#stripboard

Smallsound/ Bigsound F*ck Overdrive clone I made.

A comprehensive range of clean boost to blown out amp sounds with this circuit. The sag feature means you can starve the voltage to the distortion when you play hard enough (determined by the threshold and depth). What results is notes that fade and stutter into focus in really interactive ways. I’m excited to try it on drums.

The box I did the swirly water spray paint trick and then used my dremel to grind out the lettering.

Precision Adder (for pitch CV’s)

High impedance inputs prevent pitch droop. Output = A + B + C*x. Inputs A and B are always at unity gain. Input C is at unity gain when its knob is at maximum, or it can scale the input down to zero. Input C is normalled to +5V, so it can add a variable offset without any other voltage sources.

My design, built on a Eurorack Stripboard, with panel by Front Panel Express. Module width is 3hp.

Here’s a JHS Morning Glory build I was troubleshooting.

The two red circles were some cuts that weren’t cut properly.

These are just a few pictures of a completed board.

I usually populate the board in groups of parts in steps (links, sockets, resistors, diodes, caps, etc.).

Sometimes I do them all at once if it’s a smaller build. Larger builds I will try to take my time and will definitely do only one set of parts at a time, checking that I have put all parts in.

I haven’t had any experiences with parts blowing up on me, yet. I’m pretty sure I’ve burnt out a few LEDs and maybe a cap because I messed up or omitted another component.

I refrain from doing a lot of builds when I’m overly tired; I end up making mistakes and ruining builds.

Once I am done the build (soldering all components and double checking that everything is in order) I hook it up to my Test Box and test rig.

SmartParallel: stripboard prototype – now with blinkenlights

Okay, so the next stage of the stripboard prototype for the SmartParallel serial to parallel printer interface went well. Mostly.

As planned, I added a bar LED block with eight segments to show the state of the data lines, along with power-limiting resistors in the form of a resistor array.

I also added four LEDs. Three are driven via a 74HC14 inverter IC and show the state of the /ERROR (red…

SmartParallel: stripboard prototype of a serial to parallel dot matrix printer interface

Things went from bad to worse with the breadboard prototype of the SmartParallel serial to parallel printer interface.

All was fine for a while. Lines of text sent from my Mac via an FTDI cable were duly printed on the Epson MX-80 F/T III dot matrix printer. But then, every now and again, the printer would randomly reset. After a while, these resets got closer and closer together until they were…