Echo Base Delay and decal updates

I decided to purchase my first pre-fabricated PCB. Ive wanted to make a delay pedal for a while and to be honest, you can do this on vero board, but it's massive and I've heard nothing but good words said for the PCBs from Music PCB

The PCB was around £14 total inc shipping and took around a week to arrive safe and sound. The quality, not that I really know what I am judging against, seems top notch. I think its dual sided, through plated, which from my brief readings seems to be the professional way to do it. He also provides a fantastic PDF with bill of materials and a plethora of mods that you can do to the pedal.

For your own interest, download the PDF from here: ECHOBASE PDF

I decided to go with the standard Tails switch ( a simple SPDT switch to decide whether your tails are on or off when you bypass the echo), then add on a footswitch for the LFO. This adds or removes modulation from the repeats, for Memory Man type effects or to simulate tape delay warble. Lastly, I wanted to add in the LFO wave shape mod, this allows you add on a pot which will go from stock sine wave to choppy pitch shifty square wave for the modulation. The modulation can go from subltle shorussy effects up to full on pitch modulating sea sickness vibrato. in a work, this box is brilliant.

Here are a few pictures from the build. It must be said working with a quality PCB is a doddle, and its something I will do more of in the future. It reaffirms my faith in PT2399 chips - Ive built 2 x little angel chorus boards and neither modulate, and also my faith in my abilities. This is without doubt the most complex build Ive yet to undertake.

Here is the box drilled with some pots. I hadnt at this point decided where the LFO shape would go. Id got a bit of feel for how long the leads needed to be. Using nice sealed back pots, but sadly not PCB mounted which would have been ideal I spose. Next time..

This is the board with most of the components on.

Heres the nearly finished article, with pots etc wired in and ICs socketed.

There is a significant amount of offboard wiring. I had to bodge a resistor onto the waveshape pot (documented in the PDF) and covered it with liberal amounts of green heatshrink :)

This is one pedal where true bypass freaks might get upset. It uses similar buffering to a boss pedal. As such a SPST footswitch would suffice, but I used the nice Alpha DPDT I use for all my other builds. This is with the box pretty much wired up.

This is the finished pedal before and after decalisation(!) I havent got knobs yet for the pots. The coolest thing about this pedal is the LED will pulse with the modulation speed when its engaged, happy with that.

Got some inspiration from another EchoBase build and decided to use these bubble chamber (some kinda physics stuff) as artwork, along with the requesite Star Wars font. I am really happy with the finish. Couple air bubbles, but there always is with these decals and really unless you are picky you wont notice them day to day.

Speaking of decals, I also used the same sheet of vinyl to make some other decals
Firstly I did a Mario Bros. one for the Nintendo noisemaker thing I posted on previously.

And a Banksy rip off for my Red Lllama / Green Ringer. Sadly, upon putting everything back in the box, the Red Llama side doesnt work. The LED lights, but absolutely no sound goes through. Otherwise the Green Ringer side is fine. If anyone has a quick pointer for what I might have messed up please let me know (IvIark - if ur reading this! help!)

I think it looks pretty awesome if I do say so myself.
Wall = Volume
Peace = Fuzz

Named after the Banksy book "Wall and Piece", but I used Peace instead of course, a deliberate thing not a typo...

Art = filter switch for the octave.
Vandalism = Red Llama fuzz, Spraypaint = Green Ringer Octave.

Now to debug it! Maybe I'll change the orange LED for green while I am at it...Damn thing...

Will be back shortly with another update on a build I completed yesterday!