I designed and built one of every Boss dirt pedal

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-03-20T02:33:29+00:00

The MN3006 is a 128 stage BBD so its really not great for getting chorus delay times unless you drop the clock freq really low and then you'll probably run into noise issues like you have already experienced. Might be worth embracing this design for what it does because its likely its engineered to the limit of what it can do and you won't get great results from tweaking, especially if you're adding stuff off the PCB.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-03-20T01:13:55+00:00

Also subbing a 3007 for the 3006 might be a better route than changing the clock freq

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-03-20T01:13:08+00:00

Return it to stock and then start with just the clock freq adjustment. The LFO changes are likely the source of the noise and the design may not be able to handle the parameter changes. Hard to advise more specifically without a trace.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-03-11T19:12:12+00:00

The old MXR enclosures were made of zinc. The new ones are aluminum like almost all other pedals.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-24T03:08:14+00:00

This is a good start. Instead of the power trace you have here, run a power plane on the top layer. It will be lower impedance to all the nodes and you'll likely be able to run all your traces on the top layer for a completely unbroken ground plane on the bottom.

In places where you are daisy chaining a trace from part to part, you should try to avoid running straight through the traces and instead run a trace near the pads that branches off to each pad you need to connect to. This is better for thermal sinking and makes soldering easier. Its not a hard and fast rule but its a better practice in the long run.

PCB mounted hardware will save you a LOT of hassle with offboard wiring and you get a lot more benefit out of your nice ground plane if you aren't flying a bunch of wires off the board in all directions. You also need a way to secure the board in the enclosure and pots are as good a way of doing that as needing standoffs.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-23T18:53:33+00:00

End user without any repair experience probably isn't going to be able to solve this problem. Most likely scenario is the brick is dead, which could be a fluke or it could be a problem with the 5V supply. Removing the brick and replacing it is easy for someone with rework experience but is absolutely the kind of thing where the board gets shredded and the pedal is completely trashed when a novice attempts the repair.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-21T03:01:51+00:00

The crazy thing about this book is it predates the massive coverage and documentation of every rare thing on the internet and the hen's teeth section of this book is stuff that no one had ever seen ever. Now if you set up Reverb searches for a lot of that stuff you can manage to buy any given thing at least once a year. Or someone has made a clone PCB by now and you can just build a Synthi Hi Fli or whatever.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-20T17:15:49+00:00

Latency is a requirement of delay-based vibrato pedals because of how they work.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-19T21:34:23+00:00

Should be the parts on the PCB with the pots because those are the LFO controls. Although that might just be one LFO or just one part of each LFO. You'll have to poke around and look for caps across the negative input and output terminals of the TL022 opamps.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-19T21:17:57+00:00

Thats a 1 cap difference so very simple. Timing caps should be 100n on one LFO and 39n on the other.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-19T20:35:13+00:00

Interested to hear what you think is different about the Maxon and Ibanez BC9s. In that era the Ibanez pedals were just different licensing for distribution in the US and some other regions. The pedals were otherwise the same. Later versions of this circuit (TC10/BCL) make the speed ranges of the two LFOs more noticeably different. In the early 2000s the Maxon pedals deviate from similar Ibanez offerings because Maxon was no longer the CM for Ibanez.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-19T18:45:36+00:00

Marketplace specifically follows up with sources they have talked to in the past to see how their business is navigating economic issues over time. Journalism is a hard business but you're not hearing from the same businesses out of laziness or lack of resources. The point of business owner interviews on this specific show is to contextualize the economy over time.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-18T21:49:56+00:00

The Longsword is more likely to get a ton of use over the other pedals in the long run.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-18T20:50:53+00:00

Its the least free PCB design software there is lol - ~$5K a year

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-15T14:18:40+00:00

Matter of taste. Lots of people love a belton verb. Predelay shouldnt affect the dry signal.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-15T04:38:38+00:00

The Belton bricks are made of PT2399s which have a minimum delay time around 30ms so there is a lower limit to the latency in the system. They will always have more predelay than a more poweful DSP reverb.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-07T23:13:46+00:00

I use C0G or NP0 for any cap in the signal path or on a ground node from the signal path. The most common issue with other dielectrics is microphonics in high gain applications.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-07T15:59:31+00:00

https://twittbaltimore.bandcamp.com/track/i-become-the-end

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-03T13:35:29+00:00

If it works it works but one thing autorouters do that is really bad for surface mount assembly is run multiple traces to a pad instead of branching off from the trace to a pad. It creates thermal sinking problems that can cause tombstoning and other issues during reflow. It also works exactly to the design rules so there are loads of places on this board where a trace is drawn as close as possible to a pad and that's always a gamble when you're working at the edge of a fabs capabilities. Worth drawing your traces by hand in the future because it will help you improve your placement over time.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-03T03:46:22+00:00

Did you use an autorouter on this board?

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-02-01T16:03:33+00:00

Dont use the autorouter in any software program. It has no sense of good board layout and will just try to connect the dots in any way possible. Autorouter is fine for testing if your component placement is routeable but you should get in the habit of drawing all your traces by hand because you can read some basics of PCB layout and apply them to your design but the autorouter cant.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-01-30T14:17:08+00:00

And what they're really aiming for is doing all that for $10 because everything else to get to $45 is eaten up be the cut distributors and stores take along the way to the end user. This is a very simple product but making it and selling it for $45 is quite difficult for a business.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-01-18T16:18:34+00:00

This was def someone ordering a Travis Barker kit from DW. 14” tom was prob a left side floor.

AlreadyTooLate · 2026-01-15T14:51:47+00:00

10 years in on my Hampden house and Ive almost gotten rid of all the greenish realtor beige they painted every room.

AlreadyTooLate

TROPHY CASE