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Post by thetragichero on Apr 21, 2020 23:17:11 GMT -5
finally got to use my scope for something useful! so i look around for cheap broken pedals to fix and flip. few months ago i picked up this Oddfellows Napoleon boost for less than i could purchase the components for kinda deal. basically it is a bog simple tl072 clean boost with an internal switch to increase bass content. so simple that half of the op amp was being used as a voltage follower for the half supply rail. sweet, gotta be an easy fix.... company small enough that nobody's bothered tracing it so i get the multimeter out and trace. check voltages, etc. the thing ends up sitting sitting around for awhile because I'm completely baffled anyway tonight i decide to bust out the scope and see if i can figure out (using the 1khz sine) where the ac signal stops. think it might be some bad caps so i remove them and keep testing. not it. lose signal right at the non inverting input to the op amp. there is a blue metal film resistor there to bias the op amp, as it should be. it reads .470k as in 470r. they installed the wrong one! and my previous testing i thought i read .470M (or 470k), which seems like a great value. 470 ohms... not so much so i replace it and this is what the scope reads with the gain knob turned all the way down and all the way up aaaaaaand the gutshot yay for getting to use my new (old) toy!
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Post by thetragichero on Apr 22, 2020 10:34:25 GMT -5
as an update i just spent awhile playing guitar through this (and messy with trippy reverse delay). sounds nice. simple loudener. with the deep switch engaged it give my little tubescreamer clone the kick in the pants (and low end) it needs. obviously I'm not gonna keep a 70+ dollar simple op amp booster but maybe one of these in a dual pedal with a tweaked tube screamer will find its way on my board
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Post by thetragichero on Apr 27, 2020 11:16:10 GMT -5
setup a drumset to try to record some laid back covers and maybe a few others. nothing too heavy that suitcase was customized with foam by my old man and i to transport my four track in way back when
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Post by frets on May 16, 2020 18:21:30 GMT -5
I decided to design PCB boards to speed up Jimmy Page harnesses. I got them back yesterday. I went for speed over tidiness. 24 minutes to wire a Jimmy Page with my new boards. Everything works!! And it’s Solderless. I have a Chibson I use to swap out harnesses.
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Post by thetragichero on May 16, 2020 23:24:32 GMT -5
repurposing a crate footswitch for a dual overdrive (modified klon and ocd circuits with a rail-to-rail op amp instead of the charge pump for the klon) and some sort of boost (I'll figure that out). this is another build somebody brought up to me and then realized they didn't have money to pay for it. i liked it on the breadboard so figured I'd build it
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Post by newey on May 17, 2020 7:11:08 GMT -5
Frets- How many JP conversions are you doing so as to justify the cost of custom PCBs? Nice job, although I'm not a big fan of solderless connectors, looking good! .
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Post by frets on May 17, 2020 11:10:33 GMT -5
Newey, Thanks, The Boards are prototypes from China and cost $10 for 10 and that includes shipping using China Post. They take about a month to get to me. I use PCBWay for all my boards. I do about 3-4 Jimmy Page conversions a month.
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Post by frets on May 17, 2020 11:14:19 GMT -5
Trag, Use a TL071 for that Boost.
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Post by thetragichero on May 17, 2020 23:15:15 GMT -5
I've decided to go with a slightly modified lpb. slightly smaller input cap and volume pot at the beginning instead of at the end. slight bass cut (for solo boost purposes) and the potential to get a little grittier than a bifet op amp (i love them for most things though)
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Post by thetragichero on May 19, 2020 3:11:28 GMT -5
had to do a bit of troubleshooting with the boost portion of the pedal earlier. apparently you gotta connect all points that go to ground together or this stuff is really quiet does exactly what i wanted: big volume boost shaving some low end off. perfect for switching from heavy rhythm tone to a lead tone, without being shrill like the ehx screaming bird/tree messed with the other two circuits on the breadboard and then shoehorned the ocd into here had oscillation problems with the klon and ocd on the same breadboard and everything maxed. could've just been the nature of breadboarding but all ins and outs are run with sheilded wire and each circuit has its own power supply decoupling cap
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Post by thetragichero on May 20, 2020 3:36:41 GMT -5
got about half of the klon wired up (stopped after the clipping diodes). unlike all of the klon clone schematics I've found I'm keeping the buffered bypass of the original. i like buffers more importantly i fixed a few lingering issues with the ocd and boost. tested them out on a turned down amp on the other side of the house and they're LOUD. at some point i will test out different op amps in the ocd since i socketed it. i did the tlc2272 in it right now
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Post by thetragichero on May 20, 2020 17:46:26 GMT -5
never seen this before this 2001 squier affinity strat has been refinished a kajillion times, couple of different coats of regular hardware store spray paint, surf green nitro, and eventually black/blue poly (unfinished). something between the nitro and poly bubbled up (few years ago i filled my carve marks in with wood glue...) while sitting in the sun on the porch for a week or so. what's interesting as that all of the finishes together so I've been pulling it off in sheets
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Post by thetragichero on May 21, 2020 2:57:18 GMT -5
here's some spaghetti plugged it in and all the LEDs work. I'm glad i troubleshot each section individually because that means if it doesn't work is in the klon part of it. that is a job for the daytime
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Post by thetragichero on May 24, 2020 0:34:37 GMT -5
working on a solid state amp to put into a cigar box and run from battery (to pair with my old man's cigar box guitar). power amp is a little tda8932 board purchased off eBay. this is basically a tube sound fuzz/red llama with a James tone stack after it running at 12v. sounds pretty good! a bit noisy on the breadboard but that happens. will sheild with tape if i need to. will continue to tweak but so far i like. maybe roll off high frequencies that we don't need in guitar
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Post by thetragichero on Jun 8, 2020 23:40:55 GMT -5
so about a year ago my father-in-law sends us home with a guitar after a visit and says "do whatever you want with it" having no clue what he meant by that i occupied my time with other projects until the next time we were up there. he said it wasn't "pickin right" which made sense since these epiphone Les Paul special ii retail for $199 new since we're going back up there for father's day weekend i figured I'd finally mess with it took it all apart, polished the 'chrome' parts, polished the back of the neck and frets real good, ripped out the old electronics. these humbuckers were wound HOT (16k bridge with 12k neck) with ceramic magnets so i ripped those out, threw an alnico 2 magnet in the neck and alnico 3 on the bridge to hopefully smooth those out a bit. potted in some hot wax. interesting side effect is that the ceramic magnet was almost twice the height as the alnicos so it's almost like those dimarzio airbuckers. came with a 500k linear volume pot and 500k audio tone pot. replaced those with 500k Gibson audio pots from an sg i rewired. had this 16nf bumblebee cap salvaged from some old test equipment i threw in for extra mojo. dimarzio-type treble bleed, and switchcraft jack (pretty much the only thing that cost me besides the strings). if course i sheilded it like a good guitarnut. not my neatest wire job but it'll do some low volume testing it sounds pretty darn good. still have to do a proper setup
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Post by frets on Jun 9, 2020 11:44:11 GMT -5
Trag, it looks absolutely beautiful; but, where is the Chicklet capacitor?
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Post by thetragichero on Jun 9, 2020 13:06:12 GMT -5
this thing needs all the mojo it can get! i damn near burned some sage and summoned the ghost of Robert Johnson for this one
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Post by newey on Jun 10, 2020 5:46:37 GMT -5
That will work, but only if you're standing here:
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Post by thetragichero on Jun 28, 2020 19:26:21 GMT -5
picked up a Hammond tube organ and two 70s solid state organs (Yamaha and Wurlitzer) this week. gotta finish stripping the husks if those and others because i no longer have a place to park my truck
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 18, 2020 20:35:10 GMT -5
Very near finishing the 8 or 9 switch wiring. It’s going to be tight and messy but here goes. I’ve got the kill switch in and also retreads “volume pot module” that gives me full volume / two thirds volume /one third volume. it seems to be working great, I really like it 🙂. Also experimenting with pickup placement. I always wanted to hear what it would sound like if the pup was half way between the middle and bridge . I’m not a fan of the bridge on a clean sound and the middle is too “normal” so half way might give the best of both worlds. I also been trying the bridge and middle in series which is ok, but doesn’t have enough cutting edge for lead parts although I like it’s widened and fatness for rhythm/picking parts both clean and dirty and also half out of phase sounds great . but I was intrigued to hear what a bridge and “midge” (in between middle and bridge) would sound like in both series and parallel . Well , they both sound great ! And a little different. Both have a nice cutting edge . Worth a try ! Hammered a nail through the pick guard then used a coping saw and some files to create the space for the coil to go. I had a template to help get the right size. url=https://postimg.cc/njbjvFrh] [/url]
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Post by thetragichero on Jul 25, 2020 13:16:15 GMT -5
so the other day i picked up an organ (which is nothing new) and was pleasantly surprised when i opened it up Thomas organ with all of the voicing done by transistors but the amplification provided by this 2x el84 1x 12ax7 1x 12at7 1x 6ca4. that rectifier means this has a ton more 6.3v heater current available if i went with diodes for folks trying to Google transformer specs like i did: ser 3481 chassis markings power transformer 80-5018-6 606243 red red/yellow red 630vct green green/yellow green 6.3vct blue blue/yellow blue 55vct (looks like it was used to power the solid state devices. could be used for bias in a fixed bias setup, or a fancy dual rail hiwatt-like supply) output transformer 80-5031-1 606313 orange red blue primary green black secondary 7k2:8 or 3k6:4 impedance ratio
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Post by reTrEaD on Jul 26, 2020 9:25:18 GMT -5
1x 6ca4. that rectifier means this has a ton more 6.3v heater current available if i went with diodes The 6CA4 is somewhat of a hog for heater current. Eliminating that frees up enough to support 3 additional 12AX7s and still have a few mA to spare. Still, I'm a big fan of tube rectifiers on small amps. Me likey teh sag. Maybe get a stout power resistor and make it switchable? Anyway, these organs amp are pure win when it comes to parts for guitar amps. The 15w class of push-pull is a great place to be. Still a bit loud when pushed to power amp distortions, but your ears won't bleed.
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Post by thetragichero on Jul 26, 2020 10:13:25 GMT -5
I've been using the ~18w jcm800 to track bass as i can get some crunch but as long as i don't mind feedback (which i don't in most of the music i record) i can keep it right there in the same room as me this one has a much smaller output transformer (similar to the size i took out of my 13w pawnshop excelsior. that one was loud as hell when i used it for a fixed bias 2x 6v6 power amp though)
I'm excited to see what to5 package transistors this has in it... might add a bunch more germanium to my stash
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Post by frets on Aug 13, 2020 13:58:12 GMT -5
Hello Fellas, Just finished a Strat G & L Legacy Passive Treble Bass Solderless System. It uses an A250k Volume, a A500k/.022 and a A1m/.0022. I brought it up because this is one of the absolute BEST Strat mods. Using the bass cut and treble cut pots, you can dial in the perfect tone. I’m working on a diagram to post for you all. I don’t know if there is one up here on the forum. I looked but couldn’t find one. 🙃😉
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Post by gumbo on Aug 14, 2020 7:00:55 GMT -5
Hmmm... Now if I can just jamb that into a Roland-Ready Strat using a concentric pot (bottom pot is already taken with GK Volume)... ...although I reckon I'll probably have to build the concentric pot ...hmmm Thank you for the idea.. ...I think..
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Post by frets on Aug 14, 2020 12:48:03 GMT -5
Hi Gumbo, I’ll be putting up a diagram in a couple of days.
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Post by gumbo on Aug 17, 2020 10:12:33 GMT -5
Thank you...look forward to it.
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Post by reTrEaD on Aug 18, 2020 9:24:27 GMT -5
gotta finish stripping the husks if those and others because i no longer have a place to park my truck That's bad but if your wife doesn't have a place to park her car, you'll never hear the end of it. amirite?
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Post by thetragichero on Aug 18, 2020 9:59:26 GMT -5
meh she's more understanding than i would be. even with gear purchases (with intent to repair and sell), since i run anything over about a hundred bucks by her, she's seen enough results to encourage rather than discourage
for the record i only stripped about 3 of the ten or so that were out there. want to get em all out before mid-September when we visit my folks for a week and a half so that is we end up getting a storm they won't become potential battering rams
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mpsya
Rookie Solder Flinger
Posts: 6
Likes: 2
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Post by mpsya on Aug 26, 2020 13:46:55 GMT -5
Hi guys. I'm new round here but thought you may like to see my recently refurbed Strat - It's had a completely new paint job, new plastics and it's been wired for master volume and tone. I stuck a killswitch in the hole left removed by the removed tone pot.
It's far from perfect but I'm really please with how it turned out. Cheers
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