# Micro-Protoboard



## fig (Aug 7, 2021)

Well that was a 10 minutes well spent!

I'd recommend some velcro tape or similar instead of the adhesive. That way you can switch projects out.

Check it out!


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## fig (Aug 7, 2021)

I knew it felt naked...






...that's _muuuch _better


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## Username123 (Aug 7, 2021)

Cool! You should update this thread once you have used the proto board a bit. Would love some more info on these!


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## Coda (Aug 7, 2021)

Mu-tron Bi-Phase. Get on it.


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## fig (Aug 7, 2021)

Here you go...fig's funky five minute fuzz...


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## Coda (Aug 7, 2021)

fig said:


> Here you go...fig's funky five minute fuzz...


Now build another one on the other end, and add a blend knob…


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## fig (Aug 7, 2021)

yeah, Deja Vu ...oh man, now that song is in my head.

_If I had ever been here before,
 on another time around the wheel,
I would probably know just how to deal,
.....with all, of you._

man they had some good drugs...oh yeah breadboard...right.

Still building the DSOMBF...Double-shot of my baby's fuzz (yeah yeah). If you don't know the tune then that's gonna sound downright nasty.....okay maybe it is anyway, but fuzz pedals do have that rep...is rep still a hip word?

Here's the song; If you DO remember it, give a shout if you dare.


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## Feral Feline (Aug 7, 2021)

GPCB has a "Double Shot" , but it's a boost not a fuzz. Add some hard-clipping diodes and it'd be an instant Double Shot of Fuzz.


Have you got a schematic of the "Fig's Funky Five-Minute Fuzz"?


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## fig (Aug 8, 2021)

Oh, it's just a regular 'ol Fuzz Face sans any controls. I just thought the name was cute. You could breadboard one blindfolded......well maybe not, too difficult to distinguish resistor values by taste....do they make flavored resistors by chance?


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## Feral Feline (Aug 8, 2021)

Well to me the 470k tastes like banana-chips, but the 47k taste like bananas, I'm not too keen on 4k7, they taste like banana-flowers.

I haven't tried other decade-delicacies yet.


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## fig (Aug 8, 2021)

That's a cool idea with the boost circuit! (putting that on the list). I guess if you also add a tone stack and you'd have the TSPA.

Today I'm going to attempt a Rat circuit, the Muroidea Distortion. I recently acquired some LM308s and I'm fixed with FETs. 

Here's the schematic...




I'll try some different Vf Ge diodes. I haven't researched if there is any standard value. I have an LTSpice sim for this as well, though I did not author it.

I'll take a pic as each of the 4 stages are added. Its not like I have to finish the roll, take it to the drugstore and hang around for a week until they are ready......._anymore._

I welcome comments and critique. Especially pithy ones. Pith is like a cool summer breeze on your face. Well ...no, nothing like that.

So let me clean the dryer screen and ditch that tired old fuzz for some rockin-rodent!


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## fig (Aug 8, 2021)

I'm putting this on-hold until someone gets the LM308 I promised them but never mailed.


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## Feral Feline (Aug 9, 2021)

Geeze Fig, no need to get pithy about it.


If by chance the mailout you're referring to is for me, just take a couple of the LM308s out of the mailer — Rat-atat Fig Rig Full Speed Ahead!

Gotta keep thread momentum going...


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## fig (Aug 9, 2021)

What happened is that I neglected to mail someone (else) theirs, so its only fair that I wait too....else I'd be the real rat here.

I did build out _most_ of Bruce's boost and boost you spoke of, and added symmetrical 1N4148s  between those stages and left out the switches. I may try asymmetrical as well to make it a bit cleaner/bolder, or repurpose that switch to choose between High & Mighty, or Down & Dirty.

Here's a crappy pic, LOL


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## fig (Aug 9, 2021)

Here it is on the scope..sorry..I need a better camera than my phone has. We have a DLSR somewhere.
Having that 2nd probe working makes a lot of difference.

So, it is a medium-ish looking / sounding clip to me..what else does it need...or does it (sounds pretty slick)? A super buff? A loop?


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## TheSin (Aug 9, 2021)

Really cool!


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## Coda (Aug 9, 2021)

fig said:


> Here it is on the scope..sorry..I need a better camera than my phone has. We have a DLSR somewhere.
> Having that 2nd probe working makes a lot of difference.
> 
> So, it is a medium-ish looking / sounding clip to me..what else does it need...or does it (sounds pretty slick)? A super buff? A loop?


I’m thinking about building another one that allows me to mix and match diodes: Si, Ge, LED (red, naturally). I have a TL071 in my Rat currently. I like it. More than I though I would…


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## chongmagic (Aug 10, 2021)

fig said:


> yeah, Deja Vu ...oh man, now that song is in my head.
> 
> _If I had ever been here before,_
> _on another time around the wheel,
> ...



Do you remember the Catalina's?


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## fig (Aug 10, 2021)

It's Shag time!


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## chongmagic (Aug 10, 2021)

My cousin play the trumpet in the Catalina's for 20 some years.


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## fig (Aug 10, 2021)

That would be an awesome job / gig! I'm hoping we'll soon be able to hear a lot more beach music. We're zero'd in on the stretch between Pawley's to Hilton Head...yeah I know that's not _exactly_ a bulls-eye but were getting closer!


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## duffy_lane (Aug 10, 2021)

lookin good! Waiting on parts for mine. Trying to think of a way to attach some strip for terminal blocks + headers on the side maybe maybe


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## Bricksnbeatles (May 10, 2022)

Finally got mine hooked up, as well as 10 Madbean breadboard pot adapters (the other pot values I needed were out of stock currently). First thing I’ll be breadboarding on here will likely be a particular obscure 60s silicon fuzz circuit that I’ve been interested in trying out for a while.


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## fig (May 10, 2022)

Mystery Fuzz? Looking forward to the reveal! 

Love the KC quote too. 🥰


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## Bricksnbeatles (May 10, 2022)

Well, first breadboarded effect on the mini Protoboard wound up being a plain old Acapulco gold, just to see what all the fuss is about. 

shown here with an additional B2K pot in series with the 10μF cap of the first 386’s gain-set pins so I could experiment with taming the first gain stage.


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## fig (May 11, 2022)

Bricksnbeatles said:


> Well, first breadboarded effect on the mini Protoboard wound up being a plain old Acapulco gold, just to see what all the fuss is about.
> 
> shown here with an additional B2K pot in series with the 10μF cap of the first 386’s gain-set pins so I could experiment with taming the first gain stage.
> 
> View attachment 26170


Looks nice! What’s the verdict on the AG? A bit deaf in one ear now? I SAID A BIT…
Oh, watch the temp on the LM386s…they tend to liquify the bb.


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## Harry Klippton (May 11, 2022)

fig said:


> Looks nice! What’s the verdict on the AG? A bit deaf in one ear now? I SAID A BIT…
> Oh, watch the temp on the LM386s…they tend to liquify the bb.


Sounds like a job for ADAPTERS!


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## NickC (May 11, 2022)

im ready to start protoboarding!


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## Big Monk (May 11, 2022)

I’m thinking about grabbing a few of these. I like the Protoboard but it’s big and sometimes I just want to throw a Fuzz Face together quick.


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## Bricksnbeatles (May 11, 2022)

fig said:


> Looks nice! What’s the verdict on the AG? A bit deaf in one ear now? I SAID A BIT…
> Oh, watch the temp on the LM386s…they tend to liquify the bb.


Verdict is I get the hype, but don’t buy into it myself. I’ve got a Good number of 386s lying around so I might give it second chance in the future. Good tip on the 386 temperature tho- I’ll have to keep that in mind.

Second was a Screaming Bird treble boost. I actually dig it and didn’t find it too shrill in the right situation. I found that on the middle position of my Les Paul it had a really gnarly resonant thing going on that wasn’t present on either pickup by itself— sorta like a dual resonant peak at 300 and 600hz which was actually really cool sounding. Certainly not as awful as people make it out to be, even if it is a bit harsh if it’s going into totally clean headroom. I’ll have to double check my resistor values (it was around midnight that I did this one) because the gain was significantly lower than what I would expect from an LPB-based circuit compared to the LPBs I’ve built in the past— with a *linear* taper 100k volume pot unity was around noon, and at full crank, the amplification read around 6dB in my interface. Whatever my blunder (haven’t looked yet, but I’d guess I maybe was off by a significant figure on one or two resistor values), I liked it a lot, and would like to replicate it, as it sounded stellar into a lightly gritty AC-30 emulation, and would surely sound even better into my actual AC-30. The 5088 measured at 620 hFe btw. Of course, I decided to record some demos with the circuit afterwards, and the weight of my guitar cable pulled a bunch cups of sorted loose caps and a few dozen pots and patch wires down— mist we suffer for our art? Heh heh 😂


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## Bricksnbeatles (May 11, 2022)

Here's the Soundcloud link to what I recorded with the screaming bird on the breadboard, if any of ya wanna check out what out sounds like.

__
		https://soundcloud.com/user-598888574%2Fan-inadvertent-clearing-of-the%2Fs-VeO65wC0dIz


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## Harry Klippton (May 11, 2022)

Bricksnbeatles said:


> Here's the Soundcloud link to what I recorded with the screaming bird on the breadboard, if any of ya wanna check out what out sounds like.
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/user-598888574%2Fan-inadvertent-clearing-of-the%2Fs-VeO65wC0dIz


I like this


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## fig (May 11, 2022)

Bricksnbeatles said:


> Here's the Soundcloud link to what I recorded with the screaming bird on the breadboard, if any of ya wanna check out what out sounds like.
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/user-598888574%2Fan-inadvertent-clearing-of-the%2Fs-VeO65wC0dIz


Very chill, very nice!


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## zgrav (May 11, 2022)

fig said:


> Here you go...fig's funky five minute fuzz...


reminds me a bit of the War of the Worlds....


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jun 4, 2022)

Picked up two more during the last sale. Now I’ve got a nice little Protoboard trio.


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## zgrav (Jun 4, 2022)

Time to breadboard your combo pedal.....  

I really like the compact design for these.  I found a small kit at Microcenter that had the small breaboard for this project, plus a small PCB that can fit into it with pins that provides *micro USB 3v and a 9v input options.*  This is a benefit of the DIY Arduino market.


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jun 4, 2022)

zgrav said:


> Time to breadboard your combo pedal.....


Indeed! 

What’s great about the μProtoboard is that it’s small enough that I can take it around with me. I can fill a small portable parts organizer wiry common transistors, caps, and resistor values, bring along some wires, and prototype stuff on campus in between classes— just power the Protoboard from my MacBook with one of these guys and plug directly into my interface so I can audition circuits in GarageBand as I tweak them.


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## Fingolfen (Jun 4, 2022)

fig said:


> Oh, it's just a regular 'ol Fuzz Face sans any controls. I just thought the name was cute. You could breadboard one blindfolded......well maybe not, too difficult to distinguish resistor values by taste....do they make flavored resistors by chance?


If you're building blindfolded, I'd think it would be safer for resistors to just go with scratch n' sniff rather than flavored resistors, but I'm not going to judge either way...


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## andare (Jun 5, 2022)

All I need to breadboard is simple fuzzes. The fullsize Protoboard is overkill but the Micro lacks the pots. I wish there was a Protoboard Medium with 3 terminal blocks for pots.


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## Big Monk (Jun 5, 2022)

andare said:


> All I need to breadboard is simple fuzzes. The fullsize Protoboard is overkill but the Micro lacks the pots. I wish there was a Protoboard Medium with 3 terminal blocks for pots.



Im not gonna lie, as much as I like the big Protoboard as a concept, I typically bypass the pot blocks in favor of pots directly in circuit.


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jun 5, 2022)

andare said:


> All I need to breadboard is simple fuzzes. The fullsize Protoboard is overkill but the Micro lacks the pots. I wish there was a Protoboard Medium with 3 terminal blocks for pots.


I do fuzzes on the μ, and I use the breadbuddy boards from Madbean (take a look at posts #25 and 30)— I have about 30 of them, and just two of each common linear pot value, as well as a handful of A and C taper pots in select values


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## andare (Jun 5, 2022)

Big Monk said:


> Im not gonna lie, as much as I like the big Protoboard as a concept, I typically bypass the pot blocks in favor of pots directly in circuit.


You mean you stick the pots in the breadboard? I read that's not good for the breadboard but boy does it save the hassle of using jumpers and alligator clips


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## andare (Jun 5, 2022)

Bricksnbeatles said:


> I do fuzzes on the μ, and I use the breadbuddy boards from Madbean (take a look at posts #25 and 30)— I have about 30 of them, and just two of each common linear pot value, as well as a handful of A and C taper pots in select values


I've seen those, they're pretty good, though the pots are not hot swappable. Ordering from Europe is a hassle however...
It seems this pedal building thing is 70% paying shipping and import fees and 30% building


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jun 5, 2022)

andare said:


> I've seen those, they're pretty good, though the pots are not hot swappable. Ordering from Europe is a hassle however...
> It seems this pedal building thing is 70% paying shipping and import fees and 30% building


Yeah, that’s the one big downside.another good option is getting a bunch of these trimmers (they’re available elsewhere, so you should be able to find them from a supplier nearer to you— this was just the first link I found of them) which have knobs specifically for breadboarding. They’re usually just called breadboard trimmers actually 





						COM-09806 SparkFun Electronics | Potentiometers, Variable Resistors | DigiKey
					

Order today, ships today. COM-09806 – 10 kOhms 0.5W, 1/2W PC Pins Through Hole Trimmer Potentiometer Cermet 1.0 Turn Top Adjustment from SparkFun Electronics. Pricing and Availability on millions of electronic components from Digi-Key Electronics.




					www.digikey.com


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## Harry Klippton (Jun 5, 2022)

@andare I solder resistor legs onto 16mm pots for breadboard use


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## Big Monk (Jun 5, 2022)

andare said:


> You mean you stick the pots in the breadboard? I read that's not good for the breadboard but boy does it save the hassle of using jumpers and alligator clips



Yup. No issues as of yet.


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## andare (Jun 5, 2022)

Bricksnbeatles said:


> Yeah, that’s the one big downside.another good option is getting a bunch of these trimmers (they’re available elsewhere, so you should be able to find them from a supplier nearer to you— this was just the first link I found of them) which have knobs specifically for breadboarding. They’re usually just called breadboard trimmers actually
> 
> 
> 
> ...


really cool, thanks


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## Feral Feline (Jun 8, 2022)

I use ribbon-wire w/ female sockets on the pots and the male end goes directly into the breadboard:








The ribbon-wire can be bought cheaply with the pins and sockets already attached, and you can choose from different lengths of wire to get whatever works best for you.

The great thing about this method is you don't use up any pots for strictly breadboarding, you can just pull the wires off and use the pot in the build you just breadboarded or in another build if you've run out of that pot value and can't wait to order more...

Nonetheless, I see the appeal of Bricksnbeatles breadboard-pot collection. I've got a few of those breadbuddies, maybe I'll be ordering more.

As for breadboard trimmers, why not use the multi-turn Bournes?






Oh, and @Bricksnbeatles, check out the GlassJaw — if you aren't already aware of it, it's basically an Acapulco Gold with buffers, a volume control and a tone-stack; I've also seen it with  a clean-blend (IIRC). Makes for a lot more complexity in an otherwise simple circuit, but you get more control in return.


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## fig (Jun 8, 2022)

Is that a BMP on the BB FF?


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jun 8, 2022)

Feral Feline said:


> I use ribbon-wire w/ female sockets on the pots and the male end goes directly into the breadboard:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That’s a pretty cool method there! I’ll have to give that a go at some point. 

Those multi turn trimmers are great (I use em a ton) but probably a bit of a hassle to use if you’re trying to quickly tweak settings— for bias and stuff like that, can’t be beat tho!

I’ll have to check out the glassjaw. While I proto’d the AG out of curiosity, it’s really not too much in my wheelhouse; I’m not crazy into the whole sludgy doom thing, as fun as it may be to mess around with. The glassjaw looks to make it a bit more versatile and like something I’d actually use. As it stands, I understand the appeal of the AG, but the only one I plan on ever building as a permanent circuit is simply because I have an amazing pun that I want to use for an enclosure, and the AG is the only circuit that would make sense for the idea. More of a conceptual art piece than something I’d ever actually use live or on recordings lol


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## Feral Feline (Jun 8, 2022)

I look forward to the PUNishment your signal receives when you complete your AG art. 

You could probably make the durned thing more useful with just simply having both gain and volume controls.


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## Feral Feline (Jun 8, 2022)

fig said:


> Is that a BMP on the BB FF?


Why yes, yes a Muff-derived circuit fangled into existence by our own Leader of the PPCBack — Quarantine aka Raincoat.



PS: with the method I use, it's EASY PEASY to swap out pots and try different tapers and values; while the memory of what the first pot tried behaved like is still fresh in your mind, you can be trying something wildly different such as a W-taper...


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## fig (Jun 13, 2022)

[ meanwhile...having been banished to "Build Reports Only" ]

What's up over in the Breakroom? Anyone? Hellllooo? Guys? 

I'm going to get my OWN breakroom, with robot-hookers and cigars. Okay forget the breakroom!

[ wanders off ]


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## Feral Feline (Jun 14, 2022)

Forget the breakroom? FORGET THE CIGARS!

Bring on theWinterSoldier's sEHXy glowing green-eyed concubines...


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## fig (Jun 14, 2022)

thewintersoldier said:


> I was referring to myself only posting build reports. You can do as you please Tim.


Chris, I am sorry for misquoting you on the other thread.


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## fig (Jun 14, 2022)

thewintersoldier said:


> It's ok, I know I've burned bridges and over stayed my welcome 🥶


I’ve no clue what you mean 🤷‍♂️ I’ve never seen you burn a film cap, much less any bridge.


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## Harry Klippton (Jun 14, 2022)

fig said:


> I’ve no clue what you mean 🤷‍♂️ I’ve never seen you burn a film cap, much less any bridge.


In the words of Yo Gotti, it's going down in the DM


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jun 14, 2022)

thewintersoldier said:


> It's ok, I know I've burned bridges and over stayed my welcome 🥶


I mean when you get a solder bridge what else are you supposed to do but burn it?


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## MichaelW (Jun 14, 2022)

I only burn my bridges before crossing them.....makes for a better Monty Python experience....


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## Big Monk (Jun 14, 2022)




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