Voodoo Octave Fuzz becomes Compact Direct Drive #2

[jugglindan]

Bakersdozen hatched a plan to convert his Joyo Voodoo Octave Fuzz to a Barber Compact Direct Drive. The enclosure is a perfect match for the number of pots and switches. Rather than the two toggle switches of my build, this one will have the gain switch on the second footswitch. This is a mod I wish mine had.

To make it interesting, I am going to see how many parts can be salvaged from the Joyo. From its ashes a new pedal will arise.

Hopefully.

Still waiting on the Joyo pedal to arrive in the mail, but I have made a start on the main board for the CDD. Board cut to size, track cuts made and triple checked, some components soldered. But I have posted so many photos of boards in this state there is no value from posting more just yet.

[Bakersdozen]

Yesss! A build diary I'm excited to watch this hatch. The compact drive is a pedal I always wanted to have and seeing DC's original build progress and how happy he was with it, I approached him to see if it was something he wanted to have a play around with considering he's already done the hard yards by building one already.

The Joyo Voodoo Octave - I was never happy with this pedal and I think I even tried to do some advertised mods to it in the past and it still just sat collecting dust. I looked at it and it had the exact layout that would work in terms of pot and switch holes.



Once DC gave me the green light, I immediately set to work scraping the text and print off the face of the pedal and gave it a metallic gold vinyl wrap. Cool a green and gold pedal.



Now what to do for a decal. I wanted to capture something about the Gold top and possibly the green, but not sure. After some pondering I realised the Gold element in the periodic table was also number 79 which is the same vintage as me. Cool. Also it has the Au label, so that kind of blends in with the Aussie "green and gold" situation. Cool. Some fenangling with Inkscape I later came up with this for a layout.




It looks good over the goldtop and I also added a double red pinstripe around the sides to kind of go with the name of the pedal. In my haste to get it in the post, I forgot to take some shots of it all prettied up. Oh well, enough from me now over to the master builder. Should arrive momentarily...

[jugglindan]

I didn't know you were 79

Got the links, diodes, and three-quarters of the resistors done tonight. Should get the rest of the main board finished this week.

I will post photos of the enclosure when it gets here, before I get a chance to stuff it up. I swear things get scratches just by me looking at them.

DC

[jugglindan]

Main board finished but for 2 caps which are an out of series value. They should be here later this week. After they go on I will turn my attention to reclaiming parts from the Joyo pedal. So far, this board is turning out neater than the first one.

[Bakersdozen]

Very tidy work there mate.

[Simon Barden]

I expect it took you two hours to solder that lot.

[jugglindan]

Very tidy work there mate.

Thanks. I have reached the point where I don't even need to measure the leads, it's just "this resistor spans 4 holes, bend about here and here". And I swapped to a different solder composition which is giving me much shinier joins.

I expect it took you two hours to solder that lot.

A bit longer than 2 actually. I move slowly, measuring component values, continuity testing, inspecting each solder join and so on. It's slowest when doing the first components. With fewer known-good landmarks on the board there is a lot more counting. As the board fills the relative placement of new components gets faster.

And yes, I get the reference to my lame joke elsewhere

[McCreed]

What's the second footswitch do?
I see BD has it labelled as Bypass, but doesn't it just do that when the pedal isn't engaged?

[Bakersdozen]

What's the second footswitch do?
I see BD has it labelled as Bypass, but doesn't it just do that when the pedal isn't engaged?

Hey McCreed - dang I really wanna call you Mike McCready (oh well that's my personal battle haha)...The second footswitch (gain) will engage the toggle between low gain and high gain. The bypass switch will work as advertised, just turning the circuit on and off in a true bypass manner.

Your most likely all over it already, but here is the link to the original pedal.

[jugglindan]

The second footswitch is a mod I mentioned wishing I made to my build. The original CDD (and my build) have a toggle switch that selects between the low and high gain voicing. I found that when I set the pedal for a nice low-gain-almost-clean-but-for-a-touch-of-hair-and-breakup-that-responds-to-guitar-volume-and-pick-dynamics sound (does that have a shorter name?) that simply flipping to high-gain mode gave me a great tone very similar to a Marshall Guv'nor pedal. So two very useful but different effects on the toggle, meaning I don't need to spend time dialing in different sounds when switching. I mentioned that it would have been better to control that with a second footswitch, so that's what we are doing to this one.

The harmonics switch is more subtle so it doesn't really need a footswitch. On my low gain settings the harmonics toggle adds more bite from the filter letting higher harmonics through while keeping it in the almost-clean zone. I like to use it when fingerpicking. I don't have nails so the harmonics switch helps compensate for the softer attack. Works beautifully with the Orange Squeezer in front of it.

It's a lovely pedal. I really want to track down the schematic. From the board layout I can see hints of some unusual design choices - the voltage divider biasing the op amp looks odd for example.

DC