# Ca-ca-ca-catch the wave! Max Headroom Meridian (Aion FX)



## peccary (May 16, 2021)

I decided to branch out from PedalPCB and have had an onslaught of PCBs arriving at my house this past month or so. The first one I decided to tackle was the Meridian from Aion FX, based on the Gyuatone/Nady PS-021. I built the bass version (PS-020).

I wasn't able to find out much about the bass version of this pedal online - either the Aion clone of the original units. But it being a bass effect from the 80's got my attention and I had to build one.

I boxed this one up, tried it out, and it didn't work - it wasn't passing signal at all. I pulled it out of the enclosure and tested it for continuity with the DMM and it was working, so I plugged it in outside of the enclosure and it was working fine, so I put it back in the enclosure and it's good to go. Not sure what I was shorting out on but I can't complain now.

I haven't had much time with it and I think it is going to take some time to dial in. I can say that the "Exciter" control is very subtle and seems to be influenced by the "Color" knob. You can go from big, fat woof to lo-fi with this thing. I did find out that it plays *very* well with the Mercurial Boost, and that was when I was having the most fun with it and getting sounds out of it that I liked. I bet it will be fine on it's own, but the Mercurial Boost just seems to liven up everything it touches and has become my favorite pedal in short order. I found that when I was getting the heft I wanted from Max I was missing some drive and grind, and Freddie just brought it right back in.

This was the first time I built a PCB from another builder and it was a different experience. I appreciate PedalPCB's way of handling off-board wiring. It was my first time with Aion but it took me a lot longer to do the wiring than it does with PedalPCB. I'm glad I am branching out to other builders - the more of these I do from different people the more I'll learn.


----------



## Harry Klippton (May 16, 2021)

You nailed the no film dude


----------



## peccary (May 16, 2021)

Harry Klippton said:


> You nailed the no film dude


Thanks. I actually did this one at the same time I did the Mercurial boost. I had a super clean decal without any ghosting or anything, and I got too greedy and tried to move it a smidge after it was already kind of set and ended up causing a mess. You can actually see a piece of that first decal stuck to the bottom rim in the gut shot. This decal had a few little smudges on it but it still came out pretty good and I'm happy with it (except for the bottom left corner. I need to learn to leave well enough alone. Almost all of those breaks are from me trying to get it perfect when it's 98% already).

I also have to give a shout out to @dmnCrawler for all of the artwork they created and graciously shared, allowing me to have rad looking indicators around the knobs.


----------



## finebyfine (May 16, 2021)

Harry Klippton said:


> You nailed the no film dude


agreed! - if I hadn't seen this comment and then went back to look more closely I would've still thought it was uv printing from tayda for sure.  love the max headroom graphic. awesome build!

I'm still waiting on the enclosure its going in but I finished aion's boss ds-1 legacy board recently and the entire time populating and soldering it I couldn't help but think about how much cleaner and more organized the the board layouts are from pedalpcb 😆


----------



## peccary (May 16, 2021)

finebyfine said:


> agreed! - if I hadn't seen this comment and then went back to look more closely I would've still thought it was uv printing from tayda for sure.  love the max headroom graphic. awesome build!
> 
> I'm still waiting on the enclosure its going in but I finished aion's boss ds-1 legacy board recently and the entire time populating and soldering it I couldn't help but think about how much cleaner and more organized the the board layouts are from pedalpcb 😆



The Aion pads are larger and I thought that I would like that more than the bitty ones on the PedalPCB boards, but the larger pads actually seemed to not take the solder as well (maybe they just took longer to heat up?). I also didn't like having to solder three ground points to the sleeve of the input jack.

I took a big risk on the wiring here and just eyeballed the length of the wires knowing I wanted to run them under the board to hide them. I had it all wired up and then popped it in the enclosure and I think had I cut any of those wires another 1/8'' or so it wouldn't have worked out. Luckily it did, that would have been a pretty big bummer.


----------



## music6000 (May 16, 2021)

Love the Build, my OCD would be to get that Nut parallel near his Bowtiie!


----------



## Crash102 (May 16, 2021)

The knobs on both pedals are amazing. I really like the premium aluminum knobs. I know they’re more than double the price of others but it just adds something more to the pedals imo.


----------



## peccary (May 16, 2021)

music6000 said:


> Love the Build, my OCD would be to get that Nut parallel near his Bowtiie!


You see that gouge in the black right above the bow tie? That's from me trying to get that right multiple times   

I'll try a few more times, but it was a good time for me to stop when I did


----------



## Harry Klippton (May 16, 2021)

I also hated the wiring on my first aion project I finished recently. That being said, his build docs are hands down the best I've ever read. I read his build docs for projects I don't even plan on doing


----------



## peccary (May 16, 2021)

Crash102 said:


> The knobs on both pedals are amazing. I really like the premium aluminum knobs. I know they’re more than double the price of others but it just adds something more to the pedals imo.


Yeah, it stings a bit for sure, but I agree that they do look great.


----------



## peccary (May 16, 2021)

Harry Klippton said:


> I also hated the wiring on my first aion project I finished recently. That being said, his build docs are hands down the best I've ever read. I read his build docs for projects I don't even plan on doing


I really appreciate the time he puts in to explaining the circuit, some history, the changes made, (if any) and what everything does. I agree, his build docs are great.


----------



## Barry (May 16, 2021)

Awesome!


----------



## giovanni (May 16, 2021)

Sorry I must’ve missed it: water decal?


----------



## peccary (May 16, 2021)

giovanni said:


> Sorry I must’ve missed it: water decal?


I used a no-film waterslide decal.


----------



## dmnCrawler (May 17, 2021)

peccary said:


> Thanks. I actually did this one at the same time I did the Mercurial boost. I had a super clean decal without any ghosting or anything, and I got too greedy and tried to move it a smidge after it was already kind of set and ended up causing a mess. You can actually see a piece of that first decal stuck to the bottom rim in the gut shot. This decal had a few little smudges on it but it still came out pretty good and I'm happy with it (except for the bottom left corner. I need to learn to leave well enough alone. Almost all of those breaks are from me trying to get it perfect when it's 98% already).
> 
> I also have to give a shout out to @dmnCrawler for all of the artwork they created and graciously shared, allowing me to have rad looking indicators around the knobs.


They look great.


----------



## music6000 (May 17, 2021)

I prefer his Original PCB's myself, from 2017
A cool pedal :


----------



## giovanni (May 17, 2021)

Very cool!


----------



## finebyfine (May 18, 2021)

peccary said:


> I also didn't like having to solder three ground points to the sleeve of the input jack.



My enclosure for my DS-1 came yesterday and I was struggling with how to go about this before realizing the ppcb dc breakout board is perfect for the task. Still haven't done it yet but should satisfy my need for (semi) neatness


----------



## peccary (May 18, 2021)

finebyfine said:


> My enclosure for my DS-1 came yesterday and I was struggling with how to go about this before realizing the ppcb dc breakout board is perfect for the task. Still haven't done it yet but should satisfy my need for (semi) neatness


I have some of those and considered using one, but I had to choose between the breakout board and being able to have the DC jack be removable. Considering I had to pull it out of the enclosure I feel like I made the right choice, but it would clean it up quite a bit.


----------



## finebyfine (May 18, 2021)

peccary said:


> I have some of those and considered using one, but I had to choose between the breakout board and being able to have the DC jack be removable. Considering I had to pull it out of the enclosure I feel like I made the right choice, but it would clean it up quite a bit.



I went down to solder this a few hours after that post and realized that lol. Still not sure what I'm gonna do.

[sarcastically] How the insides look is even more important than how the outside looks!


----------



## peccary (May 18, 2021)

finebyfine said:


> [sarcastically] How the insides look is even more important than how the outside looks!


Right? Luckily I had some larger shrinkwrap so I could cover my shame   

Looks like there are a couple of ground points on the footswitch board that I could have used. Might think about that for next time. I have a couple more Aion boards I'm looking forward to building up.


----------



## Feral Feline (May 18, 2021)

As mentioned on TB, great build!

I wouldn't have noticed the problem with the graphics if you hadn't made your "decalaration".

I'm becoming a fan of the idea of using molex connectors on the power if nothing else. I need to be able to pull my builds back out and debug... too often.




Harry Klippton said:


> I also hated the wiring on my first aion project I finished recently. That being said, his build docs are hands down the best I've ever read. I read his build docs for projects I don't even plan on doing



I reference the Aion Docs for a lot of other builds. For instance, I don't have an Aion Muff (actually I probably do somewhere), I really like  his on-on-on switch for the tone circuit — it gets you an intuitive toggle up is a mids boost, middle position is flat and toggle down is scooped. IIRC, that's not the case with on-off-on.

Like music6000, I tend to prefer the older legacy boards, but still go with 1590N1 and top-jacks.


----------



## wintercept (May 19, 2021)

Very nice build! I’ve had a Meridian PCB among several others for a while now (since Black Friday lol) and plan on making the guitar version.

One thing I already can’t stand is how it needs smaller than usual 220nF and 1uF caps. Where did you get that thinner 2.5mm 220nF box cap?


----------



## peccary (May 19, 2021)

wintercept said:


> Very nice build! I’ve had a Meridian PCB among several others for a while now (since Black Friday lol) and plan on making the guitar version.
> 
> One thing I already can’t stand is how it needs smaller than usual 220nF and 1uF caps. Where did you get that thinner 2.5mm 220nF box cap?



I got the 220nF's from Tayda, I'd already had them in my stock. I had a hard time finding the 1uF film caps that were small enough. I ended up finding them at Mouser.

I believe that these are the 220's I bought: https://www.taydaelectronics.com/0-22uf-100v-5-polyester-film-box-type-capacitor.html


----------



## wintercept (May 19, 2021)

peccary said:


> I got the 220nF's from Tayda, I'd already had them in my stock. I had a hard time finding the 1uF film caps that were small enough. I ended up finding them at Mouser.
> 
> I believe that these are the 220's I bought: https://www.taydaelectronics.com/0-22uf-100v-5-polyester-film-box-type-capacitor.html



Right in front of me this whole time! Thank you very much. I didn’t want to put together a Mouser order for this one.

I will try using Tayda 1uF film caps that are 3.5mm thick: 1uF 50V 10% Polyester Film Box Type Capacitor WIMA MKS2

I took the part number and compared them to the ones on Aion’s Mouser parts list (MF00) and they are identical, except the Tayda (KSSD) ones have a better tolerance and are more expensive at lower quantities on Mouser


----------



## peccary (May 19, 2021)

wintercept said:


> Right in front of me this whole time! Thank you very much. I didn’t want to put together a Mouser order for this one.
> 
> I will try using Tayda 1uF film caps that are 3.5mm thick: 1uF 50V 10% Polyester Film Box Type Capacitor WIMA MKS2
> 
> I took the part number and compared them to the ones on Aion’s Mouser parts list (MF00) and they are identical, except the Tayda (KSSD) ones have a better tolerance and are more expensive at lower quantities on Mouser


These are the ones I got from Mouser: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/505-MKS2B041001C00MF

Looks like the ones from Tayda are pretty darn similar in size. Nice. 

Those weren't available when I did my order, but I'm glad that I was pushed to check out Mouser. It forced me to learn to use their search, which is really helpful once I figured it out. They also ship a lot faster than Tayda does (here in the US, at least).


----------



## wintercept (May 19, 2021)

someone bought all 70 of those 1uFs that were there this morning.

fml


----------



## peccary (May 20, 2021)

wintercept said:


> someone bought all 70 of those 1uFs that were there this morning.
> 
> fml


Oh, man. That's rough!


----------



## Feral Feline (May 21, 2021)

Local Shop here has 2u2 FILM caps not much bigger than 1u; the 2u2 are pretty tough to find online, I've found, or rather didn't find.

Need to restock my own 2u2 supply.


----------

