Pedals – Blackout Electronics

Ibanez PT-909 Phase Tone

Posted on 12.2.2016 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

Interesting piece of effect came to my hands to make slight modifications to it.

This one was produced only for short period in early 80’s. The problem is that it can only be powered with 9 volts battery, but not with power supply. Drilling a 12mm hole for new DC power jack is out of question, as these are becoming to be valuable, and permanent modifications would have negative impact to its value. Instead, I ended up to drill a small 3mm hole to the bottom plate, and connect a adapter straight to existing battery clip.

Note the circuit covering plastic shield. There is ”Maxon” printed to it. Maxon designed and manufactured many models for Ibanez, including TS808 and TS9, FL9 Flanger, CS9 Chorus, and AD9 Analog Delay. PT-909 also exist with different bottom plate and DC jack included:

Note the ”Maxon” text again inside the battery compartment cover. I don’t know why two different configurations exist, but this one is now happily running with power supply with only small invisible modification in the bottom of the chassis:

Current draw list for guitar/bass pedals

Posted on 6.2.2015 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

Several of these can be found from the internet already, but I will be updating this list based to my own measurements, so I can only list those pedals which I have in hand. Some manufacturers are stating these in their manuals, but they are always with the pedal on. What about when the pedal is off? It is still drawing current as the the circuit is still powered although the signal is bypassed. I’ll update this every time I get a new pedal.

So, let’s say you have a Pedaltrain Volto -battery power source. It is stated to be capable of providing a total output power capacity of 500 mAh. You will be powering three pedals, for example Boss ML-2, Fulltone Catalyst, MXR Dyna Comp and MXR Carbon Copy. Current draws for these are 30,3+2,4+4,9+11,3 mA = 48,9 mA considering they are all on. Volto would power them for 500 mAh / 48,9 mA = 10,2 hours. That easy. Or maybe not. Overall working time is affected by overall current draw. Also, you cannot drain Volto totally empty, as it will not feed pedals below certain charge level. So you can only get some estimation of the working time between recharges, as it cannot be calculated exactly.

The power source used is Visual Sound’s 1Spot. All the values are current draws when off/on (max).

Aria

AUM-1 Ultra Metal 8,7 mA / 13,4 mA

BBE

Boosta Grande (Big box) 2,5 mA / 3,2 mA

Behringer

BO100 Blues Overdrive 11,9 mA / 12,8 mA

Boss

BD-2 Blues Driver 11,3 mA / 12,8 mA
CE-5 Chorus Ensemble 20,2 mA / 21,2 mA
CE-5 Chorus Ensemble w/ Monte Allums TB-relay 23,8 mA / 24,2 mA
DS-1 Distortion (dated early 80’s) 4,0mA / 4,2 mA
DS-1 Distortion w/ Monte Allums TB-relay 10,7 mA / 12,3 mA
ML-2 Metal Core 29,4 mA / 30,3 mA
RC-20XL looper 96,3 mA (On, idling)
SD-1 Super Overdrive 5,0 mA / 5,8 mA
SD-1 Super Overdrive w/ Monte Allums TB-relay 8,4 mA / 9,9 mA
TU-3 Chromatic Tuner 17,6 mA / 24,3 mA (On, not tuning)

Carl Martin

Red Repeat Delay 29,5 mA / 31,8 mA
2Wah 2,6 mA / 2,6 mA

Catalinbread

Formula no. 5 0,6 mA / 1,3 mA

Danelectro

Cool Cat Chorus 12,9 mA / 15,7 mA

Devi Ever

Karaoke Party 0,6 mA / 0,9 mA

DOD

Overdrive Preamp 250 Reissue 0,9 mA / 1,6 mA

Dunlop

Fuzz Face Mini Germanium 1,8 mA / 2,3 mA
Dunlop Jimi Hendrix JH-2S Classic Fuzz 1,7 mA / 3,9 mA

EBS

Multicomp (Newer, TB-version) 11,6 mA / 11,7 mA
Unichorus (Newer, TB-version) 16,5 mA / 17,3 mA

Electro-Harmonix

Bass Big Muff Nano Pi 2,3 mA / 3,0 mA
Bass Big Muff 2,2 mA / 2,8 mA
Neo Clone 6,1 mA / 7,3mA

Fulltone

Catalyst 2,5 mA / 2,3 mA (?)
Soul Bender 2,3 mA / 1,9 mA (?)

FYA Electronics

Fancy Change Fuzz 1,0 mA / 1,3 mA

Ibanez

Chorus Mini (CSMini) 7,5 mA / 20,6 mA
Delay Mini (ADMini) 21,6 mA / 34,1 mA
TS-5 3,9 mA / 5,5 mA

Korg

Pitchblack PB-01 0,1 mA / 23 mA (On, not tuning)
Pitchblack Poly PB-03 0,1 mA / 16,4 mA (On, not tuning)

Mad Professor

Sweet Honey Overdrive 3,9 mA / 5,4 mA
Blueberry Bass Overdrive 2,6 mA / 4,3 mA
Stone Gray Distortion 6,5 mA / 7,1 mA

Marshall

Blues Breaker Mk.1 2,5 mA / 4 mA
Drive Master 2,7 / 4,2 mA

MoVall

Scorpion 9,4 mA / 10,6 mA

MXR

Dyna Comp (Late TB-version) 0,9 mA / 3,1 mA
Carbon Copy 11,9 mA / 11,4 mA (?)
M89 Bass Overdrive 19,0 mA / 19,4 mA

J.Rockett

10 Ton Hammer 5,1 mA / 5,3 mA

Pigtronix

Fat Drive 30,1 mA / 30,4 mA

TC Electronic

Ditto Looper 67,5 mA / 70,4 mA (Off/Recording)
Polytune Mini Mk.1 15,6 mA / 45 mA (On, not tuning)
Spark Mini Booster 6,8 mA / 7,1 mA

T-Rex

Sweeper 2 Bass Chorus 64,7 mA / 84,3 mA

Way Huge

Red Llama 2,7 mA / 2,7 mA
Aqua-Puss 11,4 mA / 12,7 mA

Warwick

Rocktuner PT1 2,8 mA / 15,1 mA (On, not tuning)

Vision

MTL-5 Ultra Metal 8,2 mA / 12,3 mA

Xotic

AC Booster 5,1 mA / 5,0 mA (?)

Yerasov

5000V 4,1 mA / 6,3 mA

Zoom

B3 143 mA (On, idling)

ZVEX

Super Hard On 0,8 mA / 2,2 mA

Blackout V-Verb 2

Posted on 17.12.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

I recently built a Belton reverb brick -based reverb, which I assembled in 1590BB -sized box as the reverb brick was too large to fit into smaller box. Now I got a newer model, which is drastically smaller. Fits now to 1590B:

The brick is hiding under circuit board. There is three different versions of this brick with decay length from short to long. This one has medium decay, which seems to be quite all-around -type. I also made some minor adjustments to make this less brittle. Not too many one-knob reverbs in the market. Even less in a smaller box.

Some off-topic. Last weekend I saw a line-up of a top level finnish metal musicians playing christmas songs in heavy metal style. There was two guitarists playing, and another one was playing with a budget level LTD and some Boss pedals. Guess if he was still amazing. Once again I realized that I can build and buy every pedal in this planet, and it won’t bring me any closer to that sound. I cannot obviously change my fingers. Think about that, folks.

Blackout Hehku

Posted on 26.9.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

I recently wrote about the vintage fuzz from 70’s, which I got from my friend, and provided ahead to pedal collector. Promised my friend to build a clone for him. The layout is as following:

As it’s working with -9V, I slightly modified it to get it working with a regular Boss-type power supply. The needed modifications are reversed electrolytes and diode, nothing more. Because Carlsbro’s fuzz is actually a circuit clone of the MkIV, there is some additional modifications. The resistor between tone 2 and volume 2 is 120K instead of 220K, and the volume pot’s value is B200k instead of B100k. Transistors in my build are russian MP38A’s from the 70’s. Pure USSR NOS-parts together with germanium diode 1N034 bring tons of a mojo to this. I had minor difficulties in finding MP38A’s pinout, so I’ll put it there in case somebody is in the same situation:

Finished this and connected it to my pedal chain. Believe me, this one has the sound the feeling! All the mojo combined with heavenly fuzz sound makes this overwhelmingly the best fuzz I’ve ever heard. I immediately turned the soldering iron back on, and created another one for myself. It moved to my pedal board permanently.

Talking about the pedal chain. Fuzzes with germanium transistors don’t like ”seeing” anything before them. They need to be the first pedal in your chain. Otherwise there can be drastic impact in tone response. Well, of course this is something clearly depending on one’s taste. Feel free to experiment, but this is my opinion.

The name of this pedal is coming from the biker club I am connected to. It’s spealized in russian motorcycles, so how appropriate. The one I gave away is optionally operable with 9V battery. I don’t need it myself, so mine isn’t.

Blackout Blue Angel

Posted on 1.9.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

Chorus and delay pedals are always the last two pedals in my effect chain. So why not to combine them into one 1590BB -enclosure. Made a basic circuit arrangement myself:

Chorus

There’s not too many alternatives in delay and chorus circuits which can be built in vero board. I first inspected the possibility to use Modtone’s Aqua Chorus by just rehousing it, but it appeared to be too large. Found a schematic of this Little Angel Chorus, which can be built in 19×18 -sized vero board. Sounds all right, but I had some issues with PT2399 -IC, which is the actual heart of the circuit. It locked up once, so I needed to add a separate anti-locking daughterboard. It would have been possible to fix the existing circuit board, but I decided to leave it alone as it was working other than that. I also noticed that the depth pot (B500K) had any effect only at the end of its range. I changed it to C500K to spread the usable range of the sweep.

Chorus circuit

Delay

Mad Professor’s Deep Blue Delay is also quite compact being sized 18×19 assembled in vero board. It has the same IC (PT2399) that the chorus side has. Not any issues with that in this circuit. It worked right away. Three knobs is all I need in delay pedal, so this is a good choice for me. The only thing I forgot was to connect the mix-knob’s one lug to the ground. It worked a bit oddly, I must say. I still was able to find a spot where it was working just ok. Still, I couldn’t stand it for long as it bothered me anyway, so I opened the box once again, and saw the reason immediatelly without a need to reassemble the whole thing.

Housing

As mentioned before, the enclosure is 1590BB. I made a separate daughterboard for +9V- and grounding distribution. Also placed the on/off LEDs’ resistors into this board. With two jacks, one power jack, two circuit boards, two daughterboards, five pots and two switches it still fits quite easily into enclosure:

Input signal goes via the first footswitch either to the chorus circuit, or to the second footswitch. Then it goes either to the delay circuit, or to the output jack. With both footswitches unengaged the signal goes from jack to jack unaffected. I prefer having chorus effect before delay, but it can be either way. It’s very easy to change them afterwards if needed. Just swap the input and output signal wires between the footswitches.

Decals are made by Olli from CIS Decals, who’ve made the stickers and decals for many of my pedals.

Blackout Blue Angel:

Blackout Circumference 2

Posted on 23.8.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

This one was ordered by my friend who needed three loops instead of two. Also, the buffer switch in Circumference 1 was too close of the channel 2 switch to be used on stage. The layout is pretty much the same:

Third loop is added, and the fourth LED is indicating if the power is on or not. With buffer off this works without a external power source, but the channel LED’s of course won’t work. Without a buffer circuit this could be whole passive, and there could be a battery inside the enclosure just to power up the indicator LED’s.

Let me mention that compared to simplicity of the circuit, these are quite toilsome.

Blackout Circumference 2:

Blackout Tshernobyl/Fukushima

Posted on 18.8.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

Tired of low-quality, disturbance sensitive power blocks sold with expensive price? Building up that kind of a system with ground lifted outputs is not so difficult after all. If the isolation is not needed (I’ve never needed), just use one Visual 1-Spot power source with 1700mA of maximum current, and build up a block which just daisy-chains the power to output DC-jacks. Like this:

Fukushima on top. Both have a buffer circuit between input and output jacks. Fukushima is the only buffer in my long guitar effect chain, Tshernobyl belongs to my smaller bass rig. Jacks are placed to match my pedal boards right. Bigger one has a AMZ Super Buffer and 8 daisy-chained, ground lifted DC-outs in different sides of the enclosure with power cutting switch, the smaller one has a Mad Professor Buffer and 4 DC-outs. Neither have a switch for the buffer, as it doesn’t make sense. If you don’t need it, just don’t connect it. Both units’ buffer circuit’s ground wire is connected to the stereo input jack’s 2nd ring, so if the guitar cable is connected, the buffer circuit is offline. Fukushima has another led to indicate if the buffer circuit is engaged or not. Fukushima’s power switch actually works as a output signal muting switch. It cuts the power of the buffer circuit also. Smaller one doesn’t have a separate power switch.

1700mA is grantedly enough to serve any kind of a effect chain, as my guitar effect chain doesn’t even exceed 150mA. 1-spot is very small and has a long power cable. It’s reportedly quite noisy in some circumstances, but I’ve never had such problems. By the way, I couldn’t imagine what would be a better faraday cage than a aluminium enclosure. Tested these in difficult conditions, and both are dead quiet. So this more like replaces your daisy-chain power distribution cable, and gives a change to solder power cables for every single effect pedal with just the right cable length. Neat and durable. Of course, you cannot beat a good solid power sorce with regulated and isolated outputs, but this is worth to try especially if you play mainly at home. This is not replacing real (expensive) power sources, but grantedly is better than a common daisy-chain system.

Blackout Tshernobyl and Blackout Fukushima:

Blackout Reds Fixer

Posted on 14.8.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

Mid-90’s Marshall stompboxes are nowadays somewhat appreciated, and some of those are beginning to be rarities. I’ve owned my Blues Breaker (sic!) since late 90’s. Bought it second hand for some 10 euros. Today you can easily sell it for 150 euros. I would still invest that sum if I hadn’t one already, because it’s overwhelming number one of its kind. Sweet Honey/Honey Bee overdrives are operating in the same area, but they are more bright and ”hi-fi”, and so less blues. I also own a Sweet Honey OD, and it cannot beat this one.

I’ve kept my original carelessly:

It’s working 100%, and even has the battery compartment cover safe. Still, there is some concerns if you are gigging with it. Jacks are plastic and PCB -mounted, and therefore not very liable. Switches are also known to be somewhat poor in this series. Instead of changing them when they are still fully operable, it’s more reasonable to save this treasure and make a clone out of it. Layout looks like this:

One problem in the original is that its enclosure is huge. Also, jacks are installed to enclosure’s butt-end, which makes it a bit hard to fit into pedal board. Being 21 slots wide, this fits to 1590B just barely.

By oversight I put a 220pF ceramic disc capacitor into place of 220nF, and spent some time inspecting where all my gains were gone. I should be more careful sometimes. In A/B -test it’s impossible to hear any difference between the clone and the original one. I’ve tested tens if not hundreds of overdrive pedals, and I am always going back to Blues Breaker. Now when it’s installed in smaller enclosure and has top-level level switch and jacks, it’s unlikely I find anything better than this. Let me introduce you, Marshall Blues Breaker’s younger brother Blackout Reds Fixer:

Blackout V-Verb

Posted on 5.8.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

I am usually using my amps’ reverbs, because I really don’t mind having one more pedal in my board and tweaking with several knobs to get the same result. I earlier assembled a Belton reverb brick to my Blackheart Little Giant, and it was working well. So why not to use the same idea in a stompbox. Harald Sabro has a ready schematic:

Without a large reverb brick this should fit to 1590B, but now I didn’t even try. I only had older style Belton brick in stock, which is remarkably larger that the new one. Actually, the large brick gives a good mounting base for the board:

There’s three different types of this reverb brick in the market; short, medium and long decay. Mine is the long version, which gives a long surf-type reverb even with lower setting. Still, there is something to fix. This is a bit too bright now, so I have to tweak a little to make this less sharp. The operation system is quite straight forward. Not too many one-knob reverbs in the market:

Blackout Circumference

Posted on 30.7.2013 by Vesku Posted in Pedals .

A/B -testing pedals may be painful without a looper. On the other hand, it maybe useful to get some tone-sucking pedals off the line when they are not in use. If you have some two or more simultaneous effects in your solo sound, it’s almost a necessity. A simple looper is very easy to make, even so easy that I decided to add something more to it. As said before the need of buffer(s) in your signal path is more or less questionable. It has to be tested to know whether you need one or not. So I added a switchable buffer into box. I drew a schematic myself, which is as following:

In my case I have only two loops, because this is more like utility box for me. The loop can be of course prolonged according to your needs. It’s recommendable to add buffer in every case, especially if the amount of the loops is increased. Not necessarily it has to be switchable. I added the switch only for testing purposes. Now this one works like this:

Signal is going from input jack to DPDT -switch. Then it’s either going to the buffer circuit or bypasses it. The two 3PDT switches are loop on/off -switches. In case that the buffer is bypassed, and both the loops are switched off, the signal is going straight from jack to jack unaffected. Both the loops have signal leds. Buffer hasn’t as it’s nothing to switch on and off constantly. Buffer in my case is from Mad Professor Ruby Red -booster, but it can be whatever you like.

Let me mention that this was absolutely the last time I am even trying to get any kind of a looper in 1590B -enclosure. Took hours of tinkering with forceps and a bunch of beer. No, I’m talking about hellish state of a intoxication here.

Every children has to have a name, so this one is Blackout Circumference. Could be Blackout Asspain as well:

Seuraava sivu »