Why I Rarely Post Projects Anymore

Alot of my projects are things I've thought of (unless otherwise noted) and over the years I've gotten a bit pissed off with people building my stuff, selling it on without even bothering to credit me in anyway. I don't care if people build/sell this stuff but one of the unwritten rules of open source stuff is that you always credit the original person.

I've seen many of my projects floating around being sold by various people with no mention or link to where it came from and it put me off sharing stuff so I simply stopped bothering putting effort into posting here. But seeing this on eBay was the straw that broke the camels back. 

people within "open source" give you stuff they've spent time and money developing - the very least you can do is respect them enough to link to the original post and/or credit them ESPECIALLY if you're making money out of them.

behringer-uv300-Mod

Guitar Lead Muting Studio Aid

I've had this little box stuck to the side of my bench for quite a while to plug various leads into while they are out of use but still plugged into amplifiers/fx or other studio stuff to basically stop the equipment buzzing at me. My friend said it might be useful for other people so I'm sharing it here.

What is it?
a little box which is essentially a jack plug socket with a 47ohm resistor across it.

Its uses:
a lot of my guitars have active pickups so you can't just leave the lead plugged into them and leaving the lead on the floor buzzing away while you're messing with with a song is a big annoyance

I also have a few different FX chains that need to be isolated from each other so this comes in handy then as well.

The little box is at arms reach so I can just grab the lead easily and not have to twist my back reaching for the bugger.

Soft Latch True Bypass (Relay) Switch For Guitar Effects Stripboard veroboard Layout

People often like to retrofit their guitar effects with "true bypass" switches but this usually means wrecking the pedal case by drilling holes in it and stripping out the buffered section etc.

Personally I don't like doing this modification, I like there to be a buffer because there is always a degree of signal loss in pedal chains but this is here for those who do like to do it.

as it uses a mechanical relay (which can be found at Rapid Electronics or wherever - the one I used is the 12v version of this one ) it is exactly the same as a true bypass switch and adds nothing to the signal.
it is quite small so it can fit in some pedals (like a tubescreamer) or you could use it externally to maybe bypass a whole group of pedals (or just one of course)

it's worth mentioning that this has many other uses such as controlling high power relays with a little tact/push switch and so on

NB: if you find you're getting misfire clicks you can make the capacitor a higher value - that part acts as a crude debounce - the higher it is the more stable it becomes but the slower you can turn it on and off but I found 220n was fine for guitar bypassing

hope you like.

for the purpose of perspective

Behringer UV300 Rate Mod (Slow Down)

I thought I'd take a quick venture into modifying a effects pedal. The one I chose was the Behringer UV300 ( Ultra Vibrato ) I love Behringer gear and in most cases they do a really good job at effects and pretty well everything they put their minds to (see the X3!)
anyway I bought this on a whim cause it was very very cheap, I didn't even bother looking for samples because if I'm honest there is only so many times one can watch people doing out of tune covers of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds while reviewing Vibrato pedals - also they never turn the rate down to nothing to show you how slow it goes.

as you can probably tell by this post, the "rate" didn't go as slow as I wanted, I like that sort of hypnotic warped record vibrato which this pedal couldn't do however with a little knowledge of how oscillators work and a bit of time probing around with a scope I was able to modify this to go slow enough

In order to slow down the range of the Rate control you basically just have to add capacitors in parallel with C12 and C15 - or you can swap them completely for higher values - the higher you go the slower it is however you need whatever capacitors you add to be very close in value to each other because if one is very different you get an uneven vibrato.
anyway here are the pictures.

if you have any questions - ask!

and you don't need to rehouse behringer pedals, the plastic is very strong - it easily withstands being dropped down stone stairs many times.

solder very quickly otherwise you'll be resoldering SMD stuff!

it's a good idea to do this in order to tailor it to your preference

the part of the circuit I am changing

The Behringer UV300 with its nice new switch