**The DIYStompboxes 10-Year Anniversary Contest Thread**

[Jdansti]

We need ya, Jimi!  I show 11 pedal submittals and over 10 more contestants who haven't posted yet. There a little over 24-hours left to post!!!

(Richard Simmons voice): Come on people! Get those entries in! Every submittal is important! 

[midwayfair]

submittal

That's an interesting typo ...

[artifus]

24 hours to conceive, design, build, document and demo a pedal... game on

[Jdansti]

submittal

That's an interesting typo ...

Sorry. It's a work thang. We use (misuse?) the verb as a noun when contractors send us submittals for doing work: 3. To commit (something) to the consideration or judgment of another. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/submittal

I promise it wasn't a freudian slip of this definition: 1. To yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another.

 

[LucifersTrip]

Talking about thinking way out of the box!! that's pretty amazing and original. I quite like the sound, I bet those wooden speaker mounts help with preventing things getting too tinny. Those glass resistors look pretty awesome!

Thanx alot...and yes, the mounts add a bit of fullness that isn't there when the speakers are naked. Though, there's a much bigger change once the top is down and the speakers are in a closed space. The glass resistors are a blast, but a warning: Don't try to bend the leads at a right angle next to the case, unless you use a 2nd needle nose to bend around. They break very easily.

[thofmann]

@Lucifer: Thats a cool idea. I think with some heavy filtering you could do something similar but your approach is really DIY.
@jimmi: i wanna see your build. You have already shown that you do a great job.

[Vallhagen]

... a combination of ignorance, stubbornness and improvising to get around limitations; ...

Man, i like this attitude:)

In a universe where simulation software is for free and fabbed PCB-s costs nothing, you can still boost your inspiration from limitations. Keep up the good work, Kay!

[snarblinge]

Lucifer that is awesome, I am seriously considering co opting that idea I have some perfect pcb mount electrets I have been wondering what to do with. One question, how micro phonic is the switching?

[Vallhagen]

Atom 'Lytic Triple Barrel Lo-Fi Electret Distortion
(with 3-band EQ)

Wow... speaking about creativity... This is so cool i cant help laughin:) . weird. odd. and it sounds good too!

And i luv the camouflage pic ...

Cheers!

[LucifersTrip]

man, thanx guys...I really try to do one-of-a-kind boxes for the contests

@snarblinge
micro phonic:
You can hear some of that in video #3. It's kind of similar to what you'd hear if you tap the pick on the selected pickup with a distortion on. I guess you could easily use soft switching. You only need a SPST.  Though, I never thought about switching live...

@Vallhagen
weird. odd/camouflage:
Yes, I always like to use parts from unlikely sources!  Funny about the camouflage pics. I almost deleted em.  My friend told me it blended in too much and that there should be better contrast, so I re-took the pics on blacktop....but left em in there since I thought they were cool.

[Vallhagen]

@Vallhagen
...camouflage: ...

Well, you had me INSPIRED man

Heres my contribution to the "Can-you-find-the-hidden-stompöx-in-its-camouflaged-environment!?"-quiz!



Cheers:)

[samhay]

Sorry - looks like I'm not going to make the deadline. My principal motivation was to support the forum and to motivate myself to finish something. I guess I got half way there. Will post a build report or two once I get things finished - can post teasers if you like.

Congratulations to everybody that built something before the deadline - stellar builds and much better time management than I can muster.

[pakrat]

After many marathon building sessions, I have completed my entry..... finally!

Name of entrant: pakrat
Pedal name: Mad Clone
Tell us a bit about the pedal: It's a Tonepad Small Clone with a bunch of mods found in the build reports and on the internet. The mods required a lot of extra wires and switch mounted components making the build messy and tedious, so I decided to make a new pcb with all of the mods board mounted. This is not a new layout, it's Francisco's layout from Tonepad with a few additions.
The mods allow a pretty wide range of sounds over a the standard Small Clone.... they include flanger, tremolo, regen control, and vibrato. The toggle switch changes it from chorus to vibrato, and also has a dry setting if you want the tremolo by itself. To be fair, I should note that this pedal suffers from the volume drop many others have reported, and traditional "fixes" did not work because of the tremolo mod. I believe the LDR is responsible but didn't have any others in stock to experiment.
The box is finished in yellow powdercoat, full faced waterslide decal, and powder coat clear on top. I have never worked with powder coat prior to this and it proved to be very difficult to get the clear to evenly cover the decal without pin holes or other problems. I had to strip the box to bare metal and start over six or seven times before I got it, but in the end I'm happy with the results.


Here are some pics:











Here it is next to the prototype I built to test the mods:



My $50.00 Harbor Freight powder coating gun:



One of many failures....



Which leads to this:



Guts:





Video: The audio is clipped in spots because I used the camera audio. Signal chain: Les Paul Standard > Mad Clone > Mesa Mark III



Layout:



Pcb:



Schematic: Fransisco's schem with mods added. Don't laugh if it's wrong, I've never drawn a schematic before....



References:
www.tonepad.com
http://beckyjc.wordpress.com/pedal-builds/small-clone-mods/
http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/board/index.php?topic=1578.0

Special thanks to JOK3RX for helping me with tracing the original pcb!
Special thanks to Fransisco at Tonepad for this, and all of his other great projects!

[garcho]

I'm officially throwing in the towel, ladies and gentlemen. I hope I haven't insulted the judges by blowing this off but my schedule is neither predictable nor something in which I have a lot of room to maneuver. The entries have been excellent, to no one's surprise. Bravo y'all, awesome as always. I hope the next contest isn't too far away, because while I didn't do any building, I did do some thinking... 

[Govmnt_Lacky]

@paktat

AWESOME build bro! I love it!

Been thinking about building another Small Clone and I really like what you have done and what you have added to the project.

A BIG THANK YOU for the transfer. I like to do PnP and I am definitely gonna get this etched very soon 

Couple questions...

As for your volume drop issue... Didn't Rob find a solution for this on his clone? Can it be implemented here?

Second... Where is the stereo mod?  Do the mods not allow the stereo output OR was it a matter of space?

EXCELLENT WORK!!!

[tca]

Sorry - looks like I'm not going to make the deadline. My principal motivation was to support the forum and to motivate myself to finish something. I guess I got half way there. Will post a build report or two once I get things finished - can post teasers if you like.

Same here!

Cheers.

[pakrat]

Thank you Gov! I did try ALL of the fixes for the volume drop and none were effective. If I cover the LDR the level goes up, so that leads me to believe the light/dark value of the LDR is either wrong, or my part was mislabeled. I do have the pdf files of the layout and pcb but I didn't have a dropbox acct to post them. I could email them to you if you want. Volume drop or not, the pedal sounds great and the crappy audio on my vid does it no justice. The tremolo works very well and the vibrato is also much better sounding than you would think, being an add-on.

[pakrat]

Oh yeah, the stereo mod.... I didn't include it in my build because I didn't really need it. The pads are on the pcb so you can still build the stereo version.

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Thank you Gov! I did try ALL of the fixes for the volume drop and none were effective. If I cover the LDR the level goes up, so that leads me to believe the light/dark value of the LDR is either wrong, or my part was mislabeled. I do have the pdf files of the layout and pcb but I didn't have a dropbox acct to post them. I could email them to you if you want. Volume drop or not, the pedal sounds great and the crappy audio on my vid does it no justice. The tremolo works very well and the vibrato is also much better sounding than you would think, being an add-on.

Would DEFINITELY like to try my hand at etching this one. PM forthcoming! Thanks for sharing it! 

I noticed in the video that you didn't spend a lot of demo time on the Flanger side of things. Any chance you could throw something up here to highlight that feature? I am asking because I would really like to get something to compliment my Flanger With No Name clone. 

[pakrat]

As far as the flanger goes, it's not extremely flang-y... flangerish? It's very subtle but still sounds like a flanger and that's pretty cool considering this is primarily a chorus pedal. Again, the audio in my vid doesn't do the flanger justice.  I could put together a vid of just the flanger if you want