Pedal Build (not an Epic!)

Headphones

Episode - The First

 

Well, I promised a build report, so here it is. 

 

While I had a few problems along the way it's all finished and working now; but I'll spread this over the next few days, just to add a sense of climactic excitement - or growing nausea if you don't like it.

 

So what is it?

 

Glad you asked.

 

It's a reasonably simple booster, set in a box, then doubled to make it more challenging.

 

I've always tended to use amp distortion, but struggled to do quick changes on the volume pot to change the precise degree of dirt/clean - so I set the amp clean-ish and then boost with a pedal.  But this would be much easier with two set levels (off is clean, then two different levels of dirt).  So, a pedal with two boosts is needed.  The EP boost gets everyone's vote at the moment and the circuit's relatively simple, so two in one box is the way this is rolling.

 

The box is a prepainted (but text free) die cast Hammond box, in this case from good old RS (on the back of another order); while the two boards themselves are from Fuzzdog's site.  The text and imagery that will appear are on decal paper from your local model shop.

 

So the first problem:  Fuzz Dog's site didn't like my browser (Firefox), I don't know why, it seems to work everywhere else.  The problem raised another thread on this site (to which everyone said stick with it!), although no answers came, despite quick contact from the man himself.  Starting up the Edge browser for the first time allowed me to order, so got there in the end - but this didn't actually solve the original problem as much as bypassing it.

 

Here are the raw bits - and the end of the beginning.

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 1_zpsznqpbckj.jpg

Headphones

Episode The Second

 

The first task is to build the two boards so that the box holes/layout can follow afterwards.  The boards are fine, double sided structures, there a few points which I suggest are aimed more towards the production environment than the home builder; for example the pad sizes are tiny, as are the tracks, while the lack of a spare through hole or two makes mounting a tad more of a challenge than it need be.

 

While building is reasonably straightforward, the lack of a component layout on Fuzz' site (everything relates to a generation older, very different, layout) means that we've to use the printed component codes on the board as guidance.  This gets progressively more difficult as the board fills up.  This is just an inconvenience of course, but where it becomes a problem is when you need to fault find; the classic error of a misplaced component is next to impossible to detect without an unnecessary period of track tracing against the circuit diagram.  Definitely something for Fuzz to look at to improve the experience/service.

 

There's a further annoyance here, too.  The pots in the site's images appear to be arranged to fix directly to the board suggesting the common trick of mounting the boards by the pots themselves.  However the components supplied were different and the pots had short straight legs, no stand offs or similar, so in effect had to be hard wired, complicating the mounting problem.

 

The switches (an optional extra) mounted to the board ok (though the holes were on the big side) and provided for a mounting method.  I chose to mount these on the other side to the components to facilitate this, as several items (the caps) were taller than the switch body.

 

Troubles behind me (I thought) here's the two assembled boards (and the end of this episode):

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 2_zpsmwgxgto7.jpg

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 3_zpsdkcdtzxj.jpg

Adam_MD

You can solder cut off component legs to the pot legs which will allow you to effectively board mount the pot. I just had a look at the site and he has soldered header pins onto the board and the pot onto those.

Adam_MD

You might have trouble getting that to fit in an enclosure the two larger electrolytics should have been soldered in bent over the small components next to them rather than up straight.

The switches and pot should be wired from the other side so you picked the right one.

Headphones

I did consider using pins to mount the pots, as you can see in one of the pics above, but it was easier to hard wire (as you'll see later).  Either way, there were neither pins nor right angle pots in the parts supply.

The switches can fit to either side so far as I can see (and from the circuit configuration).  They function fine.

Laying the caps over would have required space to do so (it would end up much the same height).

Headphones

Headphones

now an error:

Body is 4356 characters too long.  But the text (with picture link) is 1000 characters in "word"...

Headphones

Episode the Third.

On to the box!  Not something screamed by BBC Sherlock's muse, but the next frolic down the road of DIY boost pedals.

After a bit of jiggling and wiggling I managed to arrange all the parts in a satisfying way, with just enough room for safety.  Then to the drill.  After careful measurement and centre popping I used a step drill to make the holes.

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 4_zps1ogpr4w7.jpg

Next the fun of naming and labelling.  Fuzzdog named his EP clone "Epic", so with two of them it became an "EpicTwin".  So using the high tech method of PowerPoint, I knocked up a logo quoting the original Echoplex design, and the remaining legends, printing the results on to decal paper:

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 5_zpsk6yeqpgs.jpg

In honest Airfix mode these slid onto the box and, after a coat or two of Acrylic varnish, here's the result (and the end of this episode):

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 6_zpslhb6kcrf.jpg

thermionic

Nice job on the decals. Are they laser or inkjet decal paper?

Headphones

They're ink jet, from "Crafty Computer Paper".

Headphones

Episode The Fourth

A test passed is...  well, a bit of a challenge as it turns out.

Before assembling the whole thing I thought it wise to test out the circuits, so quickly assembled them with sockets, pots and battery to check.

Teensy problem here; the labels on the board are - I'll be generous - ambiguous.  A little less generous and I'd suggested they were plain barking (see what I did there?).

The input strip reads:

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 8_zpsvhlon9dp.jpg

"IN" is presumably the input, V the positive supply, G the ground?  But then the next is 0V - or ground???  Similarly the pot terminals are unmarked, so it's not clear which is "1".  So a quiet session of track tracing resolved each of these problems - I suggest that these could be better labelled; 0V tuns out to be "Output"...  Why not use: In, +V, GND (or ground symbol), Out and LED?

On to the testing itself:

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 7_zpss20jzczu.jpg

But it didn't work...

This is where the shortfall in the documentation really added time to the fault finding.  But that wasn't the only tide of woe; seems my oscilloscope wants to play up too; looks Ok at first:

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 9_zpsn7xm9uka.jpg

However, from a different angle it's clear the battery's making a bid for freedom:

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 10_zps35ujjuex.jpg

Eventually, back on the pedal, I discovered that I'd swapped the FET and bipolar transistors during assembly.  A quick bash of solder sucking/swapping and all was well (though with some minor pad damage - those tiny traces!).

Now we're all set to build - in the next episode.

Headphones

Episode The Final

Time to put it all together.  In the main, installing the items with sufficient leads is the trick (and yes it is rather rat's nest).  A gentle tightening of the nuts (ohhh) and we're mostly there - well, after the right nuts were supplied at least.

A teeny problem with the LED's mounting bezels presented itself; these are designed for mounting in thin sheet panels, not the wall thickness of a die cast box (I suggest Fuzzdog supplies something different in future).  To work here would require a counterbore, well beyond most DIYers I suspect.  My solution was to drill the hole a tad wide and use RTV sealant to take up the slack.

Once all connected together, a pair of knobs join the components (liberated from my Egnater Tweaker - black knobs on a black panel: straight out of HHGTTG - it now has white ones!).  And we're done:

http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 11_zpsopupljev.jpg
http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii567/Elephanttoo/Epic Boost 12_zpsmvhezod5.jpg

Adam_MD

How does it sound?

Headphones

Adam_MD said:

How does it sound?

As a long term guitarist I can safely say it looks cool!

In a liquorish allsort sort of way.

Did I get that right?

It sounds good.  It's a transparent boost and switches cleanly.  There might be a small hint of an upper mid boost, but that could well be in my head.

The boost switch adds a teensy bit more gain, I'm not entirely suire if that's the purpose - especially as you could turn the knob up a tad (there's a wealth of boost anyway).  If the bright switch has an effect then I'm blowed if I can hear it.

Overall It looks fine, sounds fine and does just what I was after.

I've not done the maths but I think all up it's about£40.