Successful Neovibe Build - Wild Thing!

[Andrew]

Kia ora people, have been on diy.stompbox for a couple of years now watching, reading, & learning

Have successfully finished a neovibe build with a few changes. So happy with it!! Thank you heaps to RG, John Lyons, SteveB and Eb7+9 - was great to silently learn from you all.

Called the 'wild thing' it has Speed, Depth & Width Controls. Width is a 250K pot in place of R50 and is used to alter the strength of the swing. I vary it a bit live for different effects. See image links below...

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/Schematics-etc/neovibe+wild+thing.JPG.html

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/Schematics-etc/neovibe+wildthing+internal.JPG.html

Used a GGG Board and a combination of RG's & JC's build instructions. Was hard to source some of the parts here in NZ so made a few changes as follows:

Transistors were a mixture of 2N3904 and BC549's
Included the 250KA pot instead of R50
Used 500R trimpot
Used 12v 60ma bulb
LDR's were NSL 7530
Left R35 & R36 in as stock 100k
No vibrato or volume function
Added JC's light bulb driver mod with a 2N3904 to Q13
Added R42 & R43 speed mod
Used tin shield with aluminium lining and white painted base
Used 100KA x 2 Speed Pot, not reverse audio...works fine
Put it all in a Hammond 114mm x56mm x119mm aluminium enclosure
Powered by a 18v DC adaptor

Lots of de-bugging, mostly around additional JC driver transistor to get enough current happening to get some good bulb action, also managed to get speed pot wrong way around and all the BC549 transistors pinouts incorrect. Future things I might tutu with on the neovibe are dropping C4 to 30pf, and trying to get a better volume unity...I installed R8 as 910R and R9 as 3.6k but still notice a bit of a volume drop when it kicks in.

Sounds **** great, used it at a gig in the weekend. I'm the singer/guitar player in a three piece...we were doing a version of Bowies 'Heroes' with everyone bopping away happily, I turned on my fuzz and the neovibe to do a big swishy chordal type solo....and looked out to see all these people stop dancing & look up drop-jawed, kinda hypnotised by the sound that was coming out of the amp...i could see them all thinking "what the hell is THAT!!"

Sure-fire attention grabber this one...can't wait to use it again!!!

Thanks once again for all the international free-love electronic education, I'm stoked about the learning and am looking forward to the next build.

Cheers Andrew

[Auke Haarsma]

Sounds **** great, used it at a gig in the weekend. I'm the singer/guitar player in a three piece...we were doing a version of Bowies 'Heroes' with everyone bopping away happily, I turned on my fuzz and the neovibe to do a big swishy chordal type solo....and looked out to see all these people stop dancing & look up drop-jawed, kinda hypnotised by the sound that was coming out of the amp...i could see them all thinking "what the hell is THAT!!"

haha, that made me laugh!!!

congrats on the build!

[Andrew]

Cheers Auke

yeah, I think they were confused to see a guitar player phasing them out...they were probably looking for the keyboard player??

I recall going though a few of your neovibe de-bug threads and picking up some good advice on this build

So thanks again

Andrew

[ACS]

Kia Ora Bro!!  Ka pai on the successful build...  Where'd you end up getting most of the components?  I see Jaycar have set up shop in NZ these days - they have a pretty good selection for most stomp boxes (and they even stock 3PDT's now - although you might a second mortgage to buy one...)

Ka kite ano!

[Andrew]

Kia ora e hoa!

Thanks....build was a little bit of Jaycar (3PDT @ NZ$11, transistors , knobs, caps)...little bit of Dick Smith (pots, transistors, resistors)...little bit of RS Components (enclosure, LDR's - imported)...and a lot of the diystompbox knowledge wave!!!....but man the biggest cost was the time...took me about a year off and on... my only other build prior was an AMZ miniboost, so i kinda jumped in the deep end with this neovibe...too sexy a sound=too tempting...but my perseverence paid off...i could've paid US$400 to import a MojoVibe or something to save the hassle...but hard to put a price on what i've learnt as a result of going solo with this thing...couple of times i was going to throw in the towel...now i'll probably grow an over-sized ego, show off on diystompbox and talk about building a retro Neve console or something!!....only to fall back down into the black hole of my electronic ignorance...success is a scary thing!!

would i do it again...oh yeah!

Ka kite

[Eb7+9]

Sounds **** great, used it at a gig in the weekend. I'm the singer/guitar player in a three piece...we were doing a version of Bowies 'Heroes' with everyone bopping away happily, I turned on my fuzz and the neovibe to do a big swishy chordal type solo....and looked out to see all these people stop dancing & look up drop-jawed, kinda hypnotised by the sound that was coming out of the amp...i could see them all thinking "what the hell is THAT!!"

Sure-fire attention grabber this one...can't wait to use it again!!!

somebody was asking a while back what makes a pedal perfect
... in the hands of a daring player the Vibe is it !!

well done Andrew, and thank you for sharing your build parameters

Heroes with a swishy Univibe chord solo ?!  my cup of tea ... 

[Andrew]

Thanks JC...I  had it sitting there for a couple of months with nothing happening until I discovered your bulb driver mod...would've been no Heroes without you

Cheers

[bent]

interesting to explore