DREAMEATER Dark Sun

I'm back!!!

After a whole lot of life happened, I have found relief back in my hobby of building electronic guitar pedals.  

To start back up, I decided I would take on the long drawn out battle I have had with the 7 transistor Fuzz War by Death By Audio.

This pedal has always interested me and I loved the sound every time I would start building it on the breadboard. Problems would arise however, whenever it came time to complete the circuit and there would be strange pedal properties or problems that were encountered.  

Also there was a skeptical issue regarding the schematics that were floating around. So this time around I cracked open the pedal myself and started to trace it out only to discover that the circuit was different from the designs floating around.

So I messed around with it on the breadboard and made some improvements based on all that I have learned all this time that I've spent on websites and forums. and voila!!! 

The sound I have been looking for and a more stable 7 transistor design that overcomes issues with the "original" V1. I say original because apparently there were multiple versions of the 7 transistor design before they transformed the pedal into "yet another big muff" type of circuit.

1. Louder output volume

2. External gain knob

3. Added tonal options

4. Gating incorporated into the design

The prototype

Back at screen printing...

Assembled pedals...

Pedal promotions on my kitchen counter with some duo chromatic bags for the duo chromatic pedals...

I put some youtube demos together, I'm still learning how to put a video demo together that doesn't use the phone audio, I think I can synch up the timing with a video and the recording from my DAW.

Oh well, in the meantime at least there isn't a foot in the video.

Enjoy

Bass

https://youtu.be/b8LStLAE1cw

Guitar

https://youtu.be/WM2y8F8FtZo

In the context of a Song

https://youtu.be/uoUQD6ly9qI

Solaris

Solaris, based on the sunshine reverberation by DBA, which appears to be a digital rendition of older tube based reverb tanks.  Definitely a cool sound!

Baku Baku overdrive

So after messing around with some different DBA inspired designs on my breadboard, i went ahead and drafted the PCB and had it sent off and created with OSHPark.

The main goal with the PCB was to reduce my frustration with offboard wiring! So for this i used smaller board mounted pots and input/output/9v/GND pads that could be connected to a separate 3PDT stomp switch board.  I bought some ribbon cable to use to make it look a little tidier than 4 separate wires, and I have to say that I am rather pleased with the ease of installation and how much nicer it looks on the inside.

In addition to this I wanted to give my pedal a little something extra with the presentation on the outside, so I used some contrasting hardware colors, as well as screenprinted a lion logo on the side.  The screenprint on the side isn't my best idea, but somewhat of an idea of the direction I'd like to head with my designs so its not just good looking on the top of the pedal, but more so that all surfaces will have something interesting going on with them.

One last thing I'm thinking of doing with this is trimming some of the plastic from the inside of the grey knobs so that theys it a little bit lower, right now the height of those knobs and the empty space below them is bothering me a  bit.

Here is the schematic for those of you interested in breadboarding this guy.  The sound may not be for everyone but I dig it so far :)
If you breadboard it, please let me know what you think, or if you see any design issues which would improve the performance of the pedal please let me know. I'd really appreciate any feedback.

Another etched attempt

My latest etching attempt failed to take into consideration the use of the brayer, and the ink didn't stick to the enclosure that well.  But I went ahead with the best version of it and just said what the heck...

Testing out etching

So i bit the bullet and tried out etching with Ferric Chloride.  It works, but is a little bit on the sloppy side.  Very much "space junk" kind of look.

Here is what the mask looked like.  I think I could have spent longer, it took me about 10 minutes of rotating it under the iron. My goal was to try and get the ink to show through the paper while I was ironing it.

Here is what the etch came out like after alternating dunking in Ferric Chloride and water for 20 minutes.

I scrubbed it after it had been through its last rinse, but it still retained some sort of rust look to it.  I can't seem to scrub it off, i'll have to see if it'll be an issue if I try and spray paint over it.  However it does look like the mask didn't entirely protect what it was supposed to.  Its all good, since I was going for a really beat up type of look.  I have to drill through the holes first and then test out spray painting it.

After cleaning off more of the gunk with a green scrubby pad and nail polish remover it looks a a lot nicer

After this I hit it with a base of flat black and then topped it off proceeded to wet sand the raised parts.  It appears that the Ferric Chloride didn't come out as clean of a process as I had hoped, but I like the aesthetic that it has going on.  Using a reverse etch to invert the color of the text like on the tone stacks doesn't seem to work that well either.  I think i'll just go with raising the text. As you can see the large Aluminum exposed areas have major holes in them...

I was debating whether or not to coat it with anything, I got some great advice to clear coat it with stuff from the automotive department from Cody (CHECK OUT HIS AWESOME BLOG!), and another Madbeaner DMinner (MAKES SOME REALLY GREAT ETCHES) said it might be fine with out it.  After holding the pedal for a little bit, it became clear that it was still rubbing blackness off onto my hands.  So i used some of the Krylon Gloss Clear coat that I had around and laid it on there.  In person the light hits the metallic flakes in the paint and it looks great!

And the guts

And testing out another one for a friend...

This one was at first red, but too bright so i tried spraying some black at a distant over it all and it came out to be a pretty awesome darkened red color.

Update 08APR2016

If you have to use Kinkos to print (as I did) then here is the paper you should ask for them to print on.

"Gloss White"

Simple switch between big muff and supa tonebender using Madbean's Mudbunny board.

Check carefully, but its all about the 100nf cap.

lifting the miller cap will not do what we want it to do!

Basically we do is move c6 to be switched in and out of the circuit using an SPDT.

This is what was done for the "Screaming Firebat" pedal.

7 Transistor Armageddon

Prototype board in a 1590BB

3d view of the prototype board