someone upped this on "another" forum...worth a look!!!!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

i am WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY TOO LAZY AND STUPID TO DO THAT!! lol

i just got back...got all the electrolytics, also got enough incandescents to replace all the bulbs.

unfortunately, no dice with the slide pot...nothing even close, even considered buying another just to swipe the wiper, but not even in the ball park.

since this slider still works, and enough sticks up where it's still usable, gonna just stick it back in.

taking detailed notes on where the wires go, so i will upload that info later. taking pics, and writing where each wire physically goes, what they connect to other than the lamps, as i figure that's a little less important than the electronic components.

as soon as my girlfriend leaves, i'm gonna have at it, do the top board, then tear into the bottom one. if ya don't hear from me for a few days, you'll know why...lol

[digi2t]

Hey Jimi,

Those smaller caps are 2.5, not 25. Personally, I would start by cleaning all the wire to board connections. The way the connector only makes contact on it's edge seems somewhat dodgy to me. I know some of mine were suspect, so I squeezed them ever so gently to close them up a bit, and make them tighter on the board.

Here are some shots of that mystery circuit;




What do you think R.G.? 47k and 10k resistors, 0.1uF cap, and a 2N4401 tranny. That's it.

I measured the slide pot (again, metric  ), 70mm X 15mm, with 50mm center-to-center travel. Dude, don't bust your head. You should be able to find something close, and I believe they mount direct to the panel with screws. You can probably use countersinks, and hide it with the cover plate. Here is a good example;
http://www.alphapotentiometers.net/html/16mm_slide_pot_12.html

[pinkjimiphoton]

hi dino, yep, they are 2.5....i'm almost done with the top board. 2 caps to go, then reassemble, test and the bottom board.

the slider is 7.5k, i'm assuming it's 10 k. it actually mounts via two metal twists on a sub board. i put it back in, i can live with it for now.
funny...now i remember breaking the damn thing, lol...enough sticks up where it's still useful.

replaced all the lamps, too...probably a good thing, as most were black from stress. hoping that will cure all.

i'm actually surprised how quick it's going...about 2 hours since i got home and started.

gonna solder ALL  the connections to the board...just not worth it to trust those clips, i had one break on me...not the wire, the clip~

so it's coming along. soon as i get the top board back together, gonna fire it up and see if it's still passing sound before i button it up and get the bottom board done.

but with luck, i can get it done tonite, and tweak the trim pots and see if she's cured.

btw,,, the lamps are 6v, .20 amp t-1 3/4 type mi

the cablesandconnectors.com part number is ml-1768 if anyone needs them.

now...back to work...peace!

[R.G.]

Those smaller caps are 2.5, not 25. Personally, I would start by cleaning all the wire to board connections. The way the connector only makes contact on it's edge seems somewhat dodgy to me. I know some of mine were suspect, so I squeezed them ever so gently to close them up a bit, and make them tighter on the board.

Good idea. The connection scheme on this thing is a field-service disaster. Those connectors were never meant to be used that way.

Here are some shots of that mystery circuit;
What do you think R.G.? 47k and 10k resistors, 0.1uF cap, and a 2N4401 tranny. That's it.

I'll see what I can ferret out.

The gut shots of this thing have a strong odor of "Oh, crap. How're we going to get it working in manufacturing?" The little add-on amplifier/whatever, the 1M resistor piggybacked on the top of the board that I haven't mentioned earlier, the piggyback resistor on the footpedal pot, a few other things, plus the sheer ugliness of using Faston-type connectors pressing on copper on the etched side of the PCB, plus some other smaller issues all give me the feeling that I know why they didn't build more of these. They're likely to be hard to keep working well, and they were expensive to build compared to their contemporary pedals.

The "fuzz" is a variable crossover-distortion setup.  It's Q5 and Q6, helped along and messed with by Q21. The Q5/Q6 amplifier has a dead zone in the middle as set up there. Q21 feeds it a variable "power supply voltage" and which side of the AC signal gets amplified most depends on what the "power supply voltage" is at the moment. There is a lot of gain and voltage available from the preceding input amplifiers.

The filters have a control voltage range of about 0V (highest frequency) to 1.1V (lowest frequency) fed to them on the wipers of the pots from the control voltage setup.

[pinkjimiphoton]

wellp, phase i of the phase ii is complete. and a success. i now have lights, formants and wayyyyyyyyy less hummmmmmmm. gotta do the bottom board still, but hopefully won't give too many probs...the top board was more of a cakewalk than i expected. so far so good.

but i did find some critical mistakes on my part. the voltages on some of the caps were higher than i expected. lucky i over rated the voltage some!!

c1 is 2.5mf at 25v, i used 2.2mf @ 50v
c2 is 1 mf @ 25v, i used 50v
c6 is 1 mf @ 25v, i used 50v
c8 is 100mf@ 40v, i used 63v
c9 is 10mf @ i thought 35v....wrong! it's 64v
c10 is the same as c9
c11 is 100mf @ 65 v...i used 100v
c12 is 50mf @ 40v....i used 47mf @ 50v

hoping i have high enough voltage caps to do the rest, i may have under rated them as i was in a hurry to get to the parts store.
radio shack is open til 9, so i'm gonna look over the bottom board and run out if i have to to get higher voltage caps, tho i may have them in my junkbox. i'd rather use axials as original than radial caps if i can help it.

it's funny how you mention the fuzz circuit R.G.....in the middle, it has more fuzz when the fuzz switch is in the voice fuzz position than it does when cranked!

anyways...back to work...more later. i'll try and write up the wiring as i noted. i did solder all the connections to the top board, and it was a bitch, as the clips are annodized and don't want to take solder easily.

peace

[pinkjimiphoton]

snafu!!! F***!!!!!!!

i had to get 50 v caps...that was all they had at the store, matter of fact i bought 'em out.

but...the ones on the bottom board are all 63 volts. suck! i got 2.2's at 100, so those will fly.

but i have only one 63v 10mf, the others are all 50. i'm hoping they over-rated the caps some, the million dollar question is, do you think the 50's will fly?

i have a couple 100v 22mf's kicking around, but they're not axial. i figure i could use them in a pinch, but would rather use the right kind. i seem to remember from the tube amp days that caps are over rated from what they say, but my memory is dodgy. gonna try and measure the voltage to ground on the caps, if it's less than 50, i'm gonna give it shot.

is this safe, or should i bite the bullet and put an order in?

hit rat shack...nothing over 35v.

advice appreciated!!!

[digi2t]

Strong odor of "Oh crap!" you say? I can smell it down the street man.

Jimi, the fuzz might just be that way. Mine is EXACTLY the same way. In FUZZ, it goes from nothing to max fuzz, and in FUZZ/VOICE it ges from weak to full fuzz to gatey fuzz. And, I have a feeling that the ticking is normal as well. An "effect" of some sort. Actually, with a filter on, it sounds somewhat wierd/cool. Especially if you run it through a delay  .

I've started working on the off-board wiring. I'm basically starting at the Input, and I'm going to work my way around the boards, switches, sliders, etc. I'll document where every inch of wire goes.

I also checked the voltages coming from the transformer. About 38vac. I've got between 35-36vdc rectified. There a 2 wires that go to the ON/Off switch, I believe these wires close the circuit in the transfo so the transfo can output power.

There are 10 wires in the harness between the upper and lower boards, but not all show corresponding numbers on the diagram. I'll number and trace these as well, and add them to the diagram.

Lotsa verk todo...

[R.G.]

the million dollar question is, do you think the 50's will fly?

is this safe, or should i bite the bullet and put an order in?

As I said earlier, you can measure it and know what's safe. Referring to the schematic for the console board, pull off wires from positions 2 and 3. These are the transformer power wires. Use your DMM set to read AC volts on the 200V scale. Plug it in, turn it on, read the meter, then turn it back off and unplug it. If you read less than about 88Vac, then it is safe to use your 63V caps. If you read less than 71Vac, then your 50uF's are in no danger. And frankly, if you read over 71 and less than 88, only capacitor 11 is really at any risk.

From the unloaded transformer AC output, it is possible to calculate the highest possible peak voltage after the rectifiers.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yikes. that means i gotta re-dissassemble the whole top of the unit!! 

or...find where the b+ enters the fall board... guess i better fire up the meter!!! cuz i shore don't feel like taking all that stuff off again, the contact cement under the control plate is already dry even. fudge!!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok, just read the voltages all over the fall board to ground...the highest voltage found was 19.8....so i'm gonna assume the caps were rated that high because that's well enough over rated and go for the 50 volt caps. wish me luck in my madness!~

[R.G.]

At the risk of sounding like a complete cynic, there isn't anything on the PCBs that can't be replaced. The hardest parts to replace are (1) the power transformer and (2) any appearance/panel parts, as you know already.

[pinkjimiphoton]

one cap to go....a 10mf. i'm using a 35v cap there cuz i only saw about 3 volts on the hot side. one ground lug broke off when i was doing voltage measurements, but if all goes well, it'll be in one piece soon!

yah, i agree...even transformers are cake compared to missing parts!!

i wrote down where all the connections on the fall board were, so i'll type that up when i finish re-assembling.

peace!

[pinkjimiphoton]

ALRIGHT~

phase II of the phase II restoration is done, and it works like a charm. EVERYTHING sounds not necessarily stoned, but..ummm...beautiful! 

the fuzz repeat is supposed to tick...it's exactly the same thing as the repeat percussion on an electronic organ. the modulation speed affects the ticking speed, and its kinda like a fuzzy tremolo..you don't really notice the ticking unless you're not playing.

i may try and mess with the trim pots a little, but it sounds so good i may just leave it alone.

the fuzz sound is killer...sustainy, and very liquid. when ya turn off the filter with the footswitch, it decays back to static.

the wah pedal is always on as long as you have one of the voicing switches on...i forgot how sick this thing really was. it lives up to my remembrance and expectations...

so that said, i think we now have two working specimens to work with....which should make cloning inevitable!!

the bottom board hooks up like this:

looking at it with the notch for the wah pot to the bottom, it goes like this, from left to right counter clockwise:

left side, top to bottom

#13  black wire to output jack
#14 black wire to lamp

#15 to blue wire from harness, to #4 of iinterconnecting cable
#16 blue wire to fuzz switch
#17 orange wire to fuzz switch
#18 white wire with red stripe to bypass pot
# 19 green wire to harness, #10 of interconnecting cable

bottom left

#20 orange wire to harness, # 2 of interconnecting cable
#21 gray wire to wah pot

bottom right

#22 black wire to wah pot, ground
#23 black wire to animation footswitch, ground

right side, from bottom to top

#1 black wire to hi z jack, ground
#2 brown wire to hi z jack, hot
#3 red wire to loz balance pot
#4 yellow wire to wah pot
#5 two wires here, red to harness, white with red stripe to terminal strip. e b+, 35v
#6 white wire to terminal strip, bypass switch
#7 yellow wire to fuzz switch, tp 1 fuzz switch pole
#8 yellow wire to harness, tp4, interconnecting cable 7
#9 brown wire to harness, tp 5
#10 black wire to harness, ground
#11 green wire to harness
#12 green wire to fuzz switch
lamp resistor between #'s 11 & 12.

the top board is a little more self-explanatory....my notes were just in case a wire broke off when i was messing with it, so they aren't real useful.

from the back of the top board,
a white wire goes to board # 11
blue wire to board 12
orange wire to board 6
black wire to board 17

control board goes like this...

# 33,34 black wire
32 brown
31 gray
30 yellow
29 white with green stripe
28 blue
27 white
26 red
25 green
24 yellow
23, 22, 21 orange
20 blue
19 white
18 red
17 red

other side of board goes like this:

# 1 & 2 white cloth covere
3 orange, cloth covered
4 black
5 white/white with black stripe
6 white with red stripe
7 green
8 yellow
9 blue
10 white with green stripe
11 white with red stripe
12 purple
there's another terminal here, but it's not connected or used
13 purple
14 brown
15 red
16 brown

i am burnt toast...hope this helps...look at the control board schematic for descriptions of what each terminal goes to.

see you guys tomorrow...peace and love to all who help, contribute, and read.

any commercial mother f***ers who wanna rip this info off that we're working hard to get for people...

i swear i'll hunt you down, you can run, but you will die extremely tired.

[digi2t]

Jimi buddy, time to give your eyes a break.

I've decided that this week, I'm going to do the wire tracing graphically. We have 11" x 17" paper at work, so I'm going to paste the images of the boards onto a sheet, then draw in all the rest of the components (switches, pots, jacks, etc.), and then connect the dots. This way, it will be a bit easier for visual creatures (such as myself  ) to read the lay of the land. It will also give me the opportunity to add in that "mystery circuit", and the transformer connections. It will be a job, but time well spent. Especially if it will give R.G. a clear picture of all the connections.

Another things I've noticed is that;
-"Fuzz Rpt. Pot" is labeled as "Perc. Rpt. Pot"
-On the motherboard schematic, trimmer R77 is not marked. It is a 50K, with connection point 8 being the wiper. Tested this, and continuity is a go. From staring at the schematic, trimmers R77 and R55 have someting to do with the Parallel Formant circuit. Maybe high, low voicing of the circuit.
-Point 12 on the control board (Anim. Sw. Fast) is not connected to anything on mine. You got a wire here Jimi? On mine, the wire that should go from this point to Anim. Fast side of the switch, is the purple wire in the harness, and it goes from Anim. Fast to the Animation footswitch. 

Anyway, I believe tracing the entire thing will be the only way to keep us on the straight and narrow.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yes dino, on mine board connection 12 has a purple wire that goes to...oh, screw it..i can't even figure out my own notes on this thing!!!

but yes, i do have a purple wire there that went to the animation switch if memory serves.  but i also have an empty slot, too...it would be the 5th one in on mine, from the front of the control board, left to right. that would make for 17 connections, not the 16 shown on the schem.

no wonder they abandoned these things. i can see it now,,

imagine a smoke-filled room that reeks of patchouli, black light posters on the walls, and the president of ludwig corp talking to his board of executives...

"like, groovy, babe, did the lsd kick in yet? here, like, have another hit of this reefer, duuuuuuuuuuuude, and lets talk about making the like, most bodacious toy. something we can sell drummers on, and them pesky guitar players that spend all that money <tooooooooooooooooooooooke>....something hip...something wow...wait...i see it mannn...we need to

coff!! hack!!! make a GUITAR PEDAL. something like that will blow their minds....let's make the most hippest grooviest complicated thing, and lets design it by drummers so they'll stop making jokes about using drummers as stage levels and like, stuff...i don't care how hard it is, let's make it happen, baby...groovy"....

so anyways, the acid was from owsley, and really good, so they kept eating it and the ludwig phase II was born. and it was groovy, motherf**ker...

but like all dead-headed schemes, eventually the acid ran out, and like a dead head who's head suddenly clears when the blotters (2 for 5, man, doses, 2 for 5) wear off and proclaims "man! this music SUCKS!" the now suddenly straight laced mister normal president screams in a soon-to-be-yuppie and republican voice," WHAT WERE WE THINKING!~!! PULL THE PLUG ON THE ENTIRE PROJECT, FLUSH THE EVIDENCE BEFORE SOMEBODY NOTICES WE LOST OUR MINDS!!!"

and production of the legendary pedal ceased, and it's plans were smoked in the back room by the engineering staff hijacked from electro voice, and all but 50 were recovered and destroyed to save the mighty ludwig name any further embarassment.

until some hipster musicians got a hold of two, cracked them open, and displayed their vulgar contents to the world, like soiled sheets hanging from a second floor bedroom window...

[Ry]

-"Fuzz Rpt. Pot" is labeled as "Perc. Rpt. Pot"
-On the motherboard schematic, trimmer R77 is not marked. It is a 50K, with connection point 8 being the wiper. Tested this, and continuity is a go. From staring at the schematic, trimmers R77 and R55 have someting to do with the Parallel Formant circuit. Maybe high, low voicing of the circuit.

I wondered about two points years ago, I never quite figured out that the fuzz pot and perc pot were the same thing.  Good work, guys!

[digi2t]

 

Amazing image dude. I think it's even starting to get hazy in here.

Yup, #5 slot empty is correct. Since your unit is numbered later than mine, they must have had some design change/f.u.b.a.r., and modified it.

So far, I decided to number all the harness wires. Some were already numbered as per the drawing (hexagon symbols), so I retained them, and assigned the remaining numbers to the others.
Wire numbers;
#1-RED (+36VDC from point 17 on the control board)
#2-ORANGE
#3-BLACK (GND.)
#4-BLUE
#5-GREEN (AC POWER TO LAMPS FROM RESISTOR)
#6-GREEN (AC POWER TO LAMPS RESISTOR)
#7-YELLOW
#8-BROWN
#9-VIOLET
#10-GREEN (from point 19 on motherboard to Fuzz/Fuzz/Voice switch on control panel)

I wonder if we could do away with the whole AC transfo affair, and just go with a 36vdc power supply on this puppy? Something like this maybe; http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/727271-power-supply-40w-18-36vdc-1-05a-tld1040-36-c1050.html .Just an example, I know it's pricey, but it would sure simplify things. What do you think R.G.?

[pinkjimiphoton]

heck, couldn't we just use a diode bridge to double the voltage from one of them charge pump thingies?
be nice if it could run off the same supply as the rest of the pedals...

nice work, dino...i had gotten way too brain dead to try and keep all those wires straight!!

i had actually considered leaving the fall board in place, and doing the old jack darr trick of just snipping out the "condensers" and soldering the new ones to the old ones leads...

but then i realized, in for a dollar, in for a dime, may as well get it RIGHT. and i'm glad i did.

we're only just beginning to make this happen, and i think i've already learned more than i did in all my previous builds and experiences.

sorry about the haze...flashback i guess...lol

soon as my brother gets up, i am CRANKING this thing!!

[digi2t]

sorry about the haze...flashback i guess...lol

soon as my brother gets up, i am CRANKING this thing!!

How about waking him up... with a Ludwig Phase II version of the Star Spangled Banner 

Would love to be there for that one he he he.

For the fuzz, I'm beginning to think that the slider acts as an intensity in one position, and a bias in the other. Would explain why it's so linear one way, but has a "hump" the other.

I need to study more... soooooo much to learn.

[pinkjimiphoton]

hee hee....i am tempted, fer sure!!!

you may be right about the fuzz...this is such a strange pedal; i love how when ya turn off an effect, it just kinda fades away back to the wah sound. sooooo sick!!

+1 on the learning thing, too...i've learned so much my brain hurts!