Build questions - Skyripper intermod reactionary pedal

[komodomoe]

So, I'm building Joe Gagan's incredible Skyripper pedal, and I emailed him with some questions and he actually got me a schematic updated this past march   

So the schematic is pretty straightforward, but I don't have the materials to make a PCB atm so I'm doing point to point and there are a ton of wires hanging off the board going to each of the 7 pots, the 4 phone jacks, the LED, power jack, 3 toggles, and the 3 foot switches as well as several ground wires. I'm fairly new at building (only one other pedal) and I'm a little concerned about all the wires causing interference issues. Additionally, when soldering, I like to use healthy amounts of solder to secure connections, do these have adverse impacts on the tone? Should I use as little solder as possible, or does it matter?

Also, anyone who wants this updated schematic, just PM me.

Thanks,
Ben

[komodomoe]

Also,

do pulldown resistors on the in/out tip draw any battery power or decrease signal strength?

[Earthscum]

I'm a little concerned about all the wires causing interference issues.

Generally, in a build like what you find around here, GGG, Beans, etc. won't have interference issues. This is usually more of an issue with input and output runs of wire. Any interference that gets into the input jack gets amplified right along with your intended signal. The pots that other wires are going to are limiting current enough that interference will naturally be kept to a minimum, assuming you use a decent shielded box when you're done (and don't let issues with high gainers get you until you get it into a safe home. Sometimes they are just happier in their safe place!)

Additionally, when soldering, I like to use healthy amounts of solder to secure connections, do these have adverse impacts on the tone? Should I use as little solder as possible, or does it matter?

Solder shouldn't be balled up on the pad, nor should it undercut the wire or hole. You should have a nice inset arc from the soldered lead to the pad. If you get too much solder on there, then you can create new interference issues. I forgot to cut a lead off a board I made... the extra 1/8" or so of lead was picking up stray signal from a trace it was pointing at... additionally, large globs of solder can do the same thing. If it looks like a "factory" solder joint, then you're in the ballpark. Too little, obviously, has it's consequences as well.

do pulldown resistors on the in/out tip draw any battery power or decrease signal strength?

R.G. has discussed this many times, if you want to search around here a bit (probably something recent, too... common question). So, to make it short: Yes, they "load" the signal source... say, your guitar, which needs a load about 10X it's output  impedance... we'll just say  your coils have about 10k impedance, you'd want at least 100k pulldown at the circuit input to keep from loading down the coils. Generally, you want yo actually have it around 330k (my preference, but also works well with my bass) or higher. That is why you commonly see 1M pulldowns at the inputs. It's a bit overkill, but meh... doesn't seem to have any adverse effects, unless you get switch popping. Then you would want to consider hitting the 470k resistor instead.

Think about resistance to ground... if you have 9V across a 1k resistor, you are using about 9mA. This will start to drain a bit heavier on the battery, but would get you through a gig or 3 without killing it. Now, let's look at something like a voltage divider using a pair of 10k resistors (and a cap from voltage reference to ground). 9V across 20k of resistance only amounts to 0.45mA, or 450 uA. You can still power some LED's with that, but would give a longer battery life. Now, if you take something like what I had done for a wah circuit, I made power consumption so minimal, I'm running an LED off a 47k resistor! So, the LED is always on (see Morley wah's for an exaple), but it is 12V-2.8V=9.2V across the resistor, so the LED is only getting 200uA, which works great for me. The rest of the circuit should draw even less, etc etc.

Hopefully that helps you out. I just woke up, so I could probably simplify this to about 4 sentences in an hour or so, lol.

[digi2t]

Maybe consider a vero build. I've done two of them, and the vero layouts are available in the gallery. I think it would be much cleaner than a ptp build.

Fantastic pedal btw.

[joegagan]

the aforementioned V2 is here. the only significant difference is easier biasing for Q4's two trimmers for bias presets. the old spdt setup created a nightmare balancing act, now a new arrangement keeps them isolated from one another. over half the skyrriper problems i have heard over the years related to this formerly tricky setup.

the two bias voltages for each trimmer are -4.5v,  and  - 1v, as noted.

komodomoe, if you are installing three footswitches, that indicates to me that you are not building the latest version. do what you want, but i improved it to get rid of a bunch of extra wire while eliminating a feature that has been made obsolete. the original had a foot-switch for 'range' only operation, in real life this is redundant and pretty worthless. everyone has a standalone treble booster nowadays.

if you do the the work to adapt the existing perf layout to the newer schem, it will be a good exercise for you and save wire, mess and headaches. then we can use your updated perf layout as well! it really isn't all that different.

[joegagan]

a video explaining the controls and workings, made late last year.

[petey twofinger]

what is on the guitar ?

its like an extra "arm" piece that goe from the body to the headstock , what is that ?

it reminded me of the old roland 700 synth guitar a lil bit ...

[joegagan]

that is just an extension for the strap button. that upside down guitar would not balance well unless i got the strap button mount near the 12fth fret. it was a 100 dollar used SX guitar, but it had rio grande and seymour P90s in it when i bought it.