Comic Relief :)

I built some stompboxes a while back:

















Having discovered these cool old germanium transistors on the breadboard
(and getting a visit from the neighbor the next day with a look on his face
like he was ready to kill us), I went about to build me some stompboxes that
would be fun to tweak and still be highly playable. So I ended up making these
PCBs and soldered a bunch of socket pins in.

It's the Fuzz Face and Orange Squeezer, which sound great except some RF
that can be pretty pesky at times. But what's great specifically about the FF
is that you can socket any transistor with any pinout, and so spend more time
playing and less time wiring. Does anybody else remember inside-out boy?

What's also cool is the little SMD bypass relay - now you only need an SPST switch
for everything which turns on power, and the box is in. When it's out, it's
off and automatically bypassed.

Now I'm working on this custom PSU for them because I really want to play
around with power, too.

Fortunately, the neighbor has found a new abode. ;D

Absolutely fantastic looking! They have this cool Commodore C64 vibe, so they gotta sound cool!

Awesome... ;D

Where did you buy the boxes?

Got them over at Conrad here around the corner...not necessarily the cheapest
ones but very much in love...

I used to make similar "configurators" with DIL-sockets on perfboard.
Now I usually just make ratnests. Which makes me a little nervous if I test with "proper" gear. Will take a look at our local Conrad for boxes.

You've probably found it but here: http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/product/522031/KUNSTSTOFF-PULT-GEHAeUSE/SHOP_AREA_14740

Teko - I really like these guys, though their other boxes are mousey grey unexciting for the most part.

Tried to go a little with the 70s thing, I might have landed in the 80s by accident...

@Veermaster, yeah, they indeed sound great. I have a whole schublade full of these
old 2n1305s, we really blew the roof out because they're so musical.

"Pult-gehause" - found it at our conrad, but for 18.20EUR. --> bastards

How did you manage the grounding in the box? It looks that it is ABS with two Alu plates (for looks).

From your pics it looks that it has a battery compartment? Or is that an addon that you did separately?

I am looking for boxes for my inst. recording preamps.

Well shielding is conspicuously crap of course, exposed pcb and all, but funny
thing that the orange squeezer in particular does radio in a full metal case as
well - I have a hunch this is a pcb problem more than anything.

The battery compartment is yet another 3.50€, but I was thinking if you're gonna
build an eternal Frankenstein, might as well make it quality and easy to work with.

But I guess I can't really recommend the ABS case too much except for tweaking
and then putting the final result in a good metal box.

What I'll do next when I have the time (uhhh) is to make a double whammy of
sorts where at the input you have basically 3 relay switched fuzz faces, Si, Ge,
and Ge "kaputt", and an Orange Squeezer at the output to give you that really
long sustain tail that the squeezer makes, or just run the Squeezer all by itself.

Obviously it'll have to be an external PSU due to the relays, maybe I'll make an
extra power block out of a Pb-gel battery pack with self-charge and auto-engage
when you interrupt the mains with a switch...and a voltage watchdog circuit
that reconnects mains power should your battery go flat on stage.

I guess it's good sometimes when you can't implement your ideas too fast because
it forces you to think

Ultimately what I want to do is to build something like the Korg AX-1500 or so
except with all the lovely analog sound rather than digital amp modeling (and
maybe a tube for marketing).

I guess the chain goes pretty straightforward, Distortion-Compression-Chorus-
Flanger/Phaser-Filter/Wah-Delay-Reverb...and maybe an interrupt between
Distortion-Compression and the rest so you can patch the first two elements
into your amp input and the rest goes in the insert. Better yet, give everything
an I/O connector for total patching.

Maybe even do a setup like that with a Champ...om nom nom