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Fay Ray Pedal

The Jan Ray pedal I built in February 2018 has had a makeover. I’ve been using it a quite a bit lately, and it sounds nice but it looked a bit cheap and cheesy.

So I took it all apart, changed out the DPDT On/On switch, gave it a new lick of paint and put it all back together again.

It’s now the Fay Ray Pedal.



I’m sure it sounds better now. 😉

Robert Fripp says…

begin with the possible and move gradually towards the impossible.

so, what is possible?

if getting out of bed in the morning and saying – Hello God! – is all that’s possible, then that’s what is it. but, this must be done.

it is easy to be overwhelmed, so we do what we can + 10%.

one very practical thing i find useful in my own, overwhelmed life – to do one very small thing.

for example, i have too many books and CDs to be sorted and placed on shelves. there is no possibility that i can do this. but, i can move one CD or one book to its place on a shelf. but, that one CD or that one book i have to do. then, something has changed. not a lot quantitatively, but very much qualitatively – we are in process.

so, we can’t do the morning sitting. can we say – Hello God! – and sit on the chair, bring part of attention into our right hand?

if that’s all we can do, that’s our morning sitting. and good to say – Thank you God! – when we get up.

crushed by the weight of life, it’s very easy to forget that Love is closer to us than the air we breathe. and even if we forget it, Love remains.

Nerf Box

How do you tame that loud Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp? By putting a volume control in the loop. So here’s that very thing (with a small cap across the pot to keep the treble).

 

 

It was inspired by Brian Wampler’s video:

Modified Phase 90

I have an ancient MXR Phase 90 from about 1990 or so which has an old style DC jack socket (1/8″). For this reason I’ve been using it with a battery. So, today it was time to whip out the drill (the hole needed widening and, boy, did they use proper metal back then) and the soldering iron and fit a modern 2.1mm centre negative DC jack socket. Success!

Here’s a pic of the guts before I converted it:

 

And after:

The battery leads are disconnected. But I won’t be using a battery in it any more…

Game of Tones

Winter Solstice. And time for a King of Tone clone.

This one was definitely more challenging as it consists of two of the same circuit, one for each side. I also designed and added an additional board to mount the clipping diodes and the DIP switches rather than use external switches. I would have liked to have done it all on one vero, but hey ho.

It was a real challenge fitting it all in, but it’s my new fave pedal.

 

OMG

I had a little break from building pedals, but here’s a new one. It’s an OCD v3 clone. I actually own an OCD 1.7 but I wanted to compare this one. In the end, it was a bit meh and for some reason is microphonic and squealy when the input jack is not connected. It’s a bit of a ho-humdinger. I could probably fix that somehow at some point.

 

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