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Blender pedal
My latest project has been building a blender pedal for an effects pedal I picked up. I've been wanting to add a little spice to my bass tone so I checked out a few pedals. The Geddy Lee YYZ pedal seemed the closest fit to what I was after. I found a used one and it initially sounded great, but once I tried it during an actual practice it was apparent it just didn't have the mid-range needed to cut through the mix. It has a very scooped sound and the only way to really get more mid is adding overdrive, which I didn't want. I was more after the lighter overtones, nice overdriven tubey goodness that it can provide. Back to the drawing board I installed it in the effects loop on a mixer which allows me to have my dry tone and then blend in the wet signal going through the YYZ. This sounded great! So the quest for a blender pedal ensued. Price became the biggest factor, most being upwards of $150😳, surely I can make this on the cheep. I found a nice DIY schematic and planed to just perfboard it together, but then I thought... maybe I'll try making a circuit board....I looked into it, have to have access to a Xerox printer, chemicals, trial and error, 🤦🏻♂️. Then I looked into having an actual circuit board made as I seen it during watching YouTube videos of the DIY methods. This looked kinda cool and really affordable. I downloaded some software called Kicad and watched a few tutorials on it. Few hours later I was hunting and pecking away to designing a PCB. It has a 3D view you can check out as you lay out the board.
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I should have mentioned I ordered some parts and prototyped it first.
Then once I finalized it in Kicad I sent the files to a company called PCBWay. They have a first time run for $5+shipping. For 10 boards it was $5, with a $5 off coupon, $19 shipping, and $2 banking fee, total was $21. I know by now with that and all the other BS needed to make this thing, I'm probably into it what it would have cost to buy it....but what's the fun in that?🤘🏼 That company had my boards to me in about 2 weeks, hell I had the boards before all the other parts for the build arrived.
Looks great. Are you adding this blender box to your pedal board? What are the pcb's dimensions?
And that's the biggest 1N4001 I have ever seen
Lol, I know right. When I picked the footprint for the diode in the schematic stage, I screwed up and didn't know how to change it once I was in the PCB layout stage🤦🏻♂️. Board dimensions are 52x98mm. I did a test run with it and the HP crossover board. My next iteration will have the HP built into it. I'm also going to try to incorporate the pots to on board pieces. Anyway....
Yehhh, it works👍🏻
There's so much hidden talent on this forum! Looks great. You never know - you may have a huge hit on your hands with these boards.
Thanks guys, I got it all assembled and working. Hope to try it out at practice Saturday.
Can you post the schematic please?
I have extra boards if your interested
Cool project. I like how you got everything to fit neatly into that small cast box!
Thanks Bill
Should mention I deleted the switched input for the battery. I didn't want the battery option.
That's a cool little project, I just sent in an order for a board that I designed. I don't know how intuitive you found the process, but it took me more than a few hours to get the hang of it.
The tutorial was right on with the process. I spent the most time during layout to try to minimize the need for a two layer board. I did that spending an hour a day for a week and ended up giving in, ended up with 2 traces in top. Knowing that now, I'll just use that feature to my advantage so hopefully the process will be a bit easier. It was kinda fun really, like solving a puzzle.
This is the one I mainly referenced to. Also hit some forums.
I used EasyEDA, but I'm sure it's similar, and I'm right there with you, probably eight-ish hours. Yep, just like a puzzle. I will definitely be doing more boards in the future.