Friday, July 4, 2014

2014 Planned Projects

      Herein I'll detail my thoughts on some of the planned projects this year.  I have already begun one project, but thought that I would include what coming up next.  Most of my efforts come from BeavisAudioResearch. I've linked to him in a previous post.  He has some sort of program which has a pretty good layout for schematics and breadboard diagrams.  I think it'd be cool to build all of my own effects if possible.  For the most part I don't use that many effects, I haven't written any new songs in a while for that matter, but one hand washes the other am I right? So for now, as far as I can see happening this year, I'll attempt the following



1.) Feedback/true bypass looper pedal ( pretty much done)....
As far as the Feedback/true bypass looper pedal, I have most of it done.  I'll be posting pictures of the process shortly.  I didn't do as much documentation as I should, but I think i'll do that with the Matsumin Valvecaster offshoot.  For the Feedback/truebypass looper I wanted to modify it with a boost option and an output volume option.  In the next post I'll detail more about that.  I used a Beavis schematic that I saw on some other site (I'm sure you can search for it, although it doesn't show up on his website.)  But I combined it with the voltage divider/volume control from his true bypass loop diagrams.  Additionally I wanted to incorporate a boost into the circuit similar to the Death By Audio Total Sonic Annihilation customs which had that. I named this pedal "Monster Decimator" after my girlfriend's cat "chili monster". AHHHH wait for the posts... It's white and black like he is.


2.) Matsumin Valvecaster (in the planning stages)
I saw a guy named Garth on the diystompbox forum who had created an interesting pedal. I like the idea of an LED illuminated tube overdrive circuit.  I might have to buy lexan to cover the tube, I'm not sure how i want/how I will be able to set up this pedal for functional use.  But it will be based on my cat Baku, who is named after a destroyer of nightmares, so this pedal will be called Dream Eater.  I will use black sparkle spraypaint for the 1590BB tall enclosure, then use some colored LEDs and other paint to illuminate the 12AU7 tube that drives the pedal.

3.) Noisy Cricket or Tube Cricket
So I will need an amp to play with. Beavis has described his 1/2 watt amp the noisy cricket and it's 1 watt counterpart the "Tube Cricket" however neither includes a headphone output or an effects loop.  I'm still up in the air about effects before amp, or time based effects in the effects loop.  But I'd like to incorporate a lightplate as well as some interesting LED circuits to make this look really nice.

4.) Custom Dual Filter Overdrive 
I started with this pedal, but apparently grossly under-estimated my ability at soldering and layout on perfboard.  This is basically a big muff without the clipping diodes in the 1st fuzz stage and no 2nd fuzz stage with a footswitchable potentiometer to select the sweepable frequency equalizer.  I have the enclosure all drilled and tested some art, but it is basically non-functioning. And I might have to scrap a few parts because I burned them all out, slowly time will tell.


5.) Custom Big muff.
This will be the big project pedal that I work on this year.  I'd like to base it on the Supa tonebender with a rotary switch for the output sections, and a foot switchable filter. Each filter will have a rotary switch for tone bypass, as well as some of the other popular tone controls from the web.  I'd like to incorporate a lightplate too.


Well it's late and I need to get some rest before I can post other information regarding the pedal projects. I'll post the feedback pedal shortly as well as how I create the pedal artwork..

No comments:

Post a Comment