# Phase II



## ericwood (Apr 26, 2020)

This was a fun build! If you remember that La Croix pedal you're already familiar with my wife's handiwork; this one I handed the enclosure off and let her do whatever. She went with a cactus this time and I'm really digging it. It turns out powder coat takes sharpie really well, and it's a super easy way to get some simple line art down! You do have to be careful, since it takes a couple of seconds to dry, but with patience you can pull off some clean and intricate lines with minimal smudging.

Really loving the Phase II! It has "that" phaser sound; really chewy and old-school. Couldn't help but play that Em-A progression from "Breathe." I need to spend some time in a dark room tweaking the trimpots a bit more, but so far it sounds great as-is, especially the lower depth slow swooshing phase sounds.

For anyone reading this looking to build one of these, a few things I wish I had known going into it:
- This is one of those 1/8 watt resistor builds. The 1/4 watt ones work fine, just stand them up on end (see gut shot)
- It's a cramped build. I used to work through each value and solder different parts of the board, but found I make fewer mistakes by populating an entire area, then going in with the soldering iron. It takes longer to populate this way, but the odds of accidentally soldering over an empty pad went down to practically zero.
- The fit into the enclosure is a tight one!! Even after measuring I still ended up redoing the footswitch wiring (which is why it looks sloppy). If I were to build another one of these I would have run some uninsulated leads off of the main PCB sticking straight up, aligned the 3PDT breakout above it, then soldered the breakout from the top.

Definitely adding the Bi-Phase to my todo list once I get through the PCBs I already have laying around  (reading this interview with Mike Beigel got me really hype to take on the full build!)


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## Barry (Apr 26, 2020)

Looks good!


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## Barry (Apr 26, 2020)

ericwood said:


> This was a fun build! If you remember that La Croix pedal you're already familiar with my wife's handiwork; this one I handed the enclosure off and let her do whatever. She went with a cactus this time and I'm really digging it. It turns out powder coat takes sharpie really well, and it's a super easy way to get some simple line art down! You do have to be careful, since it takes a couple of seconds to dry, but with patience you can pull off some clean and intricate lines with minimal smudging.
> 
> Really loving the Phase II! It has "that" phaser sound; really chewy and old-school. Couldn't help but play that Em-A progression from "Breathe." I need to spend some time in a dark room tweaking the trimpots a bit more, but so far it sounds great as-is, especially the lower depth slow swooshing phase sounds.
> 
> ...



That's the best way I've found when that close


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## cooder (Apr 26, 2020)

Excellent and tidy sharpie again! The sounds in these are great and I recommend the Bi Phase for even more of it and extra tweaks.


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## Chuck D. Bones (Apr 26, 2020)

Another beautiful pedal.  The outside anyway (JK).


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## Cucurbitam0schata (Apr 27, 2020)

Sweet build, and I like the simple line art, too! 

How about your volume? Mine dips slightly when I use my pedal. @Chuck D. Bones suggested that to bump the volume up a little bit I can be use some 10k resistors at R27 & R31. It's on my to-do list, Would like to know what your results have been.


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## ericwood (Apr 27, 2020)

Cucurbitam0schata said:


> Sweet build, and I like the simple line art, too!
> 
> How about your volume? Mine dips slightly when I use my pedal. @Chuck D. Bones suggested that to bump the volume up a little bit I can be use some 10k resistors at R27 & R31. It's on my to-do list, Would like to know what your results have been.



(I replied to you on reddit already but I'll add it here too in case anyone runs across this in a search!)

There's a slight volume drop, but nothing as crazy as the Ghost Echo. I tend to run a light overdrive after my mod pedals so I've got a little bit of gain compensation there and don't notice it as much.


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