Nick Glover

What is that? It’s what I call the Amp Can. It goes between my guitar amp’s output and the speaker to cut the signal’s volume. Why? Because tube amps sound better loud, but that means that, well, it has to be loud. Stick the Amp Can in there and you get all the benefits of cranking the amp without the hearing loss! How does it work?

It’s really pretty simple. It’s just an in jack, 4 resistors (big 20w resistors), and an out jack. This web site has a little more info on the specifics. I built the bridged-T resistive circuit since it is supposed to be better. Resistive designs are not as good as fancier designs because they tend to affect the tone a bit, especially at higher levels of attenuation, but I was only doing a little bit of volume cutting, so it’s not noticeable. You could also build one that’s adjustable, but I can’t buy the parts for that at RadioShack, so I went with a fixed one. It cuts the volume by 6 dB.

Now if only I had a lid for the can…

I’ve been trying to get rid of all my unnecessary belongings recently so that I have less to worry about when I move and I’ve come across a lot of people trying to cheat me out of some money, so I thought I’d post a little information on the obvious signs someone isn’t interested in what you’re selling.

• Probably the first sign is really bad English. That’s not always going to be true, but if they ask things like, “Can you tell me the presently condion?” chances are they are scammers.
• If they refer to what you are selling as “the item.” Most real people will refer to whatever it is you’re listing by name (not always, but be wary).
• The next sign is if they tell you they want to buy it for someone out of the country or they are currently out of the country and want you to ship it to them. At least half of the offers I received were from people who wanted to surprise a family member overseas with a nice gift. Uh huh. Sure.
• Actually, just avoid shipping in general. There was another guy who wanted me to ship it to him, and it seemed legit enough that I even went so far as to have him send me a check, but it looked very fake and was for a good $800 more than I asked for. He, of course, said I should just deposit him and send him a check for the leftover amount as if he had accidentally sent me that much more.
• If you send them a reply and their response is from a different email address or has a completely different name, there’s a good chance it’s not a real person interested in your sale.
• If they offer you more than you’re asking for, it’s a scam. This one should be fairly obvious, but just in case it isn’t, think about it for a second. Are you really going to offer someone more money than they are asking for? I don’t think so. Neither is anyone else.
• If they refer to you as “my friend” all the time, avoid them. Okay, so this one might not always apply, but some scammer did that to me and it was annoying enough that even if he was a real person I wouldn’t have sold it to him.

That’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but it should cover the basics. Trust your instincts. You’re not obligated to sell to anyone just because you emailed them a couple of times.

Finally finished my Big Muff clone. It’s based on the schematic from the BYOC Large Beaver, which is in turn based on the original Big Muff pedal used by Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Smashing Pumpkins, and numerous others. At least, mine is based on the original. They also provide schematics for later versions, but I chose to go with what I thought would sound best. And boy does it sound gooooood.

It took me all week to get it working. With both my previous BYOC builds, like the OD2 I built a while back, I used a PCB and enclosure from BYOC. This time, I decided to lay it out on perfboard and make my own enclosure. It was very aggravating, but also very satisfying once it worked. The biggest problem I had was that several of my connections were wrong when I made the layout, so I put it together wrong. Luckily, BYOC has a helpful community of pedal builders that can look things over for me and tell me I’m an idiot.

I salvaged the enclosure from an old printer selector box I had lying around. I have no idea why I had it lying around, but there it was… It’s a very sturdy box, which also means that it’s a big pain to drill holes in, but at least it’s not going to break.

I’ve changed that knob to something else. Originally, there was to be a selector knob there, but I ended up going a different route and put the original selector knob back.

I decided to keep the printer ports on instead of having big holes. This way I can confuse people, too.

That big thing in the back right corner is the original selector switch used with the printer ports. Every single pin on the ports had to be connected to it, so it’s a little intense. Those white wires are the places I messed up the layout and had to redo a couple connections. It’s not quite as neat this way, but it works, so whatever. On the right, you can see a smaller daughterboard that I’m using in place of the selector knob. It works just like the jumpers on the back of a hard drive. The jumpers specify what the EQ curve is going to look like. The three stock options, as you can see on the board, are mid scoop, flat, and mid boost. The fourth stock option is bypass, which is useful for when you are running a bass through the pedal and don’t want to loose so much bass. However, my jumpers provide a fifth option, though I’m not exactly sure what the EQ curve would look like. Somewhere between flat and mid boost, I guess. UPDATE: Turns out that if I add in a fourth jumper, I should theoretically be able to have both the bypass and the tone circuit active at the same time, meaning I would be able to have the un-EQed signal and the EQed signal coming out at the same time. Could be interesting for bass when I want more low end.

The only things left are to stick in a battery holder in case I ever need to use a battery and to put velcro on the bottom so it stays on my pedalboard.

I also put a true bypass switch in my wah pedal (finally), but I don’t think I’m going to bother posting pictures because it’s basically just the original pedal with a different switch. Not very exciting. Projects still left: Billm mods for my Blues Jr. (when I finally get the kit) and improving my doorbell alert system with a real opto-isolator.

I’ve got a couple projects on my plate that I will post some updates about soon (probably later this week). First, I realized that I had a lot of the parts needed to make a BYOC Large Beaver, which is a clone of the famous Big Muff pedal. Rather than order a BYOC PCB, I decided to build this one myself on some perfboard. This will be my first project on perfboard, so there is going to be lots of planning involved. Good thing I just won a Maker’s Notebook! I did have to order a couple extra parts, though, so I also ordered a couple real opto-isolators to replace my homemade one. I will update that project with the new parts when I figure out how to use them. I also picked up a small mic from Radio Shack, so I’d like to start experimenting with that. Finally, I ordered one of the Billm mod kits for my Fender Blues Jr. amp, so I will try to post that project, too.