x0xb0x Etudes - pt 7

+1,500 solder points later....aaaccciiiddd


First run through is totally unaffected, then it gets run through an effect I wrote dubbed the Bitsmacker (it's a free download if you like distortion).

The decay knob just started working on me...must have been a bridged connection.

For the sake of the blog, I'm calling this one complete. Thank yall for taking this journey with me, and giving me an outlet to document the workflow.

For the sake of honesty, I doubt it will ever be done...I want to add some of the Devilfish mods and also things like audio in to the filter because that ho really whistles.

Read More......

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 5

Holy crap, I'm getting close.

Last night I finished the Headphone / Mixer section, as well as the I/O board which has all the plugs and jacks on it. They are still sitting separately now, which means testing at this phase is not really possible.

One quirk I noticed was that, for the VCA test, I could not get a tone to come out of my headphones. I checked it on the scope though, and it looked ok, like there was a sound being made and then tapered off. I'm going to go on faith now, because everything looks to be in order.

Also, I still hate desoldering...I didn't make a mistake this time, but as I was soldering a cap in on the IO board, it kind of shifted out of it's socket and was just barely hanging in there. I fought this for an hour trying to remove the solder and re-seat the cap.

Anyway, I'm on the second to last section of the fab manual, which means a lot of redundant, tedious soldering as I get the digital controller + leds + buttons working.

I've given up on doing mods this round, as I just want to make sure the sumbitch works first, then I'll try to open it up and mod it...cause damn those Devilfish mods sound so good.

BONUS:
My favorite x0xb0x vid out right now:

Read More......

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 4

Envelope + VCA done.

Desoldering sucks.

First that damn wrong transistor, then the wrong pot. Got to watch those differences between D and B pots! I do have a solder sucker now so it's helping some.

The only other issue, after the envelope / gate section my tests weren't passing. It was either reversed or loose transistors around Q36 - I'm socketing all the 733 transistors so I can swap them out for higher beta ones if I ever feel like it. Anyway, they were loose, but once I touched up a couple solder points and stuck them in more firmly, the gate tests passed just fine.

On to the headphone and mixer/amp section.

Read More......