Cornish-style project

[jimmy54]

Thanks for the link Salty.

[jimmy54]

Here's a pic of the latest progress, starting to fit in the circuits, Foxx Tone machine, tone-bender and Phuncgnosis so far.

[QSQCaito]

That's awesome dude..

Way too big for my taste, how are you going to carry it?,, no offense
In the multi-fx pedalboard im working on, they're going to be controlled remotely

Bye bye

dac

[jimmy54]

No offence taken   I built it as a challenge really and it'll look tidier than a bunch of pedals strung together.  It's not that heavy but I'm not planning on lugging it around.

[QSQCaito]

Oh, obviously i prefer what you're doing than bunh of pedals..
I would have never imagined that being not heavy, thats awesome
Don't you have a band.. and play in bars, or somehere?If you don't, the day you have you'll have to get a transport for that it'll become a problem.. and that should never be one.

congtratulations!!

bye bey

dac

PS you guys keep pshing further day by day

[343 Salty Beans]

Oh, obviously i prefer what you're doing than bunh of pedals..
I would have never imagined that being not heavy, thats awesome
Don't you have a band.. and play in bars, or somehere?If you don't, the day you have you'll have to get a transport for that it'll become a problem.. and that should never be one.

congtratulations!!

bye bey

dac

PS you guys keep pshing further day by day

If all else fails, he can always put some handles on it.

[jimmy54]

Almost finished now.  Most of the effects are in including Foxx tone machine, Tonebender fuzz, auto-wah, ross compressor, buffer, liquid drive, thunderchief, Boss AC-2, Tremulus Lune, Sparkleboost, BYOC Phaser, The Crank.  Just need to add in the Rebote delay, wire up the effect LED's, wire up the backlight LED's, label the aluminium panels and do the aluminuim back panel and aluminium panels that will cover the bottom of each 'effect hole'.  I've also done the wooden 'doughnuts' that will go around each stomp-switch but I'm still painting them.

[slacker]

that's amazing, nice work.
Go on show us the inside, you know you want to 

[jimmy54]

Here's a couple of shots of the guts.  Things still need to be tidied up a whole lot before completion.

[jimmy54]

Hi fellas,

All effects are in now and I've just finished wiring up the effect LED's.  Still need to do the back panel, the back-lighting LED's (which will be hidden behind aluminium panels covering the bottom of each effect panel) and the labelling.  Can't believe how quiet this is even with the bottom panel off.

[newbie builder]

AWSOME!

[markm]

 
Truly AMAZING!

[bent]

aluminum knobs would look nice...you can get em cheap from futurlec.

http://www.futurlec.com/SwKnob.shtml

Scroll down to the silver ones.

i have order them, and they look nice but the hole for the shaft is a very very little off center, so when you turn it, you see the knob make a tiny kind of spiral......

bent

[Cliff Schecht]

Hi fellas,

All effects are in now and I've just finished wiring up the effect LED's.  Still need to do the back panel, the back-lighting LED's (which will be hidden behind aluminium panels covering the bottom of each effect panel) and the labelling.  Can't believe how quiet this is even with the bottom panel off.

*snip*

I'm still in shock over how quiet my pedalboard is. I did a 10 plug power supply in a 1590B box that I think has a lot to do with it, but I've been pretty damn careful as to not create ground loops and use excessive wiring anywhere. I was running my pedalboard in the effects loop of a Peavey Ultra 120 (the 120w tube head prior to the 5150's) and there was zero noise, even with the amp cranked on 120w mode. It was great, when I stopped playing, there was no feedback to contend with and even if there was, I can always use one of the pedals not in use (I never need 14 pedals on at a time  ) as a mute. As smooth as the Pete Cornish style effects look, I like to switch shit around and can't have something that isn't modular or easily adaptable.

[jimmy54]

Two of the pedals on the board are quite noisy I've since discovered, one a foxx tone machine, the other a Thunderchief (maybe not surprising as both are high gain).  The rest seem quiet.  Maybe I need to have a look at what wires in those effects may benefit from being shielded.  What wires are the usual suspects, e.g. effect input etc?

I never did anything to avoid ground loops because a) I don't really know what they are except that they can cause hum, and b) I wouldn't know how to avoid them

I basically wired the ground and power by using two strip connector block thingies and attached all circuit, footswitch and jack groundings to the one strip (also connected to power ground), and all the +ve coonections to another strip (also connected to power +ve).  I don't know if doing it like this can cause ground loops? I also connected a 100uf electrolytic between the ground and +ve as there was a ticking from the Tremlulous Lune bleeding through.  The cap took care of that. 

I've not really had much of a chance to do anything else to the board over the last couple of months as my boy (who's 1st birthday is tomorrow) has been keeping me busy (usually dragging him away from my guitars, which he tries to push over whenever possible).  I have built an eq. to fit into the last spot on the board but I need to sort out -9v, +9v power supply for it first.  I've also got the parts for an easy vibe, so I need to think how/where I can fit that in.

[Barcode80]

I LOVE THIS!!! nice work! I did have one suggestion. since you filled the gap in the top, why not fill in over the screws?

[Peter Snowberg]

BEAUTIFUL!

You should be very proud.

[Barcode80]

i'm still waiting on someone to write a tutorial on this kind of building. especially the powering section. i would want one of these powered using the same kind of 3 prong that like a computer uses. i wonder if i could convert one of my old cpu power supplies for this purpose....

[jimmy54]

To be honest, it's not that difficult.  A lot of work, but not that difficult.  If you know how to wire two effects together then you're all set.  I'd like to know more about power sections though and the best way to do it.  I'm using a laptop power supply for mine.  At the moment I've just have a normal boss-style power jack socket on the back of the board and I plug the laptop power supply into that.  It would not be hard to put the power supply inside the board and just have a 3-prong connector.  A member of this forum has done just that:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=46522.0

[Cliff Schecht]

As far as avoiding ground loops go, it's not too hard. Just try to wire everything so that the grounds stay parallel (and preferably tied together) as much as you can and avoid crossing them over anything that carries signal. They are impossible to avoid completely, but eliminating them as much as you can really helps out. A ground loop will really cause problems when you run a lot of long, stringy ground wires and just let them flop free (where they can pick up RI and other noise), which makes the ground not a true 0V reference. If you know what star grounding is (it's where all grounds meet at one point, say the ground on a PCB), try to use it as much as possible. I've rewired all of my guitars to only be grounded at one point and once I did, they have no problems with hum whatsoever, even in single coil or split operation with a high gain effect.

I have a few effects myself (Orange Squeezer and EA Tremelo) that both seem to like to introduce noise (I'm rebuilding the OS sometime soon and building a different trem), but all of my high gain effects, boosters, filters and everything else never add any noise to the signal. I have never needed to shield input wires, but sometimes it really helps, especially if you are running higher gain effects. Make sure that the grounds and signal wires (as well as the power wires) aren't crossing and you should really make a point to keep wire length down to the very minimum. When I first built my Mr. EQ I had some nasty noise problems, but I managed to eliminate them by removing all unnecessary grounds (including the input ground, which is taken care of by the case), shortening all signal wires and using star grounding as much as possible. I'm others could touch and/or add to what I'm saying, but definetly shorten some of those wire lengths as much as you can.

As far as power goes, I use the GGG Ultra Clean Power Supply with a 4 amp Altec Lansing wall supply (the transformer is in a little box half way between the wall plug and the end of the cable) and can reliably get about 1.5 amps to all of my effects. The thing that's nice is the AL plug is a two-pronged one and when I flip the ground switch to off (isolating the 3rd prong on the wall plug) on a head (or where ever it's available), I get a ridiculously clean signal.

Here's a picture (it's been cleaned up considerably and I added a power switch):