16 posts
BJFE honeybee, Mad Professor honeybee, another Sobbat DB-1. BJFE and MP will be stock. Sobbat will include diode switch with infrared and another setting yet TBD. Sobbat's for my buddy Joe who's a tweaker, so I'm also including socketed caps in the EQ section so he can alter the frequency response of the eqs, and I'm socketing the first stage cutoff capacitor and resistor, because I know he'll want to tune the output. Also changing values of bypass cap, and adding a parallel ceramic to shunt high frequencies.
I know they don't look like much yet but this is actually the hardest part besides pot wiring... prepping the boards.
Here's the backside. Only jumpers and trace cuts in place so far.
Adventures in stripboarding. Can't wait to hear some of these!
Ok, got some time to add resistors...
Some notes here. Both the BJFE and the Mad Prof use some unusual resistor values. Because they aren't available from my typical sources and cost way too much to buy at Mouser for something I'll probably use rarely, if ever, I had to get creative, so you can see on the BJFE there are a few series resistors soldered together to make one, and on the Mad Professor, there's one series resistor, and one parallel resistor. The parallel resistors in the MP are 2x 27K, to make a value of 13.5K (original schematic value is 13.7K). The series resistors in the MP are 1K and 1.6K for a 2.6K total (original value is 2.61K). THE BJFE has values of 147K in one spot (I could have just gone with 150K but who knows, maybe it really is magic), and 31.6K in two spots. I did those all with multiple resistors as well. For these I solder them pretty close, then wrap them in clear shrink tubing, so I can provide some coverage for the joint, but still see the resistor codes.
yeah, nothing worse than getting INTO a project and needing parts, especially hard to get ones. I used to have parts lists for things well in advance so that if I had to order anything I'd buy anything needed for the next couple as well. Shipping isn't bad if you buy a lot but it's stupid on small orders. I bought lots of parts from several guys at BYOC instead of from the "stores" so shipping was never a problem. Plus, if you are a regular at BYOC and need a weird part or two, usually someone has it and will send it to you cheap.
I buy most everything from Tayda nowadays, their prices are great and stuff comes faster than from anywhere else, plus every month or so they do a 15% off coupon code on facebook. I'm kind of always ordering stuff, every month or two, and I'll combine orders with friends to lower the shipping. We just bought a pile of stuff from Mammoth too, they had their free shipping deal going... but when parts are of unusual values, and I can make them by combining parts, I'll do that. Tayda is a little over 1 cent for metal film resistors, and 1 cent for carbon film, and stupid cheap for capacitors too. Can't touch that at Mouser, Mammoth, BYOC, or anywhere else...
caps in place on the honeybees...
Sobbat is taking more work, I'm adding switchable input caps to switch between input hp filter cutoff of 318Hz, 160Hz, and 41Hz, and socketing the EQ caps so my buddy can switch things around. The original had a very low 7Hz hp cutoff frequency... compare all of these to the cutoff in a standard tubescreamer, which is 720Hz, well into the guitar audible range.
REALLY interested to hear how these turn out. Honey Bee =
Still think you need to do a Dyna Red soon.
The BJFE Honey Bee is the sweetest pedal I've built yet. Everyone at last week's jam was in love with it. It's got a certain wooliness to it, while also being very hi-fi. The Drive control doesn't do a ton, from halfway up to full it's all pretty similar, probably because the threshold on the clipping LEDs gets hit and then it's just driven as much as it will be driven. The Nature control is fascinating. At bottom settings it shifts the distorted frequency peaks into the bass, and creates an almost fuzzy, slightly crushed breakup. As you turn it up, the distortion frequency shifts to the mids, then the upper mids. It
s not really a tone control--the pedal has a good balance of low to high through the entire sweep of the knob--it's more like a pre-emphasis. It's not high gain, it's a true overdrive, and it sounds, for lack of a better term, expensive. A couple of descriptions from this week.
Wooly.
Interactive.
Makes the Tweaker sound like a Supro.
Makes other pedals sound better.
Loves the (insert type of guitar).
The perfect pedal.
Clips soon. I'll write about the Mad Professor version in the next post.
Here's the Sobbat board stuffed. I've added the caps in sockets for the EQ section.
For the input cap, I'm using an on/off/on switch (twsited pair of wires on the right). In the off position, it's a 500pf cap, in one position it adds another 500pf, and in the other position, adds a 3.3n. This gives a range of input filter cutoff frequencies from 318Hz (about twice as low as a tubescreamer's filter rolloff) to 159Hz, to 42Hz (low E on a bass). The original was 22n, which ended up being somewhere around 7Hz, which is really wide open.
For the diode clippers, I'm using the twisted pair on the right. This goes to an on/on switch with symmetric infrared LEDs on one side and an assymetric pair with silicon diodes plus a germanium on one side for the other pair.
ME WANT HONEY BEE!
(Told you you'd like that one!) Guys who own the real one say it's a "special" pedal.
Wow, 7hz on the Drivebreaker? That's crazy low.... and curious, without having a Dar analysis of the rest of the circuit. Almost like "why?"
Cutoff points on the input DC blocking filters are tricky, it's not always as much about audio frequencies as it is about noise frequencies and low-frequency stability. But yeah, that's low, 7.2 Hz. Essentially it's not even there, since no guitar frequencies or bass frequencies reach it. But listen to the Drivebreaker vs. a tube screamer and you can hear that there's a lot more low-frequency content hitting the clipping stages.
Here's the Honey Bee... I screwed up a little on the writing, the "F" should be an N... it's Focus on the Mad Professor version, but Nature on the BJFe version. Also wrote the Volume too close to the knob. Oh well! May redo the case, may not.
Here's how it sounds... this is from a jam, so it's live in the room, it's the guitar on the right side. We've got two room condensers capturing everything, plus ribbon mics on every guitar amp, and a DI and Heil dynamic on the bass. This is through the Egnater Tweaker, with my blue homemade strat.
http://www.astrondelta.com/jam/11.24.12.G.mp3
Here's the Mad Professor Sweet Honey Overdrive... inside. The orange twisted wire pair is new... when I originally built this, I clipped out one of the pairs of clipping diodes to see what it sounded like without them. The result was this pedal sounded almost identical to the BJFe Honey Bee, except for some difference in the Focus control. I decided later to add the clipping back in on a switch, but leave the open setting as is. So this uses an on/off/on switch with the original 1n400x diodes on one side, and some Schottky Bat46 on the other side. The 1n400x add a little more grit. The BAt 46 make this a legitimately gainy pedal... but reduce the volume somewhat. Cool options though.
