The Armadillo

I'm trying to keep this run of posts going on my earlier projects, so lets move on.

After the talkbox, I decided it was time to move on to something more useful and complex. It just so happened that my 8th grade science project was going to be coming up soon, so I saw the chance and took it.

I had an old phaser pedal that I thought sounded pretty cool, and found a schematic, and went to work. The first approach I tried was with two bread boards and a whole mess of wires. Three tries later, and still nothing. Great.

With that approach ditched, I started making a PCB layout for this thing. that took three tries and help from a local tech (the same one I worked with for a few months) to get the pedal all working. Honestly, after 5 months of work on it, it actually sounded really good and looked cool too. I took third at my school's science fair, and second at the districts fair, which is very good considering that it didn't really follow most of the guidelines. Nobody likes to follow rules, right?

This is the final pedal. The Armadillo, the name branded on all my other gear, was my first finished pedal. Get it? Armbrust. Armadillo. Close enough.
 Its almost 3" high, so its not really realistic to have it on a pedalboard, but hey, it sounds great.

Beacuse of the original Dilla's size, I was prompted to build another similar one down the line a bit. It actually sounds better, has better reliability, and is roadworthy. I expanded the controls too, just for a bit more versatility. I called it the Lil' Dilla.

A month or two after I built the Lil' Dilla, my dad and I decided to do a 'Great Phaser Shootout'. Clever, eh?

In order of awesomeness and how each of them sound: The Armadillo, 90's Phase 90, Lil' Dilla (a *very* close second), 70's script Phase 90. Im happy with those results.

I really should have started with something less complex, but what's the fun with that? The model of learning by taking way huge of a bite has defined how I approach projects now.

.......and I've got this weird obsession with phasers now.......

The First

Let's take it all the way back to my first real endeavor into the musical electronics world, way back in September 2010.

I first started out with a small battery powered practice amp (Danelectro, I believe) that I had gutted to use on this. The whole reason that I had though to do this was off of one youtube video. it layed out  simplistic talkbox, and I just took it and did my best to hack through getting it working.

Eventually, it turned into this-

Pretty awesome, huh?

The craziest thing is that it actually worked, and quite well too. As one can see, duct tape went to good use in almost everything in this project. I wish I had made some sort of demo of it, because this picture is all I have left of it. It has fallen apart and ceased to work recently, which is not surprising at all.

All my goofing in this sort of thing was suddenly given direction.

Preview of What is to Come

It has been a while since I have posted, so I figured it was due.

Now that summer is here, I have more time to build, design, and do repairs (to support the other two). This is a nice break from having to balance schoolwork and building, especially now that things are picking up in most aspects of my life.

I have several projects in the works that are all running in parallel to one another. Here's some summaries of 'em.

The first one I have yet to finish is an amp for an awesome local guitar player, who initially prompted me to start this blog. It was first supposed to be based around a Fender Princeton Reverb built into a head. Then it became made out of vintage Hammond Organ transformers (not to be confused with the new Hammond Mfg. transformers, which are awesome in their own right). Then it became 6L6 capable, with dual switchable transformers. Then a pine cabinet combo with a Weber Neo 15" speaker. There were a lot of other electrical changes, but I'll save that for later...

Another amp build is one that is a sort of test bed for future amps. The owner of the guitar store I tech at had told me about his intentions of starting a small, simplistic, and interesting amp line. I just took it and ran. I have never built something by intentionally blindly diving into a design. Nothing but research and selecting tubes for use went into the design. This one should be fun.

A local trumpet cat had recruited my skills to build a studio grade compressor for him. It was sold as a pre-made PCB and electrical parts for it. He also took it upon himself to source the case, meters, and optoisolators, which took quite a load off my back. Some of those are dang hard to find. Its mostly done, just waiting on a hardware order for now.

I have too many ideas floating around to write down them all, so I'll save those thoughts for a later post.

I'm still really looking forward to getting all this awesome stuff posted.