Another cornish style project

[theblueark]

I've been using the same effects on my board for the last year and decided to put them all together permanently. Partially I also got sick of finding the source of signal problems due to corrosion on the mechanical jacks and plugs and wanted to solder everything together properly.

Here's what I started with:


And now:





gut shot:


The entire board is powered with a visualsound 1Spot connected here:

I wired 2 DC inputs just in case one fails. They are in parallel so I can use either. One of the switch breaks or connects the power connection and the other is used to turn on the DT10. Search for the korg DT10 true bypass mod and you'll see why the switch is needed.

Everything is a little quieter now than before. I star grounded everything on the board. Each effect has only one ground, instead of in stompboxes where you have the power ground and the input and output ground connected through the patch leads. In this case I only had the live going from effect to effect. I suspected this would help with ground loop hum and I'm fairly confident it did.

I'm still going to do some touching up with the finishing, some labels for the controls and changing of the knobs to make them all more standardized. I love the way the knobs are recessed and flush with the wood, protecting them from being accidentally moved or stomped on.

List and chain of effects:
1. Korg DT10 tuner
2. Mxr Blue Box
3. GGG Tycobrahe Octavia
4. Bazz Fuss
5. Zvex Wah Probe
6. Subdecay Stupid Box
7. Bob Sweet's 2001 made Sweet Boost
8. Boss PS5 pitch shifter (controlled with the expression pedal on the far right)
9. Ernie Ball Stereo Volume 25k Ohm (using only 1 of the input/output for mono)
10. Boss DD20 delay (controlled with a with a tap tempo footswitch)
11. Korg 301d delay
12. Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo
13. Danelectro Fab Chorus
14. Electroharmonix Nano Small Stone phaser
15. Electroharmonix Micro Qtron
16. Line6 Verbzilla reverb
17. Korg Limiter (actually a compressor)

[Auke Haarsma]

nice project!

But that gut-shots scares me... 

[tehfunk]

MAN! i just did a quadruple take on your gut shot. haha. nice work!

[soulsonic]

Yeah, that wiring is crazy. How did you keep all the connections correct? It must have taken a very long time.

[Timebutt]

VERY impressive work!

[theblueark]

Thanks! The wiring is actually easier than it looks.
I put in each effect and wired the power supply and ground first.
Then I checked each effect to be working by plugging my guitar into it's IN and the OUT to an amp.
Once all the effects were working on their own, the next step was a piece of cake. Just wire the OUT from one effect to the next effect's IN as you would with patch cables, just without the ground.

[Rodgre]

Very nice looking board. I agree that the internal wiring looks scary, but that's just because I've made stuff that looks like that and I had a hell of a time keeping it running.

One question, though. With all of those pedals and your DIY-skills, why not build yourself a solid and heavy-duty power supply to run the whole she-bang?

Roger

[Paul Marossy]

I ought to do something like this with my own pedal board. 

[iaresee]

I ought to do something like this with my own pedal board. 

I do love the clean UI it presents you with but I fear a debug-in-the-field situation with this approach. Right now if something breaks I pull some cables and take it out of the chain.

[Paul Marossy]

Yeah, troubleshooting would be something of a pain in the rear with that type setup. But, in theory, nothing should happen to it as long as you did your homework when you built it. The most likely problem would be mechanical failure from a footswitch or a shorted power supply...

[theblueark]

Rodgre: I actually really love the switching design of the 1Spot power supply. And it's really convenient for gigs cos the power supply is far from the board with the thin power lines able to extend long distances.

I actually did this project because I gig very regularly and was sick of debugging the loss of signal, usually caused by the buildup of corrosion on jacks and plugs. Then I'd have to use contact cleaners and stuff to clean them. My board was pretty cramped as you can see in the first picture, and I had it fail on me mid gig once. Had to take the whole thing apart to fix that one connection that was causing the problem. Big pain in the ass. I decided that if everything was soldered together, it'd actually be much more robust. I'm considering carrying an extra DD20 as a backup, as it's the only really essential effect for my band's music.

For reliability I did as much as I could think of to ensure there were no moving parts. All the boards are held by standoffs screwed into the wood. All long wires are held down by holders also screwed into the wood.

Although it's impossible to troubleshoot mid gig, it's pretty easy to find a problem once it's opened up, with an audio probe or such. I'd agree, a power short would be hell to find though.

[m-theory]

I'm in the early planning stages of something somewhat similar.  I too, have come to utterly despise patch cables.  I've long dreamt of something Cornish-like that could house everything I'd use, but my hesitation has always been that I don't want to be permanently locked into given set of circuits or a specific layout. 

So, I got to thinking the other day that it would be "ideal" to have a metal fabricator build me a box, my preferred size and general shape, and cut out rectangular holes in the top, say about 3" x 6".  Then, stamp out plates for these holes with flanges on the sides, so that all I'd have to do is screw down the plates in their repective positions.  An entire circuit, including pots, could be mounted to the underside of the plate. 

The wrapper is always the same, so it occured to me that a guy should be able to have the inputs/outputs, power/ground, and footswitch/led always mounted on the board, and, using some sort of modular connectors, simply drop a new circuit, mounted onto one of these flanged plates, wherever you wanted it.  I'm thinking I'll add an isolated power supply on board as well.  Still early in planning stages, obviously, but I do intend to put it together over the next several months. 

[theblueark]

Hey just thought i'd update as a motivation for anybody worried about starting one of these projects.

I've been using the board for gigs on average once a week ever since then, with zero failures so far, and it's quiet as ever 

Unfortunately my day job has gotten massively time consuming and I haven't been doing anything with effects for quite a while