and in the long run that makes things take three times as long...

Doug_H · February 22, 2006, 09:20:06 AM

I designed something a couple years ago I called a "whatchamacalit". It sounded really great on the breadboard. Then when I perfed it up I couldn't get it to stop howling. Some kind of positive feedback going on. I could never figure out what it was. So it went in the parts drawer with other old/failed projects. That drawer is a small scale version of Mark's photo. I know I'll catch up with Mark some day, I just know it.

Doug

mojotron · February 22, 2006, 11:45:14 AM

I just finished Tonpad's DS-1, just as I was going to give up on it.

I etched the board a long, long time ago when I was first experimenting with normal printer paper transfers to copper clad (which I don't recommend at all - stick with picture paper - or better yet PNP) and it looked rough enough that I initially thought I would just leave this one until I burned a new board and this board sat collecting dust, but I thought I would try something different last weekend. I lost count of the number of trace errors I ran into (solely due to the poor transfer and a few mis steps with a sharpie) - but I really, absolutely, love the end result!

I made the mental note, if I ever have doubts like that again (and I should know better) - burn a new board.

vanhansen · February 22, 2006, 12:25:03 PM

There's not too many I've given up on. Lots I've tried on the breadboard and just didn't like them but that's not giving up, it's experimenting. There are a few populated perfboards sitting about that need homes. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING like Mark Hammer's pallette.

I have 2, maybe 3 sitting like that. Ones I may have given up on truly are ones that were beyond my knowledge level where I tried to go to the next step but realized I wasn't ready for that step yet. Some were forced to be put aside due to missing components. My to-do list is much longer than the to-finish list.

nightingale · February 22, 2006, 12:52:50 PM

Hi,
I have a shin-ie-companion fuzz on perf that i never got any sound out of?
I also had a MKII tonebender that died that I could not debug?
Those are the only circuits that have haunted me.

brett · February 22, 2006, 06:48:55 PM

Hi.
I have a similar situation to Mark, except the individual projects are smaller and more numerous.

Every now and then I dig into that pile, either for parts (especially chips and pots) or to revisit a project.

It seems ridiculous now, but a couple of years ago I could not get my first attempt at a germanium fuzzface to work. I really, really worked at it. In the end, I gave up on it, threw the board in the pile, and subsequently always built silicon fuzzfaces and their variants and alternatives (Rocket, RM Axis, Axis face,...).

Then, a couple of weeks ago I ordered a pair of germaniums from SmallBear (thanks!!), and got an amazing fuzzface going in ten minutes. Well, I just had to look back at that old board again, didn't I? There it was gathering dust, but exactly as I built it.

With Q2 backwards!!!

How pathetic is that?

puretube · February 22, 2006, 07:07:29 PM

there was that shaka-tube debug problem by M****, which kept me up a few days last summer...

after many days I finally decided to re-build it according to his specifications to find the problem, once time allows;

vacation and other problems intervened and prohibited that attempt...

with the result, that until this day I still haven`t built a single circuit from this forum`s ample schemo archive,
and luckily by accident (?) M**** found out himself half a year later about his wrong tube-pinout.

never give up!

Dji · February 22, 2006, 07:36:15 PM

I have several projects sitting sad and non-functional right now. I had a string of disappointments--a 3/4 functioning Theremin (so close), a half-functioning Small Stone, a non-functioning Rebote--then, worst of all (though perhaps more predictable) I finished a synth build and it does nothing. I took a break and finished a Blue Box, hoping to rebuild my confidence for the debugging process... but it's a brick too.

I can't debug anymore. I'm taking a little break from building & debugging alike.

But I did just order two boards from Francisco.

D.

jjucius · February 23, 2006, 03:43:48 AM

I have a good one, i just built the proffesor tweed. well i printed out the circuit board ironed it on to the copper etched it and when i looked at it and the layout i noticed something was wrong. i could not figure out what was wrong and it was driving me nuts. then i saw it the writing on the board was backwards

i didnt flip the design when i printed it. it was the last blank board i had on a sunday night so i took the layout and fliped that and built the effect backwards, and it works great

but boy do i feel like a bone head it shows i havent built anything for a while
Joe

News:

how many projects have you given up on?

Doug_H