deadastronautFX Aductor II Delay Build Report

[strungout]

So, you've decided to build the Abductor II Delay... Get lots of 100n caps. Seriously. I think it might be a fetish or something... Rob, anything to say about this?

I ordered the pcb from Rob. Building went fine... Except when I realized I'd put in a bunch of 1nF's where I was supposed to use 10nF... Fu... 6 of them. I panicked, I admit. I de-soldered one of those caps and the pads on the top of the board came off... Gah...
Luckily, the traces there are on the bottom, so I still had the connections and everything was ok. I need a desoldering pump. Think that could've sucked all the solder from inside the hole and make removing the caps a breeze. Braid doesn't work for that.
So, then, I figured I'll just rip out the caps, bending them over and over until they break off. That left the pads intact and I could just solder the caps onto the pads on the bottom of the pcb. Simple. Worked well enough, laid them them flat. Did the same with two 100nF I melted with my iron not paying attention while wiring in the pots. Double-sided; might as well use both sides, right? XD

A reflow or two later, it fired off. Weakly.
Everything worked, echoes, modulation and tails, but the volume in bypass or when engaged, was very low. The white noise I was having was louder... Traced some of it to those melted 100nF *Shock* As for the rest of the noise, it came from wiring all three lugs of the Speed, Depth and Time pots, and the circuit not being boxed up yet. In the schematic, some lugs are not connected (Speed 3; Depth 1; Time 3). Rob mentions it in his Abductor thread.

Boxed up, it works great! It's very silent (which is why I bought a board. I knew I couldn't do better, noise/layout-wise on perf... Yet). Really happy with it. I'm pleased with the sound too, good bottom, good sparkle. It's inspiring to play, though it takes some learning to manage the delays in a musical way and not just slip into pure anarchy. That has it's uses, but... It makes you feel like playing eerie, atmospheric stuff. For me, anyway.
I have to de-solder the switch from the board and use wires cause the switch doesn't come up high enough to be able to fasten it to the box. The 16mm alpha pots I used plus wire thickness takes a lot of space. Not that the wires are that big, I use 22. Also have the regulartor on the bottom of the board. Seemed like a good idea to save space. It's in a TO-220 package.

The box. I haven't really done much with it yet, except drill the Speed LED on the wrong side... But I think I'll use it in the design. I drew a triangle between the 3 holes. Like some of those 'alien triangle shaped UFO's with lights' people see. I'm gonna make a better graphic though. Maybe something abstract having to do with those triangular ships.. Open to suggestions. I'm not awesome at making graphics layouts, so keep it simple!
In the meantime I used a bunch of colored knobs to create some interest. I have some UV LED that would obviously look cool with a white box...

Might do a short clip...

Edit: I made a short clip. I'm just raising the Level knob on each PT2399.

https://soundcloud.com/user-165425177/abductorclip/s-WZ2GTcvD0cg

Edit 2: One more clip. Was playing Moonlight Sonata and thought it sounded good and uneasy through the abductor II:
https://soundcloud.com/user-165425177/moonlightsonataabductorii/s-z9QBp7wBwkr


Some pics:





The electrons demanded an arch to mark the entrance to the Temple of the Switch, where it is decided where you will go in life.



Drill-press. Managed to make things crooked still.



Roomy. It's a 1590XX.



Only 2 LEDs at the moment.

[strungout]

I'm heading towards this as graphics...




Simple. I'ma paint the box white. Colors or font and triangle? Purple could work...

There was this NES game called 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors'. Random.