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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 11:21 am 
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Though they were designed for use in the new Crown Jewel kit, those little boost modules would be great in a stand-alone boost pedal with the same 2x4 pin plug-in set-up that the CJ uses. A small enclosure with a stomp switch, LED, level pot, I/O jacks, a DC adapter/battery hookup and the plug-in boost module assembly and away you go. But it's not quite that simple, because of the different power requirements of the available boost modules.

Just a simple +9V supply will work for the LPB, MOSFET and Electra boosts, but the other three modules have different power/ground arrangements. The Treble boost needs -9V for the PNP germanium transistor, the 18V JFET boost needs (obviously!) +18V, and the 27V boost needs +18V and a -9V ground to provide that large voltage range, plus +4.5V for the op amp in that circuit. The boost modules are already set up with the connections for these various voltages through the two 4-pin connectors. But there's still the matter of providing those various voltages....

It would certainly be possible to get a charge pump and rig up your own circuit to provide the +18V and -9V sources, but since I'm incorrigibly lazy, it occurred to me that this would be a great application for Madbean's little Road Rage circuit (two PCB's for $4). The only thing left to address is the +4.5V op amp voltage supply, and that's easily done with a simple two-resistor voltage divider off the +9V supply.

So what to connect the Road Rage outputs to and plug those boost modules into? BYOC provides the obvious answer for that, too: one of the new Experimenter boards! They've already got the correctly spaced connection eyelets for the Boost modules to plug into (see photo below), so you would just need two of the little 4-pin female sockets like the Crown Jewel PCB uses (not the male ones shown in the photo!). Your various Road Rage voltage output connections can then be made to the Experimenter PCB, and there's plenty of room left to install the 4.5V voltage divider and the LED's CLR, as well.

Now on to the "verification" stage: I've got some Road Rage boards and LT1054 charge pumps on order and everything else on hand, so we'll give this little project a try. Will post more on this in the next week or so....

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 11:53 am 
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Awwww yeah! DVM putting on the mad scientist goggles. I'm keeping an eye on this for sure!

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 12:22 pm 
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Why not just build the power supply circuit on the "mother" experimenter board? It's just a charge pump, 4 x 10uF electrolytic caps, and 2 diodes. Then 2 resistors and another electrolytic for the voltage divide. It should fit pretty easily. Put the components on one side of the board, and the sockets on the other.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 1:11 pm 
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Subscribed.

(always wanted to post that :P)


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 6:00 pm 
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I'm planning a 'meaty' one knob fuzz for one of the experimenter boards. :mrgreen:

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 7:07 pm 
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byoc wrote:
Why not just build the power supply circuit on the "mother" experimenter board? It's just a charge pump, 4 x 10uF electrolytic caps, and 2 diodes. Then 2 resistors and another electrolytic for the voltage divide. It should fit pretty easily. Put the components on one side of the board, and the sockets on the other.

Yeah, that would certainly work, too. But I've got those Road Rage boards on the way and there's also that "lazy" thing I mentioned. :mrgreen: But it would definitely save some space, so I'll have to try that layout on the 2nd one I make, which I want to try mounting in one of the "micro" pedal enclosures!

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 11:42 am 
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OK, here 'tis. For this first one, I went with the Madbean Road Rage board to handle all the voltage conversion duties, so the Experimenter board holds the sockets for the boost modules, the connections for the various voltage outputs from the Road Rage, the signal input and output connections, and the +4.5V voltage splitter for powering op amps. This latter is just two 10K resistors and an electrolytic cap--one resistor on the socket side of the board, and the other resistor and electro underneath.

I mounted everything in a powder-coated 1590B enclosure I had on hand. In retrospect, I probably should have used a 125B to have a bit more depth available. The Experimenter socket board is mounted to the top of the A100K volume pot with double-sided foam tape. Once you mount the boost module into the sockets, the resulting "triple-decker" is right up to the top of the enclosure. In fact, a couple of the boost modules are too tall to get the cover plate on, most notably the Electra, because of the height of those beefy 100n film caps that come with the boost module kits. So either substitute smaller 100n caps, bend them over on their sides (this may not reduce the height enough for a couple of the modules), or go with a deeper enclosure.

In any case, the thing works like a charm. I tested all but the 18V JFET boost module in it (that's currently in my personal Crown Jewel) and all performed faultlessly. Photos below.

For you hard-core DIY'ers, as Keith pointed out, you can mount everything needed to run all the boost modules on one of the Experimenter boards. I did this, too, though I haven't installed it in a pedal yet. I know it works, though, because I temporarily hooked up a battery to it and confirmed all the voltages (+9, +18, -9 and +4.5). This is the first time I've fabbed up a circuit on an eyelet board (I've always used vero in the past), so it's not too pretty. But it's full functional, which is what really counts. There are a couple of photos of this board below, as well. This one will definitely need a 125B or equally deep enclosure for a pedal installation, because the finished assembly with the boost modules installed is about 1 1/8" tall.

Comments or questions welcomed....

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 1:59 pm 
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Frickin'. Awesome.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:21 pm 
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Well it wouldn't be a Madbean build if you weren't unnecessarily cramming everything into a 1590B… :mrgreen:
(I KID BECAUSE I LOVE)

Nicely done, super cool setup. 8)

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:05 pm 
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sjaustin wrote:
Well it wouldn't be a Madbean build if you weren't unnecessarily cramming everything into a 1590B…

Hey, I resemble that remark! :wink:

I subbed shorter 100n caps on the Electra, LPB and MOSFET boost modules and now everything fits like a glove! And not the OJ kind.... :mrgreen:

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 8:36 pm 
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I wonder if it would be a great idea to turn this into a kit?


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PostPosted: Sat May 06, 2017 8:26 pm 
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Here's the second of these modular boosts I've made--this is the one with the BYOC Experimenter board holding the voltage conversion circuit, 4-pin sockets and input & output connections (see photos above). As I mentioned previously, between the voltage conversion components, socketing and boost module, the combined height requires an enclosure with at least 1 1'/8" of height. So for this pedal, I used a powder-coated 125B in Silver Hammertone that I picked up on sale from Pedal Parts Plus. Everything fits easily into this box, with plenty of room to spare. I went with top-mounted jacks on this one. Couple of pics:

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PostPosted: Sun May 07, 2017 8:07 am 
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sjaustin wrote:
Well it wouldn't be a Madbean build if you weren't unnecessarily cramming everything into a 1590B… :mrgreen:
(I KID BECAUSE I LOVE)

Nicely done, super cool setup. 8)


Hey now....I resemble that remark!

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PostPosted: Sun May 07, 2017 1:14 pm 
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MADBEAN v.2 wrote:
sjaustin wrote:
Well it wouldn't be a Madbean build if you weren't unnecessarily cramming everything into a 1590B… :mrgreen:
(I KID BECAUSE I LOVE)

Nicely done, super cool setup. 8)


Hey now....I resemble that remark!

Well the good news is that I'm still buying your boards. :wink: (Thanks for all your contributions to DIY.)

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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 11:01 am 
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We decided to take your suggestions (actually, I think Morgan was the first to suggest it :wink: ) and make a "mother board" for the boost modules. It won't be a kit. Just a PCB. We've also got a few new modules on the way as well: Green Ringer style octave up, Orange Squeezer based compressor, Modified Fuzz Face ala the Thomas Organ Fuzz Wah, Soft Clipper (clipping section of the tubescreamer), and Hard Clipper (clipping section of the Centaur).

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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 11:20 am 
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byoc wrote:
We decided to take your suggestions (actually, I think Morgan was the first to suggest it :wink: )

Yes, it was indeed Morgan who first mentioned it--I was just playing off that, since it seemed like a great idea. And being retired now, I have the time to play around with such things! Prolly should've tipped the hat to Morg in my first post!

Looking forward to trying those five new modules! And the "motherboard" PCB will definitely make the build much easier.

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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 12:12 pm 
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That is cool! I will definitely build a few modules and the motherboard :)


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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 2:31 pm 
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Well I think that's a great idea! :D

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PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2017 12:48 pm 
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So about that motherboard - will there be build instructions? I can't find them on the site...


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PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2017 1:30 pm 
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mmarsh wrote:
So about that motherboard - will there be build instructions?

You don't really need them, Mike. The PCB has all the components labeled except the two diodes (though those two spots are clearly for diodes) and two resistors.

For the diodes, you can use pretty much any pair of silicon diodes, though you'll lose some output to the +18V rail due to the voltage drop through them. But you can use a pair of Schottky diodes to minimize that, since they're available with very low forward voltage values. 1N5817's are perfect for this purpose.

The resistor pair is just for the +4.5V voltage divider, so any pair of equal value should work fine; a pair of 10K's seems to be the most common values.

Beyond the components, it's just a matter of wiring in your +9V source, ground, and the signal input and output--all are clearly labeled on the PCB, with PLENTY of extra ground eyelets.

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PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2017 3:37 pm 
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Thanks, Bob, those were the components I was interested in :) and good tip regarding the Schottky!


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PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2017 9:50 am 
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mmarsh wrote:
..regarding the Schottky!


FWIW, I find that the 1N5817 Schottky diode pair seems to get closest to 18v with the charge pump configuration.

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