Mike's Pedal Thread

stewart · Post by **stewart** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 12:06 pm

mike, i got a phone call from the drummer in my band last night looking for your contact details; he was chatting to someone at a party about pedals and mentioned you'd made me some, and the guy seemed interested. i gave him your email address to pass on, so if someone contacts you out the blue asking about pedals it's probably him. word of mouth and all that.

Post by **Mike** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 12:18 pm

Awesome, thanks very much Stewart!

Post by **Mike** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 3:06 pm

Zaphod wrote:
Mike wrote:I've got Zaphod's tone control designed also. The Harmonic Perc sounds amazing - really thick and chunky at high gain settings and clangy at lower ones, the tone control suits it well after I refined it. The saltboost stage makes everything plenty loud - great pedal. It has plenty of gain.
Awesome!

You gonna demo it?

[youtube][/youtube]

Haze · Post by **Haze** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:29 pm

can i get a list of stuff that you have built?
trying to find an interesting dirt...

Post by **Mike** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 8:23 am

Check out the shortscalegeardemos page, but I'm pretty sure that this covers it:

Green Big Muff
Timmy Overdrive
Fulltone OCD
Fuzz Factory
Woolly Mammoth
Harmonic Perculator
COT50
Fulltone Ultimate Octave
Univox Super Fuzz
Fuzzface with Fuller mods
Tonebender

And off the top of my head I could also do things like the Peach Fuzz and Hotcake, Lovepedal Purple Plexi 800...

Post by **Mike** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 3:56 pm

Zaphod's pedal Sent'D

Reece · Post by **Reece** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 3:58 pm

Muchos gracias.

Post by **Mike** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:36 pm

Zaphod wrote:Muchos gracias.

No worries. hopefully you'll be rocking out on it tomorrow.

I fixed Fran's borked Guv'nor. Someone had destroyed the switch. It was broken in two with the base still attached directly to the PCB. Tricky. However I'm fucking MacGuvyer.

Extracted the old switch with my buddies' help at work, with the awesome soldering irons we have and some desoldering braid. Top:

Bottom. Pads are clear so I can insert the new switch

However when I ordered the Alpha replacement I didn't realise that it was a PCB mount so I got the solder lug version, which doesn't fit into these holes. No bother, I have a plan.

I stripped a load of solid core wire and made these extensions to each of the pins with neat solder joints to the lugs

They feed nicely through and the switch is butted right up against the PCB

Spread 'em and solder one by one very carefully

Snip off excess and we're done.

You can see this section had a bunch of gluegun goo I had to carefully remove to get at the switch pads. It was holding on some insulating material, so I'll use tape to replace it.

Done and ready to reassemble

Mounted the pot and LED board first and then the jack/switch board. Everything nice and tight. Then finally the tricky part in seating the main board and the DC jack.

Screws all done up and knobs replaced and BAMMO:

One 100% working and sexy Guv'nor II pedal and it sounds ace. That was tricky work but very satisfying. I'll get this in the mail tomorrow Franbot.

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:50 pm

Cool. I enjoyed that post.

The harmonic perc video isn't working for me though.

Fran · Post by **Fran** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:15 pm

They are some mean skillz Mike and i really appreciate it, if you want any monies for the extra trouble give me a shout.

Are PCB mounted switches commonplace on newer pedals? Seems are risky idea to me.

Justin J · Post by **Justin J** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 2:58 am

i love desoldering braid. it works so much better than solder suckers for stuff like that.

Post by **Mike** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 8:30 am

bubbles_horwitz wrote:i love desoldering braid. it works so much better than solder suckers for stuff like that.

+1

I have never been a solder sucker fan. If you have a great iron then Braid works like Buttah, even on oldish PCBs.

No worries Fran, no extra cash needed at all, it was actually a lot of fun, and very, very satisfying to get it sorted. A lot of switches are PCB mounted these days and it's not such a big deal, since the nuts and washers bind the switch itself to the case, so the PCB shouldn't be under stress when stomping. The problem comes when some numpty doesn't realise if the nut comes loose and still keeps kicking the shit out of the pedal...

Fran · Post by **Fran** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:10 pm

Mike wrote:The problem comes when some numpty doesn't realise if the nut comes loose and still keeps kicking the shit out of the pedal...

Thanks again mate.

Reece · Post by **Reece** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 6:30 pm

om nom nom

not tried it yet, i'm gonna wolf down me dinner then BRING SOME TONEZ.

Reece · Post by **Reece** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 7:16 pm

I can't wait to try this thing at home!

It keeps clipping the champ's speaker, thats how raw this thing is! Also, fuck me mike that saltbooster stage adds a lot of boost, it's got like 1.5x the boost of my LPB-1.

Thanks Mike!

Post by **Mike** » Wed Nov 12, 2008 8:35 am

No worries man, glad you like it. Yeah, unity is around 9 o clock on the Balance dial, it has HEALTHY volume.

Reece · Post by **Reece** » Wed Nov 12, 2008 2:15 pm

It has some weird characterisitics.

If i roll back the tone knob all the way on my jag with the gain at full on the pedal I get a bright kinda crumbly OD sound, the second I roll off the gain all the highs dissapear as you would expect with the tone rolled off.

Ir's also got some very useable lighter gain sounds as well as teh raw fuzzes. I also put the lpb and this is front of my champ both at full volume (I don't learn) and that was FUCKING LOUD. I really need a cab for this thing the little 6" speaker cant keep up with the tones and distorts alot with certain pedals.

Post by **Mike** » Wed Nov 12, 2008 2:17 pm

Yeah, the Harmonic Perculator is definitely an odd little pedal, it's completely unique in the way it generates distortion.

mewithoutus · Post by **mewithoutus** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 12:16 pm

mike, where did you get info on the OCD such as schematics and such. i cant find anything.

euan · Post by **euan** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 12:21 pm

Haha yass. I had to do this with my faulty Drivemaster. I even phoned up Marshall and asked them if they had any spare footswitches. They sent me one with tags instead of PCB contacts. So I fixed it ghetto style. I actually tried to take apart the switch and fit it that way but it didn't really work.