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I have 4 populated Nolk boards ALL GONE NOW I'm not doing anything with at the moment. I'll send you one free, except shipping - paypal me like $8 so I can send it in a small flat rate box, and it's yours. Would like to see them become pedals and not just languish on my shelf. PM me.

This doesn't deserve it's own thread, sure, but idk, free stuff, and this is where the cool diy kids hang out.

Whats the smallest enclosure will it fit in?

It's 1 inch by 2.8 inches. I designed it to go in a 1590BB with board mounted pots, but I guess whether it will go in something smaller depends on what you do with the jacks, pots, and switches. You can look at the internal shots on my Nolk thread. Probably wouldn't take too much imagination to put it in a 1590B.

Wow that was fast. 1 left.

yo what's yr paypal info, i'd love one

Ok so they're all spoken for now. I think I'll also send you each a set of three KSC1815Y transistors you can replace the KSC1845F transistors on board with, if you want to experiment some. The pedal as is, with the 1845, is high gain almost immediately on the gain dial. Putting the lower gain 1815 in there might give you some more room before massive gain kicks in. Something to try. I hope one of you 4 does, because I haven't tried it yet and want to see what the results are. Probably a better pedal. Give it a try.

For the pots, I think you should use an audio pot for the tone control, and linear for the other two controls (all 100k). That's what seems to work best, to me.

Since making these boards, I've noticed a couple things I would change about the board, which you'll only notice really if you decide to mod it. Pad sizes could be a little bigger, and I think I need more thermal relief. The ground plane will suck up a ton of heat before you're able to move any grounded leads. Ah well, live and learn. Still a pretty nice board.



Schematic:
http://i.imgur.com/kpjG0rt.png

Ah! How the fuck did I miss this?!

I'm gonna put the lower gain transistors in mine. Probably get rid of the mid scoop switch too. So if I just leave it out, it'll be permanently un-scooped right?

You have total control over thermal gaps on ground pads in eagle but i guess you figured that out after you made the boards.

neonblack wrote:I'm gonna put the lower gain transistors in mine. Probably get rid of the mid scoop switch too. So if I just leave it out, it'll be permanently un-scooped right?

You'll need to put a jumper wire from pad 1 to pad 2.

On the board, pads 1 2 and 3 are where the switch connects. Raw signal from pad 1, scooped from pad 3. Pad 2 goes on from there, and needs to be connected to one or the other of those (by the switch, normally).

It's also pretty easy to add a "Mids" control. I did it on Goroth's Nolk, and it works well. Let me look real quick again at what I did and I'll say how to do that, too. All you have to do is add a pot wired as variable resistor between C13 (100nF) and ground.

Ok yeah: 100k audio pot works well as a mids control. Wire pot lugs 2 and 3 together, so you're using the resistance between pot lugs 1 and 2, then mids increase as you turn clockwise (resistance between capacitor and ground increases as you turn clockwise). This will give you a range from the full scoop to flat.

You could take the 100nF cap off the board, wire lug 1 to one pad where it was; and run a 100nF cap from the other pad to lug 2/3.

Of course, if you choose to use a mids pot and leave off the switch, you'll want to hardwire it in scooped mode: jumper from pad 2 to pad 3.

eatyourguitar wrote:You have total control over thermal gaps on ground pads in eagle but i guess you figured that out after you made the boards.

Yeah, I just went with what looked like plenty of space around the pads, and not too thin traces, while allowing my ground pour to flow around everything. Hard to say exactly how much space and how thin the traces need to be, to limit heat transfer to the plane. All I know now is, a little more would be better.

Isolate and width are both 16 mils:

Just do the math for any platted through hole pad that has one or two traces then double the traces and make the heatsink on the end of the wire an order of magnitude like x100 to reprasent a ground plane copper mass. Thermal resistance formula is exactly like ohms law. The graphs look like a cap charging and discharging perfect log. Once you learn it you will laugh cause you probably already know it. Something mystical about the tools we use in math perfectly applicable in so many places. You can kinda make an estimate of how bad it is by soldering on the ground pads and counting the seconds to melt solder compared to other non-grounded pads. If you more than doubled your time i would say it is not something to sell as kits for beginners with cheap irons. Some irons will have an infinite heatsink problem if the pad heatsink TDP > iron wattage

i think the board looks pretty good. i might add a gnd pad at the ins and outs. nice layout skills though if you are able to have a totally uninterrupted second layer as a gnd plane (:

Hey thanks Scott. Yeah I recommend everyone pcb a small fuzz now and then - it almost lays itself out and makes you feel like a real champion.

Thanks eatyourguitar, I'll have to try that. People without the temperature regulated irons are probably used to pulling their hair out by now, hahaha. We've all been there. Best of all for kits might be to do like some of the pcb sites and skip the ground plane altogether, it is just icing on the cake after all. But I don't sell kits or intend to, so ease of assembly considerations are all to suit myself.