Effects Bay

So, I just got an email letting me know that Amazon is having a sale… 25% off soldering equipment. So I figured there were a few guitar effects nerds like me out there, that may need to upgrade a soldering iron or score a new tip or two. Looks like they have a few soldering irons (Weller, Sinometer, Mastech, etc) and a few other items like Heat Guns, Desoldering Wicks, Tips, Stands, etc.

If you’re needing some gear, check this page out.

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This was a fun project for me. I’ve been messing around with Vero boards while working on circuits for pedals for myself and friends. Vero is easy transition from breadboard to a working board, but it’s sort of a pain. You have to add your break out points with a drill bit, so you need to really make sure you’ve measured properly, or you’re going to have to start over, etc. If you need to make more than one, a PCB or printed circuit board might be a good direction. I’ve never designed my own board, but figured I would give it a shot last weekend.

I use the program DIY Layout Creator which is fantastic for laying out components and getting your traces from schematic to board. Like I said, vero is super easy to convert from schematic to board, but PCBs have a bit more difficulty since the lines have to be continual (actually, I’m sure you can add some jumpers, etc.. but I wanted to avoid it). It was fun challenge.. like building a maze. After a couple of revisions, I had a design and it looked like it was going to work.

The technique I ended up using was the lazer paper (not transparency). The concept is to print circuit on a piece of lazer paper then transfer the toner to the copper clad. I had a old workhorse lazer printer, so I figured I’d fire it up again. I’ve seen people talking about paper, and that some paper does not transfer the toner very well. I’ll describe what I have so you can get close. The printer I used was a HP LazerJet 1100 and the paper I bought was Staples brand color laser paper (96 bright, 32lb item# 633215).

After creating your circuit layout in DIY Layout Create, you would print on the paper. I first had to open up the rendered PnP in photoshop (change the scaling) to get it to the right size on the paper. Don’t reverse the diagram, but if you have text, you’ll need to reverse the text so it will transfer correctly on the copper clad.

I used double sided copper clad from Radio Shack (if you can, find/use single sided copper clad). I used double sided.. because that is all I can get here. I’ll be ordering some thinner single sided copper clad in the future via eBay.

Cut the copper clad to size. My piece was 2.25″ by 2″. Some people score the clad and snap it. I chose to use a bandsaw with a metal cutting blade. Cut it like butter.

You will need to clean the copper with Isopropal alcohol to remove any grease, fingerprints, etc. Next lay the image face down on the copper.

Now we need to apply heat to melt the toner on to the clad. I used a iron on a high setting. I would press hard for about 30 seconds then press on different areas. Be careful not to dislodge the paper. That will smear and you will need to clean the copper and start over.

The paper will actually bond with the copper. Let it cool for a few minutes then submerge it in a container of cold water. I left it in there for about 15 minutes. The paper began to wrinkle.

Look for the paper to be wrinkly. The paper should be naturally be pulling away from the copper clad

Gently (I repeat gently) pull the paper away. If you do this too quick, you’ll pull the transfer off of the clad which causes a break. Once the paper is off, you’ll need to clean off the rest of the small pieces of paper ‘hair’ that is still bound to the clad. Gently wipe those off with your finger.

Here is a shot of my clad with the print freshly removed. I did have two breaks on the upper left corner. So I needed to fix these before going to the acid phase.

You can fix the broken traces by marking them with a fine point Sharpie. Make sure your copper is dry before fixing the traces.

Now, we’re ready to apply acid to remove the exposed copper. I used Ferric acid from Radio Shack. You can use Mucaric acid, but I believe that is bigger mess, including ventilation and corrosion issues. I wanted to start with Ferric since it seems a little easier to work with.. but is more expensive. I used rubber gloves and a plastic container.

You don’t need much acid. I used about 2 cups or so. I tip the container so the acid pools at one end.

Put your piece of copper clad in the acid and let it soak for about 15-20 minutes or so.

With this shot, you can see the copper being eaten away. It’ll look like black mist pulling away from the copper clad. You will start to see the yellow mustard (depending on the copper clad you bought) of the plastic PCB.

The edges are the first to go. Here you can see the yellow starting to appear. When it’s all done, I poured the Ferric acid into a jar to reuse on the next etch project. Not sure how many times it can be used. Wash off the PCB with water should be yellow with black traces. I wipe off the toner with more alcohol, and if it’s really stuck, I used a S.O.S pad (gently!)

When you’re all done, you’ll need to drill the holes. I used a #60 drill bit on a drill press. I might go a little smaller next time, but it worked. Also, I’ll probably be looking at some tinning solution next time. Soldering direct to the copper took more work than I thought.

Hopefully this little how to will help on your first etching project. I was surprised how easy it was.

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A musician here in town heard from a mutual friend that I was into pedal projects and he was interested in getting a tremolo pedal. One of my big things as I try to get better with my skills is to continually work on projects. Practice definitely improves your ability to work electronics. You become more efficient and proficient with various tasks from soldering to drilling enclosures, etc. So what I’ve been doing is only charging for parts. Pedal repairs.. I usually accept a 6 pack for my troubles. I’m always looking for opportunities to fire up the soldering iron.

Anyways, this guy wanted a tremolo. I started reviewing various schematics on the internet. Tremolos are definitely more intense than my normal projects. One schematic that looked appealing was at General Guitar Gadgets (EA Tremolo). I fired up my DIY Layout Creator and started laying it out for a vero board. One thing that was evident right away was the size of the board. Vero is great but it can be a pain trying to get the size down to where you want/need it. While I was dicking around with that, I could see the General Guitar Gadgets PCB staring at me in the monitor and decided to just buy the PCB and be done with the hassle.

I also opted to go with the blinking LED mod that would flash the LED with the speed trem speed. I like to things move/blink, so that was a obvious choice. I had most of the components on hand already, but had to purchase a few resistors and the transistors.

Assembly on the PCB was cake (was happy I chose this route). I might try this again, and see if I can etch a PCB based on the schematic. I really want to go this direction in the future and move away from Vero all together. I had a few powder coated enclosures from PedalPartsPlus.com so after completing the circuit board and did my testing, I measured and drilled out the holes. I’m really starting to get a feel for my drill press and holes are coming very easy now-a-days.

After assembly I gave it a thorough test, and it sounds great. I really like the volume pot. You can overdrive circuit with it dimed. Unity gain is about 12 noon. Sounds great with tube amps. I’m not a bit tremolo guy, but I think it’ll cut the mustard. A couple of issues, the blinking LED will immediately blink when input jack is in. I’ll either break this out to the ground on the primary LED or provide a SPST switch to kill the LED. I can see some benefit to adjust the speed while the pedal is off (so you don’t have to engage it to see the rate). Not sure. I’ll ask the guy who this is for.. and go from there. Here is a shot from top.

If you’re into tweaking, building, modding.. love to include your stories as well. Let me know if you’re interested in a guest post!

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Last week I was asked to see if I could repair a old Marshall Guv’nor pedal for a friend that plays bass. He borrowed the pedal, but stopped functioning. I took a look at the guts and immediately diagnosed the problem to a broken wire leading from board to the output jack. A new solder connection and he was back in business.  But, he mentioned that he needed to get this back and was interested in the older Russian Big Muff Pi (large green enclosure). I remembered that I bought a Big Muff Pi (BMP) PCB from GeneralGuitarGadgets.com (GGG) a while ago, so I thought it would be a perfect little *fun* project.

I was happy to see that GGG had a schematic for the Russian Big Muff, so I started by printing that and finding all the various components.. which I had! Next was assembling the circuit board. After the circuit board and the pots were installed, I installed it to my breadboard tester to see I was in business… and sure enough, Big Muff tone was rockin’ the workspace.

The next phase was to get an enclosure. I had a few powder coated enclosures for a buffer project I’ve been working on, so I taped it up and started laying out the knobs and jack placement. Holes were drilled nicely with my Ace drill press (man.. I’m so glad I picked that thing up!).

Below is a shot of the BMP circuit board. I’d like to see if I can do some mods to this.. but may need to create one for myself. I already gave this to my friend (which was super psyched on his new Muff).

Here is a shot of the top. The powder coat is cool.. changes from purple to brown depending on the lighting.

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If you’ve been following this blog for a while.. you would know I’m very interested in pedal building/hacking and general tweaking with electronics. Since I started, I’ve been noticing a steady increase in skill level and general electronics understanding (don’t take me wrong.. still have a million more miles to go). During this, I’ve had a great time actually making things that I play. There is a great satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment when you step on a creation… and it does.. what it’s suppose to do!

So this leads me to this post. Today, I wanted to talk about Mod Kits DIY. Here we have a business that has some sweet kits for the guitarists out there. Along with a few pedal kits, they’re offering a amp kit as well. I would love to try an amp some day.

Here is their official press release:

ModTM Kits are designed to give both novice and experienced musicians the opportunity to build their own amps and effects pedals.  All kits come with easy to follow instructions and use point-to-point wiring.  Pre-drilled enclosure and all parts are included.  All you need to provide are hand tools, a soldering iron and solder.  All effect pedals operate on a 9V battery.

MOD 101 Guitar Amp Kit – 60 watts of tube power using your choice of either 6L6 tubes or EL34 tubes.  Choose from 32 different variations of the circuit to suit your tonal preferences.

The Rattler Pedal Kit – an easy to build kit that has the fuzz sound of the 60′s and 70′s.

The Piledriver Pedal Kit – this clean boost kit provides up to 38dB of gain to your guitar signal.  Use it to push your preamp into overdrive or as a line driver if you are experiencing signal degradation from your effects chain.

The Verb Pedal Kit – Build your own digital reverb pedal.  Get sweet, warm reverb tone using the Belton Digi-Log module.

And the newest addition to the line:
The Persuader Pedal Kit – Make your own tube pre-amp pedal built around a real 12AX7 tube.  Go from clean warm to smooth tube overdrive.

Here is a demo of their amp and kits:

If you get a chance, check out ModKitDIY.com! Also, check out their social networks (Twitter and Facebook)

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I’ve been working on pedals for a few months now. I absolutely love tweaking. I’ve been having issues and challenges, but these have really helped me learn the ‘process’. I didn’t really like building kits, since I feel it’s a little too ‘auto-pilot’. I really wanted to learn and understand how electrical components affect the signal, etc.

About a month ago I stumbled across this video which is EXACTLY why I don’t like kits. This is showing Brian Wampler (Wampler Pedals) working the breadboard and tweaking the circuits to get the sound he’s searching for in his head to come out of the amp. To do this, you need to really understand how these components work.. or at the very least have the balls to mess things up. Kits are great to get started with the soldering iron, etc., but the breadboard is where it’s at for creating something instead of just building something.

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The following is a guest post by Christian Moraga (@cubisteffects). If you are interested in guest posting, please contact me!

Welcome to Part 3 of the Mod.It.Yourself series where we have previously looked at the basics of Tools and Techniques in Part 1 and how to mod the Diode Clipping in a pedal in Part 2. Part 3: Switches will look at an important component in the pedal modder’s toolkit. Switches are mechanical devices that allow an instantaneous flip to either turn part of a circuit on or off (break the circuit), or introduce a new part to the circuit. The latter function is useful in doing reversible modifications, or mods that use the original stock component. This part of The M.I.Y series will explain a bit about common switches and some ideas on how to use them in your own pedal mods.

The two most common mechanical switches used in modifying pedals are the push button switch and toggle switch.

Both of these switches use common nomenclature for their components that must be understood before selecting them for your next project. Below is a look at some of the more common names of switches that are used for pedal mods and an explanation of their specs.

Each switch is named with respect to the functions of their contacts, i.e. the part of the switch that is in contact with your wire, component, PCB etc. Also called a lug or pin. The two terms are poles (denoted by P) and throw (denoted by T). A pole is the number of switch contact sets of pins/lugs, and is labelled SP- for single pole, DP- double pole, 3P- for triple pole etc. The diagram below shows the poles of a 4PDT switch.

Most switches used in pedals have three pins per pole. The center pin is common i.e. is always connected to either outer pin of the three. Moving the toggle either up or down selects (as shown in the photo below) between these two connections or conducting positions. These positions are known as throws and are denoted -ST for single throw or -DT for double throw. A single throw switch only has two pins with the third pin shorting to ground, thus having only one position.

Common switches used in modifications are single pole double throw (SPDT) or double pole double throw toggle (DPDT) switches, and true bypass foot switches are known as triple pole double throw (3PDT). Using this knowledge of switches, here are a couple of mods you can try on your next pedal designs or mods.

KILL SWITCH

To get a stuttering effect made famous by guitarists Tom Morello and Buckethead in stompbox form, you can make use of a type of push button switch called a momentary switch. By using a push-to-make momentary or “normally open”, when pressing the switch you are breaking the circuit thus creating a staccato effect. To do this, all you need to do is cut the wire that goes from the output of the PCB to the bypass switch. Wire each of these two ends to a normally open SPST momentary switch and you have a momentary kill switch. The effect signal will stay on until you step on the switch, cutting all volume of your signal. By pressing at rhythmic intervals, you can create unique guitar rhythms heard in many RATM riffs. Momentary switches are great for these “stab” like effects and can be used for feedback loops, or wiring to a potentiometer in a delay pedal to get that spaceship, oscillation sound.

DIODE CLIPPING SWITCH

As previously discussed in Part 2 of the M.I.Y series, we can mod a pedals’ clipping diodes to create a different tone of the distorted sound. We could use different diode material, symmetry, combinations etc to get our desired sound. But what if you liked two diode sounds and wanted to switch between them? Using an SPDT switch, you can do just that and is a common feature on many effects pedals.

The schematic below [PIC 5] shows the clipping diode structure of many distortion pedals – a hard clipping pair at the output of the IC.

One end of the pair shunts to ground, while the other end is in the signal path. If this end on the signal path (A) is wired to the common pin of the SPDT switch, we can then switch between two differing pairs of diodes. Wire the end of two pairs to ground, and the other end to (B) and (C) of the switch and you can select between your favourite clipping tones. The symmetry of the clipping can be controlled using this switching layout as well – just use different symmetrical pairs for (B) and (C).

You can also use this principle to switch between two components of differing values i.e. the output capacitor to provide more/less bass in the circuit. Remove the initial capacitor from the PCB where one pad will have one wire running to (A) and two wires from the other pad to one end of either capacitor you wish to switch between [PIC 7].

Hopefully this information and diagrams will give you ideas on how to mod your next pedal, or to modify your next pedal build. Also, I would suggest getting a multimeter with a continuity test function. By putting either probe on any two connections, a beep or sound should be heard. This is very useful to test your new connections.

Happy modding,

C.

About the author.

Christian Moraga is the owner of CubistEffects.com located in Sydney, Australia. Christian repairs and mods most brands of pedals like BOSS, Ibanez, EHX , Arion, MXR, Danelectro, Marshall, Dunlop, VooDoo Labs, Digitech, DOD etc and specialise in Big Muffs and ProCo Rats. He also makes custom switching and loopers for your pedalboard needs. A/B, True Bypass, Tap Tempo etc.

A note from EffectsBay.com
I found Christian while doing some research on the Line 6 DL4, where Christian has some great mods available!

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I’ve been getting into pedal building, to the point where I’m a little concerned about how big this obsession is getting. Frankly, I think about it ALL the time these days. I had no background in electronics prior. I’ve always been a ‘hacker’ in a way, but more of a ‘breaker’ in reality, but I’ve always wanted to fix things or see why they work, etc. Over the years, I’ve picked up a few tricks/techniques and tools, and I’m at the point where I can start to get my head around basic pedal circuits and what not.  For me, the satisfaction comes with the application. To build something.. and then play my guitar through it is completely rewarding, and I absolutely love it.

The world of pedal building is overwhelming when you first start. From understanding electrical components to the basic fundamentals of electricity you are exposed to a lot of new and challenging things right off the bat. When looking at pedal circuits, you’ll most likely see them as schematics on the web, and it’s hard to translate that to physical components.. well it was for me at least. I was having trouble going from schematic to board, but one thing that has helped immensely is this great FREE program called DIY Layout Creator.

Basically, it’s a piece of software (I did mention it was FREE right?) that will allow you to place components on a virtual board. This is really great to ‘see’ how the circuit develops and it’s helped really translate schematic to reality. I personally like veroboard (strip board) for this since this translates well from schematic really easily for me. You can also use perfboard or PCB layouts as well.

If you’re interested in building pedal circuits, I would highly recommend this program. You can download it here.

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I’ve been really getting into pedal hacking and I’ve been a little obsessed over the idea of making pedals one day. The pedal hacking community is incredibly kind and helpful, and it’s really easy to get the bug and desire to make something.. and if all goes well, works with your guitar.

A couple of days ago @4ntwaan let me know about something that Zachary Vex of ZVex has been up to. At the 2010 NAMM he was talking about the Inventobox, basically a pedal hacker’s dream box. It allows you to wire in pots, drop in ‘modules’ or craft you own circuits into the pedal.

Here is a video where Zachary explains the Inventobox:

As you can see, there is some great cool potential here. I’ve been planning on making a prototyping board that interfaces with a bredboard and pedal enclosure (ala Beavis Board) and this is definitely the hi-tech version of this. Awesome!

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Some of you know that I’ve been experimenting with the pedals, and I’d like to eventually like to make my own effects circuit. I’ve been doing a lot of research and meeting a ton of people that are either into modifying or creating their own pedals. This community is absolutely fantastic, and more importantly, fun for a nerdy type like myself.

I’ve been working lightly with electronics for a couple of years, but by no means am I an expert.. so I have a long way to go. I’ve just been playing with various projects and working on some repairs and what not, but it’s important to always go back to the basics. Soldering is something I know I have more to learn and is very critical for electronics. You can get away with a lot, but with stomp boxes, you definitely want to get it right since they get thrown around, and stomped on. So your connections need to be done right.

Here is a great video on soldering by CuriousInventor. Lots of great information here:

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