Building the Meat Sphere

[Vince_b]

Hey Marc, your Waahba Wooh looks reaaly good! What kind of enclosure is it? I never seen one like that before.

But the Range switch must be set for 4 positions, not only 2.

[MarcMooga]

Thank you Vince! 

Enclosure is completly DIY.
Plywood Body.
Fibreglass Panels.
Adhesive Aluminium Foil for Shielding.

I have spent (much too) much time only for enclosures, about 25 ones now. 
I have build them in 4 sizes (this is the largest one and this size was once created by me to fit the Krautrock Phaser of Jürgen Haible).
I have build them so that all connections are on the back.
That saves me a lot of space on the pedalboard.

[LaceSensor]

mine sounds much better with 5mm green diffuse LEDs and 10k/1M photocells...

[chordball]

mine sounds much better with 5mm green diffuse LEDs and 10k/1M photocells...

Is this in replacement of the VTLC5C3's?

[LaceSensor]

mine sounds much better with 5mm green diffuse LEDs and 10k/1M photocells...

Is this in replacement of the VTLC5C3's?

I didnt have VTL, I used silonex NSL32 and it was poor

[tlaubs]

Does anyone know if it would be possible to still use the pedals in the loop if the Meat Shere is byupassed?  If not, does any one have an idea for a mod to do that?

[MarcoMike]

take a look HERE

it's just matter of adding SW4-B wiring. as I see from the pictures around, you're using a 3P4T, so it should be doable.

(but I'm not able to tell wether this will work on Taylor's board... maybe there is some traces cutting or the like to be done)

[WhenBoredomPeaks]

My Meatball went fuzzy after some mods. It fuzzes around the cutoff frequency.
I swapped that 10k feedback resistor in the filter with a 8.2k because i have ran out 10k resistors. Could that be the cause of the fuzziness/distortion (at any resonance setting) of my filter or i made a mistake somewhere else?



Btw it sounds like a dirty overdriven filter now, bad for guitar stuff, potentially good for synth stuff.

edit: and for a few minutes i powered it with a 15v supply, i doubt that it could cause problems but maybe i fried the vactrols or something? but then it wouldn't filter.

[LaceSensor]

Taylor

Not to be a tattle-tale, but did you give permission for this?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lovetone-Meatball-Clone-/330792592055?pt=UK_Guitar_Accessories&hash=item4d04c662b7

I thought all your stuff was for personal use only, not knocking out repeated clones onto eBay etc?

As an aside, the guy also does big cheeses and he took my layout without asking permission.

Ian

[SlugBait]

Hi guys,

I received the MeatSphere and Gristleizer PCB some days ago. Very nice pieces ! Thanks Taylor !

I bought many components at my local store but they missed all the pots, switches and knobs...

The gristleizer is going to be piece of cake to mount. So let's talk about the MeatSphere...

I'm quite beginner in the area of pedal building so don't be surprised by my interrogations...

First, how to make sure the knobs i'm going to buy is completely compatible with the pots ? Is there an information that i should take a look at ? My local store had long shafts pots and switches..i would like to avoid buying this online...

About the 3P4T, i see a lot of different models and i 'm not quite sure about them. I want to make sure they are the right one, could someone point me the good one to buy in this list :

http://www.banzaimusic.com/Rotary-Switches/

Is it this one ? http://fr.mouser.com/ProductDetail/CK-Components/A30415RSZQE/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMvNbjZ2WlReYpR40FFCXM07o2fCn%252b6EhBA%3d


I think i'm going to buy on Banzai cuz they have everything i miss for the 3 boxes i'm currently building (WSG, GRISTLEIZER and MEATSPHERE)...

I may have additional questions in the future.

Thanks for your time, you did great build and i hope to succeed too !

Cheers
Sebastien

[Taylor]

The important parameters of the pot shafts are just whether it's for set screw knobs or push-on knobs, and the shaft diameter. As far as the length, for pedals we usually use something like 15mm.

You want this switch:

http://www.banzaimusic.com/Rotary-Switch-3x4-Pins.html

But you will have to cut the shaft down most likely (not too hard as it's plastic) if you order from there. Mouser has the shorter pots buts if you're ordering from outside the US the shipping is expensive I hear.

[chicago_mike]

finally got time to finish one.   

Question though. the trigger leds and the external led..do not go completely dark. theres always a little light.

The 2 internal leds used are green leds pulled from a rotosphere. The rotosphere has a cooked pcb by the power supply. The leds checked out okay.

I amusing 100ohm for those.

I have for the external led a 5mm orange led from pedal parts plus I think. I don't know the cmd. That resistor is currently a 1K5. should I increase that?

Both 1.8Meg resistors are 1.5Meg right now.

Everything else is cool. But I will audio probe after a quick gig tonight.

[DrKoester]

Whoa.

After taking the last 6 months off of working on this (moved twice and got married) I completed the wiring and enclosure this weekend and -- whoa.

This thing is a beast.  The range of possibilities is fantastic.  I'll ditto previous build reports by confirming that it takes patience to find the right settings.  I started with the following:

Mid-Hi Range
Low Pass
Down
Full Bandwidth
Max Sensitivity
Min Attack
12 o'clock Decay
Max Colour, Intensity, Blend

From there it was a matter of exploration.  I haven't tried the FX loop and my LED isn't working.  Looking at some of the other builder's gut shots it looks like I had some confusion with the build instructions and will try to fix on my own first before posting questions.

Thanks to Taylor for such an awesome board and Vince_b for the template (although I still managed to drill outside the lines).  Will post pictures once its painted.

[lulu_joe13]

Hello all, I've made a dazzling series of mistakes when trying to test my meat sphere build. When engaged the thing just hums. When in bypass I hear un-distorted guitar. My worst mistake was when trying to make sure it was getting power I grabbed another wall wart and that one was 9V AC. There was no smoke or noise or anything. Now the meat sphere only hums. The  led only lights when the rotary switch is set to up with the intensity all the way up. Where do I start trouble shooting? I've looked at my soldering to see if I shorted something. That all looks fine.

[lulu_joe13]

Ok. So. I am going through 9v wall warts at a clip. They are burning out. Smelling that plastic smell. But there is no smoke or smell in the meat sphere. I have a short somewhere after a) reversing the polarity of 9V and ground at the power connector and b) using a 9V AC adapter by mistake after killing the first 9vdc wallwart. The Led doesn't light either. Where do I start troubleshooting?

[lulu_joe13]

OK, OK. So I checked the diodes thinking the ac from the 9v ac adapter I grabbed by mistake did them in. Sure enough! I've replaced them but this thing still drains a 9v battery in minutes so I still have a short I guess. Plus the LED still won't light. I do get the effect until the battery dies so there is some improvement. And I do get clean guitar when in bypass. Any suggestions on troubleshooting?

[bluebunny]

If you're destroying wall warts and draining PP3 in minutes, I'm guessing you have a dead short across the power rails.  Do your short-lived batteries get warm?

[slacker]

If you had to replace the 1N4001 diode, then you should also replace the two 47uF caps the AC will have damaged those possibly causing the short, the opamps are most likely also dead or damaged.

Have you got a multimeter?

[lulu_joe13]

Thank-you so much for the advice!!! Well, I checked everything with a VOM. And, yes I found the short. It was right at the ground pad. I also found a wrong cap. The box is working now enough for me to explore it while I wait for the correct cap. But, one last question. The LED still doesn't light. I'd rather have it on than off. What value resistor in RLED would get it to light? Or, how could I change the wiring in Taylor's off board switch diagram to get an Led that's on when the meat sphere is engaged?

[DrKoester]

Alright so a few posts back (and last night) everything was great but at some point between taking it out of the enclosure and working on the LED and putting it back something went south.  After re-assembling all was well except the colour pot only worked in the last 90% or so of it's rotation -- in other words, no real effect from the pedal until I hit a certain point in the pot and the effect popped in. 

Today I fired it up again and I have no effect.  It engages but no envelope is triggered and the result is similar to my bypassed signal but slightly muted.  I checked the resistance of the pots throughout their sweep and all are normal but the colour -- it is 0-65k ohm and then drops down to about 55k over the last bit of motion clockwise.  I think I'll do the obvious but I'm confused on how it was mostly functional last night and now it has no effect.

Any thoughts?  I will try to track down a replacement here for it and report back.