Aion Electronics Gale Pedal

I've been looking into cool pedals for a while and I'd seen the SoloDallas Pedals and given that I have a SG and a Marshall DSL20 it seemed like the perfect match, well except for the price tag ($199 USD) for the pedal which meant that I never purchased one.

But recently I stumbled across Aion Electronics who has a load of PCBs for all sorts of pedals as well as schematics etc. and it seemed only fitting that I dive into another guitar project but one that I can do inside when the weather is rubbish. So I ordered his Gale PCB which is a essentially a SoloDallas Storm. Will post up some pictures when it arrives. Until then here is the link https://aionelectronics.com/project/...oster-limiter/

Pretty cool Woltz.
I had a look at some of their OD's (I'm a dirt pedal junkie).
I'd be interested what your cost comes out to with parts & enclosure.
If I get bored, I may price out one of their overdrives and see what it totals.

I've done some pedal mods, but never a full build. Though I've thought about it more than once. You've kind of piqued my interest again. (but I do have two guitars going atm :))
Cheers

Many years ago I built the (now discontinued) BYOC OD2 from a kit. It ended up costing a lot (around $200 as I recall), but I had fun building it. Full kits seem to come at a premium price compared to buying spare parts along with veroboard or PCB builds, especially if you are prepared to buy components in bulk. I have a fairly good stash of parts for building stuff from https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/. I too love dirt pedals :). I have all the parts to build a Guvnor now.

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Originally Posted by McCreed

Pretty cool Woltz.
I had a look at some of their OD's (I'm a dirt pedal junkie).
I'd be interested what your cost comes out to with parts & enclosure.
If I get bored, I may price out one of their overdrives and see what it totals.

I've done some pedal mods, but never a full build. Though I've thought about it more than once. You've kind of piqued my interest again. (but I do have two guitars going atm :))
Cheers

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I've priced it out and it comes to around $70 (AUD) for all the components except for a power supply and a 9V battery. Also not including any freight.

The four components that are expensive in this pedal is the NSL-32 Opto-isolator ($12 from Pedal Parts), the LM386N-1 IC which I can only find at Jaycar ($3.95) the 125B enclosure ($11 from Pedal Parts) and the PCB from Aion (About $19)

I could probably get those components except for the PCB from eBay cheaper but you do run the risk of crappy quality depending on the seller.

To make the most of the freight cost ($10) for the PCB, I actually ordered their Aurora PCB at the same time to do a 2nd pedal which will be close to a Janglebox.

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$70 for a $200 plus pedal plus the fund of building it! great

Just arrived.

https://i.imgur.com/YKgneOa.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/oPjAoMg.jpg

Got the boards pretty much done. First time soldering to a PCB but I think it went ok and hopefully I didn't make any mistakes.

https://i.imgur.com/O01WNjQ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/JsnhpZN.jpg

The solder joints look good, so as long as everything is in the right place you should be fine.

I always find the next stage the most frustrating. When I finish the board I feel like the pedal is done, but there is at least as much work still to go with the offboard wiring and enclosure.

Yep I'm actually still waiting on the enclosure to get here from Tayda and then I need to work out how I'm putting the graphic on the enclosure. But I'm going to shoot into Better Music tomorrow and grab a 9V adapter and daisy chain so that I can wire this up and test it first before it goes into an enclosure.

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Originally Posted by Woltz

Yep I'm actually still waiting on the enclosure to get here from Tayda and then I need to work out how I'm putting the graphic on the enclosure. But I'm going to shoot into Better Music tomorrow and grab a 9V adapter and daisy chain so that I can wire this up and test it first before it goes into an enclosure.

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Is that the giant Better Music in Phillip? I am always afraid to go in there for fear of GAS. I have run out of power supply connectors (I only have 8) so I now need to work out how to power the two new pedals I am building. Do I buy a new daisy chain supply, or a fancy isolated supply with 10 or 12 outputs?

As for graphics, I have been using laser printer decal paper along with acrylic lacquer cans for colours and clear. For the Phase 45 I am going to attempt polishing the metal to a high shine.

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Originally Posted by jugglindan

Is that the giant Better Music in Phillip? I am always afraid to go in there for fear of GAS. I have run out of power supply connectors (I only have 8) so I now need to work out how to power the two new pedals I am building. Do I buy a new daisy chain supply, or a fancy isolated supply with 10 or 12 outputs?

As for graphics, I have been using laser printer decal paper along with acrylic lacquer cans for colours and clear. For the Phase 45 I am going to attempt polishing the metal to a high shine.

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Yep, only about 10 minute drive for me to get there which is convenient. Ah yeh GAS is a problem with that store, two floors worth of music gear, if you can't find something in that store that you "need" then you aren't a musician.

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Originally Posted by Woltz

Yep, only about 10 minute drive for me to get there which is convenient. Ah yeh GAS is a problem with that store, two floors worth of music gear, if you can't find something in that store that you "need" then you aren't a musician.

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I'm not a real musician by any means, but I still have to be very careful there.

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Originally Posted by jugglindan

I'm not a real musician by any means, but I still have to be very careful there.

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Haha mate my guitar playing ability is barely above beginner and I still see heaps of things I "need".

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Ha ha. Sometimes I feel like the guitar player that nobody wants in their band, but they let me hang around to use my gear or to build pedals for them.

Fortunately, I don't care. I only play for enjoyment at home, so if I happen to enjoy playing the same 3 riffs 100 times while changing diodes in a pedal, so be it :)

Those in the know argue that you should spend money on a decent power supply, especially if you are going to play at volume. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, I use a daisy chain and it works fine for home.:o

BTW, I love Better Music's online store too.

I have a joyo daisy chain, but I am already using all 8 connectors. Only 1 pedal runs on an isolated supply for noise reasons.

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Originally Posted by Andy40

Those in the know argue that you should spend money on a decent power supply, especially if you are going to play at volume. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, I use a daisy chain and it works fine for home.:o

BTW, I love Better Music's online store too.

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Yeh I'm only playing at home. The only time people might pay me would be to shut up haha.

In my view the best way to prove whether the daisy chain is sufficient is to measure the current draw of each of the pedals and ensure the power supply is capable of supplying the total required current.

Obviously noise as Jugglin mentioned is another consideration.

I don't love the Better Music website because it's not as easy to navigate as some other music store websites but that is likely just because they have so many products on there. Fortunately being in Canberra I can just go into the store.

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My daisy chain brick is rated at 2A. Checking on The Power List for my pedals or equivalents, I can see the Barber Direct Drive was measured at 11mA. Assume my clone is hungrier, so say 20mA. JHS Little Black Buffer 19mA. TS-9 7.5mA. MXR phase 45 1mA. Hotone Xtomp mini 250mA max. Digitech Trio ~450mA. Ammoon Looper 140mA.

There's a trend there. The analog pedals are very low power. I could in theory run almost 200 of them at a time off my 2A power supply. I typically have just 2 to 5 on at any time. The digital pedals tend to be an order of magnitude hungrier. But they are also noisier so I run most of them off a separate power brick anyway - except for the looper. It doesn't add any power noise so I run it off the daisy chain.

Based on this, I just ordered a 6 plug extension to my daisy chain.

I do get small amounts of noise when running through the board with all pedals off, but this is probably mostly thermal noise (Johnson-Nyquist noise) that is generated simply by running power through any circuit. The noise gate in my amp handles this nicely. The noise introduced by running my Trio on the daisy chain is much louder and more annoying.

I remember when Better Music was in a little hole-in-the-wall shop on Colbee Court.
The new store is very impressive and a several of the staff are still there from the "old days".
I feel like I've watched some of them grow up!

They always treated me well and were very supportive by sending students my way. I've continued to buy from them even after moving to QLD. I bought my Fender Deluxe Reverb Tonemaster from them last year. They gave me the best price they could at the time (Fender gives them very thin margins btw) it was a pre-order and has only dropped $11 since its release, so I'm still happy :cool:

I bought my THR10c from them many years ago via their website. I also took my G&L there for a full setup last year. A bit pricey but they did a great job. I am hoping I learn enough from my tele build that I will be able to look after all my guitars myself.

No question about customer service. I've always been happy with their staff. I bought my SG and Marshall DSL there and I've bought my strings, accessories for other instruments and sheet music from there as well.

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Boards all done, did a quick wire up to the sockets so that I can test. I'll tidy up the wiring once the enclosure gets here and I do a test fit.

https://i.imgur.com/DjfgFTS.jpg

And here's the messy test setup.

https://i.imgur.com/0atFglS.jpg

What did I play you might ask? Well, what do you play with a SG, a Marshall and a Schaffer Replica? AC/DC of course.

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Struggling to come up with a graphic for the pedal. This is what I have at the moment.

https://i.imgur.com/IcwWjcx.jpg

Tidy work there Woltz

Artwork looks good. How do you apply it? Colour decal? Screenprint?

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I can't claim the artwork as mine. I grabbed the cartoon off the net and used illustrator to layout the pedal with the text. I'm thinking opaque water decal with clear coat or epoxy over the top but I need to research more.

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I don't make my own drawings either. I just grab stuff online and mash them up in Inkscape. I don't have a colour printer, so all my decals are in black.

I have used SCA clear over decals. When I used it over acrylic lacquer paint it worked great, but it did not adhere to a powder coated enclosure.

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Either it's a very big box or you'll be using very small knobs. If not, you might want to think about moving the text so it doesn't get obscured.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Either it's a very big box or you'll be using very small knobs. If not, you might want to think about moving the text so it doesn't get obscured.

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Yeh the dots are just marking the location to drill. I'll do a test print on paper first to confirm there is no issues.

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Couldn't be bothered waiting for warm weather to do the decal on the enclosure. I just decided to box it so I can use it because I have other projects that I want to put time into.

https://i.imgur.com/YRrcMKX.jpg

Just a cheeky bit of masking tape for labels at the moment.

https://i.imgur.com/o1WVJpl.jpg

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Looks good. My OD-2 went for 7 years with crap paint and hand-written sharpie labels. Still sounded good :)