Build Your Own Clone Message Board

which one out of the group did you go with? I picked up some RadioShack ones today and measured them with a friend's Fluke here at work and none of them measured 1M with the light blocked. They were all below 5K in the light though. Maybe we were measuring wrong?

The Rat Shack LDRs I measured were all above 1M dark and below 10K light.

Don't get too hung up on the values. Socket the LDR pads and just try a couple out and see what sounds good. Screw the numbers!

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Function f(x)
TightCamera - Gear Reviews

lol! that works for me

Does the LED/LDR combination need a diffused LED? I have lots of waterclear 3mm and only 5mm diffused, though I suppose a 5mm will fit if needed.

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Blake

"Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold - They'd rather give you a song than diamonds or gold." - Sir Waylon

It will work with either.

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Function f(x)
TightCamera - Gear Reviews

Thanks. I got it up and running now using a 3mm clear yellow LED, which I socketed just to experiment with and see if there's any differences. This thing is perfect for what I needed, capable of getting much smoother than the onboard trem on my AC15. Thanks again for the board, CJ!

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Blake

"Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold - They'd rather give you a song than diamonds or gold." - Sir Waylon

Yeah, I've been gigging with mine for a couple weeks and it sounds great. Just enough controls and wide range on speed and depth. A keeper for sure.

I built mine and although I seem to have gotten the leds wrong at first it now works. Moved the gain to an internal trimpot because the less outside controls, the better. Since I got 2 boards I'll probably move the gain to an internal trimmer as well, I always leave it on full anyways. The one thing that bugs me is that all the useful speed range seems to be between 14:00 and 17:00 on the dial. Everything before seems to be too slow for my taste. Is that something I can fix with a different kind of pot. I've tried swapping the linear pot for a log, but that limited the useful range even further. Would a reverse log pot give me more useful range?

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Solder the heretic
Measure the mutant
Troubleshoot the unclean

Instead of a different taper, try a different value. I ended up with a 25kB for speed after much experimentation (oddly enough, I made the same comment about the usable range here).

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Thanks dude! Too bad I don't have a 25kB in stock but I'll order one in my next buy.

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Solder the heretic
Measure the mutant
Troubleshoot the unclean

Another question, if I want to replace the depth pot fully maxed out with a resistor can I use a 1K resistor and how should I solder it to the board?

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Solder the heretic
Measure the mutant
Troubleshoot the unclean

Every noob should do a project with a white PCB. After putting all the components on mine, I was wondering wtf all these brown spots were? Then I learned about flux splatter and needing to clean that up and all of that fun stuff. With the green or other dark PCBs, those flux spots just look like maybe you toasted the PCB a little bit or something and it's nothing to be concerned about. You can't put one of those white boards out w/o cleaning it up though unless you really have no pride.

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I noticed that. Thought I had messed something up. After more closely examining my other builds I noticed it was normal (for me at least). So what's everyone's favorite for cleaning up boards after populating?

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http://www.facebook.com/MalvinAudio

Acetone.

But I only have flux on the bottom of a PCB, for the most part. I don't care what the bottom looks like.

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Function f(x)
TightCamera - Gear Reviews

Based on some google searches, I've just used some isopropyl alcohol and it's worked. I have only found 91% but it seems to work. Some people mix it with Windex which may work better I don't know. I just scrubbed it down with an old toothbrush and it left the board minty fresh.

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Isopropyl works fine, although it sometimes takes a bit more effort to remove the stickiness left behind from the rosin. Flux cleaner removes it faster, but it can be a bit pricy.

I've definitely noticed that tackiness. I wonder if that's what the Windex is supposed to be for.

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Ammonia is what's in windex. (at least that's what I seem to remember, I don't have a bottle handy and who knows if it's been changed for something more environmentally friendly).

I use acetone, but have found that it can turn the flux into a sorta white powder that needs to be removed. So acetone + tooth brush is my method at the moment. Whatever my flux is made of, alcohol doesn't do anything to it.

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-Mike