Slacking with the image making

I haven't taken a picture in probably 2 months. This is pretty abnormal for me, because for a long time that is pretty much all I did. Partly it's because I've been too busy to go and do anything, and partly because I love going to shows and there haven't been many worth seeing in a while. I did come across some really cool photos recently though:

The first set is 11 crazy ass pictures taken by satellites of things happening on the earth.



The second set is of 25 photos that were taken at the exact right time.





The last set is a set of three photos scanned from original prints of French nuclear bomb tests in 1968.

Second Pedal Build

I finished my second pedal. The build quality is substantially better than the first because I have a much better Idea of what I'm doing. I took pictures of the build as it went on, it took about a week, mostly because of painting the enclosure, but it's done and works. Here's some photos of the progress. Forgive the shitty/blurry pictures from my phone. I should have used a real camera, but its so inconvenient.

Here is a (blurry) photo of the top side of the circuit board:



This pedal can be built like either the MXR Distortion+ or the DOD 250 Overdrive. There's only a few differences in the specs, so I socketed all of the solder pads where these changes are made so I can change components really quickly. In this photo (not like you can tell anyways), the pedal is being built at Distortion+ specs, but the parts for the OD 250 are in this bag:



Here's the underside of the circuit board all soldered up and ready to be mounted in the enclosure:



I finally got the paint to look satisfactory. I used some of the textured spray paint that is supposed to look like stone or something. It looks pretty cool I think:



It took me about an hour and a half to get it all wired up and ready to mount the already-built circuit board in. Mainly because I'm slow at soldering still (I learned how just as I built the first pedal a few weeks ago). Here's a shot of the inside with all the wires sticking out ready to go in:



The toggle switch I used was a DPDT switch. It was huge and made fitting everything inside a complete hassle, but it worked in the end:



If you look at the bottom, between the two prongs at the top is a 3rd germanium diode (the other 2 are on the circuit board). The bottom prongs are connected by the wire jumper that would have gone in the pedal if it was built completely stock. Here's another angle:



The two green wire leads connect to the circuit board. The switch lets me play the pedal stock in the "off" position and with asymmetrical clipping in the "on" position. The advantage of this is that it provides a more tube-like overdrive, although it is a very subtle difference and is slightly quieter. This is what the huge ass toggle looks like unmounted:



Eventually, I did get everything into the enclosure, plus a battery, and it worked on the first try. Pretty nice if I do say so my self:



For my next build, I'm building a huge ass spring-reverb pedal a la the one on generalguitargadgets. But until all the parts show up, I get to enjoy this one:



I think the next pedal build after the reverb will either be a tube screamer clone, or a big muff clone. Haven't decided for sure yet, but it will be one of those.

Post-Build Update: Billy Knuckles recorded one last time in order to get all the songs we never recorded onto tape, onto tape. I used this pedal for it and thought it sounded delicious. I also used it for our last show on Sunday 11-18-07.