INFANEM the driving notion clone

[ibarakishi]

this recording is way more in the area of what i use more often than not for stuff. pretty much everything you have said up until this point is true across the board. you mentioned above that if the caps were changed to the original MLCC ones, this would most likely affect the high end brightness to bring it closer to the original correct? i think that the current version is definitely usable for what anyone normally using a driving notion would want to do across the board since there is the inclusion of the thick switch as well. im just curious if that would be the main factor that would make it more bright heavy vs the more balanced version that it currently is. i think this would be helpful for people who either love the screeching highs or would want a more level one when they go to build their pcbs.

[digi2t]

Well, it's a rainy day, so what's guy to do?

Build another Driving Notion, of course! This time, I used all ceramics, except for the two Thick switch caps. The 1uF's are monolithic ceramic, while the rest are all the cheapest ceramics money can buy (in keeping with INFANEM's jack tradition). The polars are tantalum, as in the original, and the power cap is an aluminium electro. JFET is biased to the same voltage as the original, except I used an SMD unit this time. I'm saving my thru hole stash for "special projects". Voltages are +/- 0.1v across the board, but I didn't put too much effort into precisely matching, except for the two critical transistors in the high section.



The verdict? It's brighter than the clone. Snappier. Lots of snap and punch, more so than the first build with the film caps. The ceramics definitely play a part. The difference between this one and the original isn't that great, to the point where tweaking the knobs I can cop the original, so I'm chalking that up to component tolerances adding up in the end. Maybe trace routing as well.

So with that, I so conclude the work on this. I've spent enough time on it, other work awaits. My question now is; Iba, which one do you want? The first, smoother one, or this one, brighter and punchier? Doesn't take any more time to box one or the other. Your choice. Just drop me a PM with your shipping deets and preference. I'll let you know when it's on it's way. Don't worry about the jacks either, they're top quality, unlike the ones made of the finest gruyere that INFANEM could source.

In the meantime, is anybody interested in a first version proto-board? I have 10 of them to give away. Something Phil and I cracked off early on. I'd prefer someone built something with them, rather than trashing them. Ship free to anywhere on planet Earth. One per person please. The differences between them and this v.2 board are;

- Minor silkscreen errors, but doesn't affect functionality. I'll clarify in the build doc.
- No Thick switch. That was added afterwards. But, if you're handy and so inclined, it's a relatively easy add-on. It's a simple psuedo-bootstrap move, so no trace cutting required. Where and how you mount the switch is your business.

I'M ONLY MAKING THESE FREEBIES AVAILABLE TO THOSE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS PROJECT THREAD BEFORE 26 MARCH 2021.

This is what it looks like...



If you're interested, PM me with your shipping deets, and I'll send one out to you. I'm putting a special build doc together for it now, so I'll send you a link for it via the PM.

[mcatano]

what a wild ride

[UglyCasanova]

Sign me up for the final version. Always been curious of this circuit.

[digi2t]

what a wild ride

No shit.

Sign me up for the final version. Always been curious of this circuit.

Check your PM.

[ibarakishi]

what a wild ride

an understatement

[goroth]

Don't sign me up. I just DIY'd a DOD250 and barely got it working

[digi2t]

Don't sign me up. I just DIY'd a DOD250 and barely got it working

[cosmicevan]

I'd like to try this, but I'm a total n00b for DIY. I am waiting on my first BYOC kit to arrive right now. If there are boards available, I'd happily pay for one as long as putting this together won't be the impossible dream for a novice.

[resincum]

Don't sign me up. I just DIY'd a DOD250 and barely got it working

can I take yours?

[goroth]

I'm gonna get ian to build me one in the other thread. There is just too much risk for me destroying this.
In the meantime, I'm gonna DIY another 250, except instead of a PCB I'm going to try and breadboard first and have some fun with some values/diodes.

[eatyourguitar]

False. I did not "show up when this project started". Fact, I never posted anything in this thread until 26 March 2021

that is your opinion more than a true or false. we can both agree it was over a year ago. closer to the beginning than it is to the end. you don't need to be some indignant lawyer about it. sorry I triggered you. I said some things that were not %100 accurate. some of them were true and some of them were my opinions. let's all calm down. no point in arguing about it now.

We've already traced out the 3 and 5 knob versions some time ago. Neither version ever convinced us to be that great of a fuzz, or to be distinct enough to merit adding PCB's to our overhead, so we mothballed the works indefinitely in favor of more interesting projects. Maybe one day we'll revisit it, or maybe not. Who knows. Plenty of more interesting projects to trace out there right now, as my overflowing work bench can attest. If we do decide to make PCB's, then the schematic, as well as any other pertinent information will be released along with the build doc. As we've always done with all our projects.

Regardless, thanks a bunch for the offer.

Cheers,
Dino

I will admit that I did make a mistake in how I remember it. you are right and I was wrong. you did say "maybe" but all I could remember was something else. my fault and I appoligize for spreading misinformation. please understand that this is a mistake by me and not some intentional lie. I honestly can't remember what you said to me over a year ago down to every word. please forgive me?

Well, yes... that does suck. But then again, when you go and make a claim such as this;

post pics of the inside please. I like to reverse engineer. I have a way to get it right %100 of the time. I build a full net list by checking continuity from each pad to every other pad. the search space is as big as p*(p-1)/2. this is close to (p^2)/2 which grows like p^2. this is why I want to see how big it is. something with 4 pots, 20 resistors, 4 caps, 2 IC, power = 70 pads. this means I have to check continuity 2415 times. in reality though, it would be 4830 because it is very difficult to skip duplicates. 2415 is only theoretical.

a fuzz face though, that would be 182 tests or 96 in god mode. the difficulty grows fast!

Then why would I bother getting involved. I mean, 100% success rate. Sorry, I can't compete with that. I screw up all the time. Constantly. It's like a disease. I'm afflicted. Screwupitis. No vaccine available. Anyway...

If I wasn't so afraid of failing out of school and losing my financial aid, I would not have enlisted the help of others to do my job. If I fail school, I lose financial aid. if I lose financial aid I go back to living in a tent in winter. the cold weather makes my knees hurt. I am very grateful for jonwayne volunteering to help me when I needed it the most. I thought it was the perfect solution. the problem with that is that my success rate goes out the window. I can't control what other people do. I also can't fire them if they work for free. but I can't step in and do it myself if I am busy with school. I was repeating the same class after I failed it when they switched to online learning during covid. I got a waiver to stay in school. I switched my priorities around so I was deciding to put school first.

I tried to explain to you that if I am already agreeing to non-compete with you, and I am bankrupt in the pedal business, what is the harm in helping me help the guy who has been waiting over a year for his pedal? you just ghost my email no reply? that is pretty messed up that you swoop in to look like the hero when you never cared about OP the whole time. all you cared about was proprietary, competition, and profit.

First and foremost, we don't compete with anyone. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, for Phil and myself, this is a hobby. We both have very good jobs, and by no means do we monetarily depend on DEFX in any way shape or form. The day we get bored with it, or it begins to feel like a chore, we will shut it down in a heartbeat, and not bat an eyelash. As for not caring about the OP (ibarakishi), trust me, if we really didn't give a shit, then we wouldn't have gotten involved.

Yes, I did ghost his email to the deadendfx site (26 March 2021), which read...

what are you rambling on about? you claim that you were the first person to trace it but you decided to withold it and keep it proprietary to increase your bottom line for your business. if that is not true then why not share it? to say that you have another job that pays the bills is irrelavent. what difference does that make? if anything you would be more inclined to share the schematic if you have a day job and the pcb business is not intended to be profitable. you said you don't want to share something that is not verified. does that mean you never traced it or you don't know if you traced it correctly? why not post it with a disclaimer? this is really not adding up. people post schematics with errors all the time. the community has a high tolerance for traced pedals posted with errors. are you a perfectionist?

Yes, I did ghost his email to the deadendfx site (26 March 2021), which read...

--------------------------------------------------------
From: Robert Smith (onlywearblack@gmail.com)

The following message was sent using your Big Cartel contact form at http://www.deadendfx.com/contact

I think we talked before when you said you traced the infanem driving notion on your own before I attempted it. I am now in a bad spot. there were some errors on my schematic that I traced as a project with jonwayne on ILF. The pedal was deconstructed into pieces so that has been destroyed. There are still details of my schematic that I believe are incorrect or unconfirmed. I feel really bad that I owe someone a guitar pedal and now that I am completely out of business, I want to end on a good note not burning the guy who donated his INFANEM pedal for tracing.

I am desperate so I thought I would ask you once again if you would share the schematic that you worked hard in tracing. I know you said it is proprietary but I am not competing with you now as a business and you are also not selling the driving notion so maybe you could let me see the schematic you have for it? pretty please?

--------------------------------------------------------end email

First of all, the schematic is not proprietary, definitely not in the sense conveyed here. The circuit, as with the schematic, is the intellectual property of INFANEM. Second, and this one really gets to me, why in heavens's sake would someone destroy a perfectly good pedal to trace it? I'm sorry if this sounds flippant, but it's not even that tough of a trace. Yes, the traces are confusing because of the routing, and some SMD parts can be a pain to define, but then again, I've traced some of the later Spaceman pedals that are not only SMD, but have all the traces sandwiched between the two outer pours. Finally, the work we put into a project is our own, regardless of the circumstances. Yes, that is proprietary. Granted, I didn't breadboard the Notion until recently, but quite frankly, why would we share anything that hasn't been validated, or that we're not 100% confident in?

this smells like bullshit or maybe you don't know the law with ragards to copyright, trademark, trade dress, circuits and schematics. lets not conflate trademark and copyright. circuits themselves as a concept hold no copyright because they are not copyrightable. the drawing that you make is your copyright automatically regardless if it was traced from an authentic INFANEM pedal. you can not say that it is a schematic of an INFANEM pedal since you do not own the trademark INFANEM although this is arguable. you can say "look at this drawing of a schematic I made. I think it sounds a lot like the INFANEM pedal I was looking at". this is your protected free speech and your copyrighted drawing. if you are claiming that the copyright of the drawing of the schematic that you have belongs to INFANEM then you are in possession of copyrighted material yourself. If you have in your possession a drawing created and copyrighted by INFANEM that you are not legally entitled to copy then you have already infringed INFANEM's copyright. so again you are either bullshitting us or you don't even know what you are talking about with respect to the law. either you own it or INFANEM owns it. if you got your hands on INFANEM's official drawing directly from INFANEM, then you would be in possesion of the %100 accurate verified circuit which also means that you never traced it. so you either lied about tracing it or you told the truth about tracing it and you somehow how think that your copyrighted drawing is property of someone else (it isn't) and you think that circuits are copyrightable (they aren't). INFANEM owns the name INFANEM. they can have trademark litigation against both of us for using the name to promote the sale of PCB's that are not affiliated with or endoresed by INFANEM in any way. probably this won't happen but if it does it won't affect me because of my financial situation I am what lawyers call "judgement proof". like blood from a stone.

Also, just to digress for a moment, remember the original PM that he sent to me on 10 March 2020? Well, it didn't take too long before he was whining about it in this thread. Just a few hours after my reply to his PM, I saw this;

I just found out people have already traced it before me but they do not share don't worry. I will post everything for all to see. I will be selling PCB's. no one is selling PCB's right now. if they did they would need to release the schematic as well. if you hear anything on that please forward the link to me so that I can stop before I start.

Quite frankly, I just didn't know what to make of this. Was it a complaint? Was it an attempt at enticement? Some sort of guilt trip message? I don't know. I knew precisely who it was aimed at, but I simply decided to take a pass.

I told the truth. you got your feelings hurt. was it because you spoke to me in private and I talked about it on the internet without mentioning your name at all? I intentionally did not say your name. this was clearly not a personal attack. if you wanted a different outcome you should have made different choices. do what you want. don't blame me for your regrets. you doxed my real name without permission. ILF should already ban you for that. the essence of my statement is that although there are people here on ILF that have the means to help us with this project, because they apparently do not support the open source community, we or I will have to do everything ourselves even if it means duplicated efforts. the result will be that open source defeats closed source. my idea to share the schematic for free is unstoppable because I own any drawing I make. if that devalues someone's proprietary work that was basically a for profit cloning business I really don't care. I will solve that problem my self even if I make no money doing it. I love this hobby or at least I did. not so sure anymore.

in closing, I'm pretty much done with this thread, done helping people on ILF. done with ILF. done with trying to do any kind of business with guitar pedals. it looks like the project is in good hands now. if an improved schematic should appear then I will finish the build and send it off to OP sometime in the summer when school is on summer break. good luck with the project no sarcasm intended.

[eatyourguitar]

the irony is that i have received little to no communication or updates from EYG as to how my pedal (which i didn't know until now is completely destroyed i guess and has been?) is ever going to make it back to me or how i will be compensated if it cannot (i paid money for labor, which was not a donation). despite not being consistently kept in the loop for over a year, i had just made peace with the fact that my pedal never would return and i would not be compensated.

i understand sometimes people make mistakes or things happen in life. things have happened in my life before. i am understanding to these things because they happen to everyone. what im not understanding of is people not taking responsibility for their own actions, even if that is simply saying 'hey, i messed up. i didn't mean to mess up. i don't know how to reasonably or timely fix what i messed up. i own up to that and im sorry because i don't know how to make this right and haven't made it right for a pretty long time now.' i am a person of basic principle. i haven't received any sort of communication indicating anything close to this.

I have been quiet, i have been patient, i have been understanding, and i have been considerate. I think anyone would look at this situation with a level head and would agree that this is absolutely absurd.

i am a pretty simple person materially. i live a small life for very specific reasons. i don't own a lot of things because of my living situations, but the things i do own are things that i have to earn slowly through my own independent work together with my partner, and are things i actually rely on to truly use as tools. and i use them until they are run into the earth. this pedal was one of those things. I have literally used it on every single album i have recorded over the past almost 7 or so years now and on every album i have contributed to for friends that have invited me to play with them as well, as well as live. It was also the first 'real' pedal i ever bought for myself.

i am really appreciative to digi2t for his help despite so much noise in this thread and even though he doesn't and shouldn't feel any responsibility to add anything to this thread. its ridiculous that he is getting any sort of hate on any front. I don't expect people to understand where i am coming from or my living situation, but the response from EYG is mind melting to me on so many personal levels

i could get into other things, but its not necessary and i doubt anyone cares...

TLDR:
-thanks again digi2t for the help. im guessing from your video that things are on course to turn out well.

-EYG, you don't have to worry about getting my pedal to me, finishing anything, or worry about the money i paid since it seems to be stressing you out and pushing you to this. as oldangelmidnight mentioned, bowing out isn't at all shameful.

im going to go lay with my cats in bed. its been such a long week and this is the last thing i wanted to have to read today

I don't know either. I ask for the schematic but I get ghosted. I check the thread everyday for a while after I released the PCB to see if all the error's have been found and fixed by the community. I don't have an amp or a guitar. the guitar store where I normally go to test pedals closed after covid. all I can do is build it from a verified schematic. I could maybe make an appointment with the guitar store owner who would probably let me test the pedal before I ship it. or I can fix my broken short scale chinese squire. it needs a bridge + strings. although I didn't send you emails every week, I did post here regularly at some point. I stopped posting when I was waiting for the jack PCB's to arrive from china. The only way to fit everything in a 125B with through hole parts is with this jack PCB and these specific jacks. I think I already mentioned this in my email to you that I could have done it with 112AX jacks but those are the same garbage that failed the first time. the neutrik NJM PCB mounted jacks are the best you can get. because I care about building you a pedal that will last a lifetime I wanted to give you only quality parts. I don't want to rush it but then have it break again soon after. I really do care a lot about helping you and keeping my promise. this is why this project is taking so long. because I control the quality. I won't send it out if it is not perfect.

this project did stress me out. it made it difficult for me to concentrate on school work. it had cost overruns which I paid for. I was worried that people would start trash talking my name. probably people don't care about why it took so long. pedals are built by people not robots. people need food, shelter, guitars, amps, parts, schematics, free time.

to be clear, none of this is anyone's fault but my own. I am responsible for my failures. I alluded to a straight forward reverse engineering and cloning process without mentioning that it has risks of irreversible failure. I think I did mention that the pedal would be destroyed and cloned. I mentioned that you would be getting the clone for your money. I stand by that promise even if it takes longer.

[eatyourguitar]

to anyone who already purchased a PCB from me. the correct resistor and capacitor values are available thanks to the contributions of Dead End FX. I could not have got this far this fast without the help of Dead End FX so I must give them credit for saving my PCB project and bringing it back to life. I know it wasn't done as charity to help me but at least they decided to go open source in the end after initially it was proprietary to dead end FX. R1 is not wrong at 68R but if you want less noise, more sag, you can use the 470R value as you will find in the dead end FX schematic. in this image you will find my mistakes on the left and the possible solutions on the right. it should be noted that these are the opinions of dead end FX and not necessarily the values found in the INFANEM pedal. With that being said, I would trust the experience of Dead End FX more than my own experience. I also don't have access to anyone at INFANEM who can confirm the correct component values. I suggest anyone who purchased a PCB from me use the updated component values on the right and install some hand picked high gain NPN selected for reverse gain in positions Q6 and Q7 (installed backwards to the silk screen footprint).

[goroth]