LocoBox TubeManiax

[stickninja]

A friend of mine gave me this pedal that was not working, its a Loco Box TubeManiax Over Drive from the 70's.  When I took it apart, the wires were ripped of the pots, I soldered them back on, and it works great.  This pedal sounds fantastic.  After a little researching, i have come to find that these are extremely rare and hard to come by, there is nothing out there on these pedals.  Is there any one out there interested in this pedal enough to work with me to put together a schematic? I can upload high rez images, and measure values etc. if your out there let me know.

[Pigyboy]

We are out here

[WhenBoredomPeaks]

more:

http://www.locobox.com/tubemaniax.html


of course these pic are useless so you should post juicy hi-res pics of the solder side of the pcb, components side, pot values etc.

[Perrow]

A friend of mine gave me this pedal that was not working, its a Loco Box TubeManiax Over Drive from the 70's.  When I took it apart, the wires were ripped of the pots, I soldered them back on, and it works great.  This pedal sounds fantastic.  After a little researching, i have come to find that these are extremely rare and hard to come by, there is nothing out there on these pedals.  Is there any one out there interested in this pedal enough to work with me to put together a schematic? I can upload high rez images, and measure values etc. if your out there let me know.

I think you've answered your own question. 

[modsquad]

If its from the 70's how come it has a MAR2004 stamp in the box.    Probably a glorified Tubescreamer from the description.  Curious though.

[modsquad]

Duh, its the battery stupid.   Nevermind.

[stickninja]

all right then, I guess I will get to work.  I will keep everyone posted, and get some hi rez images going....i was thinking of trying to overlay the two sides of the board digitally, any recommendations on how to do this? photo shop maybe?

[stickninja]

OK, so here we go.......Did a lot of work today, and I hope it wasn't fruitless.

So here is a shot of the component side of the board.


The solder side


I spent the day "digitizing" the circuit.  I will begin the values list tomorrow and get that up asap.  Any advice on how to identify the Jfets and Diodes?  Also you will see I have M1 and M@.  They are Mystery Components.  I have a picture of them to follow, not sure if they are diodes or what, any help would be appreciated in identifying and figuring their values.  so here is my composite circuit drawing.....


And here are the mystery components.....


Like I said, i will start with values tomorrow, but I need to know how to determine the polar orientation of some of those caps, and how to figure out values for jfets and diodes. 
Sorry, i'm kinda new to this stuff, but I thought this would be fun to jump into.  I was hoping someone out there might be able to help me take this to a cleaner schematic and PCB.
Hope I did well so far.

[stickninja]

Sorry to make that image so big, just wanted to make the component labels readable

[Perrow]

This stole time I should have been doing other things 

Mind the fact that I've rotated some transistors and moved a few parts around a bit.



Do I need to tell you it's unverified 

[stickninja]

Awesome man, i began to check it over vs. mine, cant finish right now I have to run, but i found a couple mistakes on my side that you fixed on yours, so i fixed them on my image, here's the new link for anyone interested.

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/7229/compositeexportv11.jpg

[Perrow]

Awesome man, i began to check it over vs. mine, cant finish right now I have to run, but i found a couple mistakes on my side that you fixed on yours, so i fixed them on my image, here's the new link for anyone interested.

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/7229/compositeexportv11.jpg

Yeah, had to look at your photos to correct those faults Fun to hear that you haven't found any errors on mine.

[niopren]

look the "Volz Overdrive"

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Any data on that opamp? 6552 I suppose that you could sub it with any old op amp however, is it a single.... dual?

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Any data on that opamp? 6552 I suppose that you could sub it with any old op amp however, is it a single.... dual?

Nevermind.... I see that it is a 4558 equivalent according to Boredom's pic above 

[slacker]

If anyone's interested I drew up a quick schematic from stickninja's layout, mostly just to see if there was anything special circuit wise. The caps in the feedback loop of the first opamp are just to show the position of the mystery components.
The switching is quite clever if you like that kind of thing, I guess most people will just be interested in the rest of it though.

[stickninja]

im working on the values now, can any one identify those mystery components? how do I identify the diodes? and lastly, I tried this morning and had a real hard time with it, is there anyone out there that can help with an eagle schematic for this layout?

[slacker]

The diodes look similar to the Japanese silicon diodes in a Tube screamer, I'd guess any silicon diodes would work, the exact sort of diode doesn't normally make much difference. The mystery components could be some sort of diode as well. 

[Perrow]

I've found two errors in my previous pcb design (at the pads next to R1-R5, too many). Reworked and beautified.

Should be a little less crowded now in the triangle between Q2-Q3-Q4. Included a "components only" view to make the numbering legible. A few resistor labels are a bit off graphically but you should be able to pair components and labels.



And yes, I like them curvy traces 

[stickninja]

nice man, you made those with the diy layout creator i assume....when you use that in PCB mode, does it export/print at scale? in other words, will the IC fit in that without manipulation?