u/toncu

One of the jacks on my new Pine Box Tall v2 pedal was loose, so I opened it up to tighten it. The instructions say to not adjust the trim pot lest you wreck your pedal. The leprosy warning made me laugh.

I was building a DIY version of the Double Phaser (well of the original version) and this popped on my Reverb feed. Works exactly as I expected but honestly, the LFOs would benefit from a mix or blend control.

The Spacerocket II is fantastic. I’m only recently experienced with Spaceman and bought a few of their Cadet pedals. This is the first non-Cadet I’ve picked up.

The Fuzz 1 and Fuzz 2 settings essentially wait until you’re holding a note and then add the octave to it. Crazy cool effect.

This was a quick build, just a couple of hours. I’m not 100% sure what the transformer is doing to the signal…maybe some kind of pickup emulation?

Very crunchy, sometimes caustic. Quite lovely! :-)

Pros: Nice shade of purple, LED works. Very large-type card with what I assume is the pedal serial number in the box.

Cons: Everything else, especially the anemic tone it produces. Like mud? Prefer reedy rasp? If either of those are your goal, you'll love it. Never heard Sabbath, and assume it's just "not clean" tone, and never intend to actually listen to Sabbath? Again this pedal may be for you.

I played this through an Orange Rocker32, using an Epi LP, an Epi SG,and a Gibson Explorer. All the guitars have their default humbuckers. I also used a Revstar with P90s.

This pedal would be a disappointment as anything above a $18 Temu pedal.

If it was just a "MXR OD" I'd think that maybe it was on one side of the OD quality bell curve.

It has the imprimatur of authenticity as a function of Sabbath's logo, Zakk's name incorporated into the logo, etc, etc.

I cannot get a Sabbath tone from any of their first four albums with this pedal.

The Tone/EQ is perhaps an example of how to do a Tilt-like EQ badly. Left of noon, it's mud. Not Iommi & Butler bottom-end to chew on, just mud. Above noon, it's shrill and reedy.

I had the newish Empress Drive on my board and it took no time to get a War Pigs tone.

The most optimistic, benefit of the doubt offering I have is that perhaps after nearly 50 years of listening to Sabbath and the like at far too high volume, the Sabbath frequencies are shot, which nearly would imply the pedal is perfection.

But with any of the other dozen ODs I have, I still can produce Sabbath-adjacent tones. So I don't think the perfect pedal hypothesis holds.

It feels like a branded money grab. I don't know the guy and I have nothing against him, but this is so bad to my ear that I can't believe Zakk Wylde actually heard or played this pedal.

I bought the Zakk Phaser when it came out - it's perfect, sounds like a proper MXR phaser, but it's has and orangey enclosure. I somehow assumed that a Sabbath labeled OD pedal with his name on it would at least visit the park outside of neighborhood of Sabbath tone.

I'd love to hear someone's playing perception who is no where near "old guy" age.

Botton line: this one is going back. I collect pedals like it matters (it does not beyond my commitment to "All rig, no gig") and I'm embarrassed to have it. Were the expectations (and they're my own, I suppose) not have been set to "Hey, a massive Sabbath fan metalhead guitarist put his and Sabbath's name on it, it must be pretty close to Sabbath-like," I'd still be disappointed, but I wouldn't keep it.

I spent a long time working on this one, bit by bit. I managed to get to the end without incident, though I was almost ready to bail on it when it came to soldering the wires into the expression jacks. Tedium supreme!

It's a very cool pedal, glad I got to the finish line.

Note that Behringer has a version of the Meatball for $119 USD. I may have come near that in parts cost and for hobby stuff, my time doesn't get priced in. Lots of learning, lots of pride now that I'm done and it works, but I'm still thinking of buying the Behringer one to A/B them.

The biggest challenges really were spelled out In the build doc. There are four sub boards, two of which are daughterboards that get attached directly to the main board. The rotary switch board interfaces require solid alignment, but you also need to solder the pins to connect those two daughterboards to the main. 10 pins on the left, 5 on the right. If by just a bit and you're hosed. I must have sat and re-sat everything a half dozen times before attaching the off board hardware.

I recently was advised by the sub that I'd mis-installed the LDRs and LEDs on my Quadratron effort and I ordered a replacement board because it makes more sense than melting my way through unsoldering and desoldering. I didn't add the optical stuff until the very end...

Lessons learned and applied here. I still have a variance in distance between the LEDs and the LDRs, but the build doc describes the lack of shielding as a feature that conributes to the original's sound...so I was okay with a bit of inconsistency.

I started bending down the tabs on the expression jacks, but used Claude to convert to 1590XX spec the 1590S (I think) expansion "gasket" someone made a few years ago in the PPCB forum. You can download the .SCAD and resulting .STL at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XlhZvtTY6PCUOHphNJNoc61UUcKqavKZ?usp=share_link The SCAD is parametric and allows for easy tweaks.

Oh, last thing - the labels are wrong on the PDF I used when I had Tayda UV print the enclosure. And the external trigger jack is on the opposite side of the build doc spec. Long way from perfect, still kinda stupidly beaming with pride. 😃

Edit: super low-quality demo. Audio over the air to iPhone microphone. Still a worthwhile demo. 😄 https://youtube.com/shorts/d6Ptx1QVUHs?feature=share

The new PPCB / JHS Fumble Boost “co-release” is an easy pedal build. I have a Notadumble 1.0, but I wanted to build this circuit and left it in a 3D printed enclosure.

Sounds just as it should, very handy to leave on the desk and attach when I’m too lazy to walk over to the amp to bump the volume.

I’m building the AionFX Quadratron. I put the LDRs in the wrong position initially. I removed them. I had success reinserting two of them, sort of hacked in a third, but I can’t make any progress on the last two connection points for LED2.

Tried flux, tried solder sucker, tried copper braid.

Fairly frustrated and a bit anxious that I’ve basically wrecked a build because of these two pads.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks!

So many chips!

I absolutely love this pedal. I have a couple of other PLL pedals, like the Pillule, but this one is far more intuitive to me. The distortion of the Square knob on its own is excellent, but start dialing in the subharmonics and oscillator, and then pick the intervals and it's a blast.

Trickiest bit for me was getting all the switches and pots aligned to get the PCB in place. I had to mount the hardware on the face of the enclosure for better access to gently align pot lugs.

I finished up the pedalpcb.com Son of Ben Preamp, a trace of the Benson Preamp. This build is straightforward enough to be a fourth or fifth project for a newer builder.

Amazingly low noise! Very happy to have built it. I’m sure this will be put to use regularly.

I used info from a post in the PPCB forum to bias each JFET to 4v at drain, allegedly as specified by Chris Benson himself.

This clears my “in progress” queue. I have a box of 25+ PCBs that are eager for attention.

I was excited to get this one done. Worked on first attempt, so yay! Made a cluttered mess of the footswitch wiring, but it’s stable enough for my living room.

I finished the PedalPCB Parentheses Fuzz tonight. Happy to say it worked on first attempt.

I used an OP07 in lieu of the LM308 in the build doc.

I learned not to print black text on a Tayda black hammer paint job and the text should be a little lower or smaller to remain visible under the footswitch washers.

It sounds quite like the EQD version which I think I’ll put on Reverb.

No, I didn’t realize I already owned the original pedal when I bought the PCB. I truly thought the EQD was called a Sunn pedal. Reading IS fundamental. :-)