Recreating VFE Mega Pedal — Part 7 — Almost there!
Alright,
So it’s up and I have been testing each of them through the cluster system.
Here’s the gut shot on the inside
My thoughts came to sweet and sour fruition. Here’s the report.
1. I gotta debug White Horse, Bumblebee, Mini Mu, Rocket EQ, Triplet, and Blueprint.
White Horse: Whining and oscillating with the sustain knob turns up.
ANSWER: I’ve found the culprit for the White Horse. It was the BS170 on the clipping section. I pulled that off and changed to socket. Replaced them with 1N914 like Timmy. Voila! It works nicely.
Bumblebee: Auto Swell doesn’t work
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Rocket EQ: The boost seems to be dead and no output when the boost is all the way up.
ANSWER: Rocket EQ works as well. It’s a very nice Parametric EQ Pedal. I can get a wah-type of picking (think like chicken picking style/Richie Kotzen/Guthrie Govan) style with this pedal. The culprit was the dual-gang filter pot. The lugs need to be soldered properly both at the top and the bottom. Re-flowed the solder joints and voila! works nicely.
Mini Mu: No output and wah oscillating in the background.
ANSWER: Couple pictures of debugging! I finally got the Mini-Mu working. The problem was the chain after White Horse. The White horse itself has its own independent gain and when I turned everything up they become noisy and whining everywhere.
I decided to rewire the I/O for the Mini-Mu. I put it in Send/Return with Delay/Reverb. This solves the problem and helps to get better sounding.
Triplet: The Octave all the way causes whining and squealing noises like White Horse.
ANSWER: Triplet works now. The culprit was the Ge Diodes I got from evilBay. I swapped with 1N270 and 1N34A and everything works nicely.
Blueprint: No delay, although the tap tempo works (verified switch tapping and LED blinking).
2. All the OD/Dist/Fuzz work (Pale Horse, Blues King, Merman, Scream, Alpha Dog, Focus, Fiery Red), Reverb/Delay work (Mobius Strip/Yodeler- nicely done), Modulation (Tractor Beam, Choral Reef, and Old School) work.
3. All the switching works nicely. I am thinking upgrading to 1776 Effects relay switch instead 3PDT.
Once I figured out the issues of those 6 pedals, then the VFE Mega Pedal is alive!
