Episode: 1817
Title: HPR1817: Gathering Parts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1817/hpr1817.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:40:44

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This in HPR episode 1,817 entitled Gathering Parts.
It is hosted by Enneville and in about 23 minutes long.
The summary is Enneville talks about the process he goes through while starting an electronic
project.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
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Hello, this is Enneville and today I talked to you guys about how I approach an electronics
project.
What got me started on this one is I was clicking around on the internet as you do and ended
up going down the rabbit hole.
I stumbled across this site called Gilmourish and it was everything to do with David Gilmour,
the guitarist for Pink Floyd.
It's all about his gear and his guitars and what amps used and then there was what pedals
he used and I'm looking through all of this stuff and I see the Big Muff Pi.
Now I had heard of this guitar pedal before, I knew it was around but I never used one
or had one or even heard one clean.
I'm sure I'm hearing them in songs of course on Pink Floyd and I'm sure a lot of other
people use them but I don't really know what this pedal sounds like.
It got me curious and I didn't really want to go to the store and spend a hundred bucks
on something just to see how it sounds for a minute and then never use it again.
I just started researching this Big Muff Pi, it's an overdrive pedal, it's all solid
state and it uses four transits, I believe it was four and we'll get up to this schematic
in a minute.
As I'm researching this Big Muff Pi and who made it and when it was available, where
it was available, I stumbled across another site that is completely devoted to this pedal.
People are really geeking out on it and actually reverse engineering them and drawing schematics
and showing the changes from version 1 and version 2 as the years went by all the different
the capacitors that changed and the transistors that changed and it was really quite a lot
of information but on that site there's the schematics.
So it got me thinking why don't I just see if I got enough parts or I'll just get a few
parts and I'll build up one of these pedals and then I'll be able to see what it sounds
like for, I don't know, ten bucks, five bucks.
So the first thing that I do when I'm going to start an electronics project is of course
you get the schematic, I mean if you can design it yourself kudos for you but I'm going
to go off this schematic here, I'll link all this stuff in the show notes these, let's
say four, this would be like four or six links of the things I'm talking about today.
So on this, it's actually www.BigMuffPage.com so that shows all the different versions,
let's see which one I used, I'm scrolling down the page now, I keep, oh yeah they even
go into people that license the technology and put it out as another name, people that
blatantly ripped off the technology and put it out as a different name but anyways, here's
the one I can build any of these now but this is the one, here's the one I started going
off of, I know I'm fathom about here because I'm scrolling up and down a web page, good
fun for you, V1 standard was it, V1 green cap, I think it was the V1 standard triangle
BigMuff circa 1971, yeah because David Gilmore started using these in the early 70s so
if you want to look at the show notes you can check out the schematics and you can follow
along with what I'm going to say here but the first step that I do with an electronics
project is I have to start seeing what parts I have, seeing what parts I need, the easiest
way I found to do that is of course you get the schematic and then I get a piece paper
and I look for R1, that's resistor one and just write down what the value is and then
R2, R3, R4 go right through all the R's and have a nice list of them and I go on to the
capacitors which would be C1, write down what that is and then make a note if it's an
electrolytic capacitor or a regular ceramic cap or something, just make a distinction between
electrolytic and not, so you're going to want to go through all the C's, I forget how many
there were in this one, there's R18, R21, I don't know, just getting up around maybe 25, 30
resistors, I probably should have wrote this down before I started blabbing into the microphone
but yeah, it's looking like about 15 or 20 caps. The next thing I write down are D which
is diode, so you've got to look for a diode one, diode two, diode three, depending on how
many they are, again, write down the values of these components. Next one I'll do is Q which
is transistor, I don't know where they got Q for transistor but that's the way it is,
so in this particular schematic there's four transistors, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and this is
where I'll go on to what I was going to say next but I'll just say this before I leave
this subject, then you might go to IC which is integrated circuit, your schematic might
have that, IC1, IC2, IC3, you're going to have, oh back in the resistors, here's R26,
let's see, R26, R25, so at the end of the resistor list, R24, R25, R26, they go into very
wars just this, so this would be your volume controls and your tone knobs and so make
a note if the resistor you're looking for is a linear taper pot or an audio taper pot,
what type it is, you're just getting your parts list together basically. Then what I'll
do is go through that list and let's see, which one's R1? I just did what I did a couple
weeks ago, looking all through this schematic for R1 like I had previously and there is no R1,
for some reason this schematic starts with R2, I don't know if they left something out at a late
stage or someone overlooked something or maybe I'm just not seeing it right now but I don't believe
that this schematic has a resistor one, anyways, resistor two is a 33K, you're going to go down
your list now or this is how I do it and I'll go down the resistor list and see is there any more
33Ks, so you know you're going to need multiple of these things and if there are, I'll market some
way, like put a star next to it and then you know down on let's say R12 is also a 33K, put a star
next to that or you can use colors or highlighters or however you want to do it, go through your
capacitor list, you're going to do the same thing, see if you have duplicates because you might,
you might need 30 resistors but you only need four types or five types and when it comes up to
ordering this list that you're creating is going to help you so and then on this case I need four
diodes, they're all the same so I know I'm going to get four of those, actually I always order
double, when it comes to components you're buying something that might be 10 cents or less and
the shipping is going to be $6 anyways so I just like buy double what I need or you know a whole
handful of them just to stock up my personal components drawers as well, okay so once I have the
list of all the parts I'm going to need, I go to the well the components drawers I was just
talking about, I don't know why I'm calling them drawers, they're on the floor in the blue
hacker bag, they are a bunch of plastic like tupperware cases that I got from somewhere that have
compartments in them so I I sort all the resistors that start with one like all the brown
resistors will be in one and then you know all the two red lip that yeah two red lip that's
something I learned you have two red lips so you know that two with the resistor is a two it's
just that just popped up right out of my head anyways I have all my components sorted and I'll take
the list that I just generated and go through my components and see what I have what I don't
so what I have I'll put a check mark that's good and then what I don't this is where you are going
to have to do some ordering places like spark fun and out of fruit does you know you can get kits on
there and you can get you know neat projects to build up and things like that and sometimes you can
get the odd resistor or cap but when you get into a project like this you're going to have so
many different variables you're going to have to go to the big guys and the big guys for me is
digikey or mouse or electronics so okay let me click over to digikey here I think it's mouse
sir MOUSER it's one of those things I've only read and I've never heard so mouse or mouse or one of
those oh let me just jump back for one second what I ran into personally was I I had a bunch of
the resistors I needed I had a bunch of the caps I needed but and I had all the diodes I needed
what I did not have is these transistors and the transistors that are in this schematic are the
transistors that were used in 1971 and they no longer have those transistors if you could find
them at a geez I should have checked over at children there is a place that has new old stock near
me I should have drove over and checked but anyways in this big moth page they say on the schematics
if there are modern equivalents so on to digikey now here's the thing digikey is a big huge you'd be
surprised I'd like to see what their warehouse looks like because they just have like you look up
100 ohm resistor and it'll come back with 74,000 results and you have to weed through this
all right let's do it let's type in resistor I'm okay I'm on the resistor page
and the results are 72,697 different components so you can see how that's pretty overwhelming to
start with but what you're going to need to do is they have I don't even know what you call this
it's like a menu system so you can choose your manufacturer you can start narrowing the search
results down you can choose a series so we're going to want through hole so you can go over
to resistance and go to 33k just scrolling up and down to the amount of ohms here I mean there's
I finally got to 33 and then there's 33.2 and 33.3 and 33.33 and 33.33 and 33.33 and 33.389 and
these are intolerances of plus 0 1% I can't imagine who's building something that needs this
precision but there there they all are so let's just click on 33k and apply filters we've
gone now going down to 703 items then another good place to go is wattage this is just a little
pedal it's going to run off of nine volt battery so a quarter watt or a half watt half watt
plenty and then apply filters again we've now gone down to well 76 again features
anyways you get the point you're going to go through this menu system and narrow your selection
down until you're just down to about three or four parts and then it can just come to price I mean
this is see what I mean here's this one 33 ohm oh I want it 33k ohm you can see how confusing this
is like can be so 33k ohm we can hit apply filter now we've gone down to 360 separate items which
is still quite a bit for one particular component another thing you can choose of course we choose
through hole it is in the power so this is a little pedal that's just going to run off a nine volt
battery a quarter watt quarter watts fine so click on quarter watt and apply filters now we're
down to 82 separate devices packaging there's bulk just you get them in a bag tape cut which is
those resistors that come with like a piece of masking tape on the top and the bottom which
that keeps them orderly if you're going to keep these things in drawers or you're going to want
little zip lock bags for everything or like a compartmentalized box like I said uh tape box
and tape reel these are things that go out to manufacturers and automated machines are
pick and place taking things off of a reel or out of a box it's rolling out like kind of like
ammunition on one of those belt fed gun type things so we either want bulk or cut tape or just
single device so I'll hit bulk we are still at 28 devices now we come down to manufacturers which I
have no idea let me close my window my neighbor just decided to weed whack her lawn doesn't she know I'm
busy yeah so manufacturers I don't know which ones are better than the others or I mean at this
point I'll just scroll in and just find one just go by price or and again we're talking
I mean this first page here is between one cent a piece and like 39 cents so I'm definitely not
going to want 39 cent pieces I'll stay with just like this is hobby stuff so one cent a piece
that sounds fine there's a ceramic 33k quarter watt axial 5 percent tolerance 5 plus or minus 5
percent tolerance and it's a penny a piece so if like I said earlier if you're going to be paying
six or seven dollars for shipping and I don't even know if I imagine they ship international or
some of you guys that are listening from another country you probably have you know the equivalent
of Mauser or Digike over there but in any case it's going to be the same thing you're going to want
to get this stuff shipped to you and it's a penny a piece so you know why not buy 50 of these you know
and then you then you have these resistors in a drawer another way to go about if this is your
first project or just starting your first project and you don't have a lot of parts hanging around
I mean you could you could get old computers and copiers and you can start tearing them apart and
desottering things and build up a collection that way or there is another way go to Amazon or
whatever search engine search engine you go for and look for kits you can get there's one that I
actually purchased so it's Joe Joe nose so Joe nose and then whatever it is you're looking for Joe
nose resistors and it comes up here's Joe nose resistors quarter watt 86 value 860 pieces
they come in a box they're all individually in their little envelopes with the markings on them
and that's only 18 bucks and so you got 860 resistors just to start your collection with or have
on the shelf I once I saw these I was on Amazon looking for knobs I'll get into that in a minute
and that's how I stumbled across these these Joe nose kits there's someone else that's
doing something very similar but it seemed like price-wise you got the most from this Joe nose guy
and they have he has oh I got him in front of me so I bought the Joe nose resistor kit there's
a capacitor kit I have two mice on the table and I keep grabbing the wrong one and that's not
very helpful so Joe nose capacitors it is a 33 value 645 piece kit then and again it was 20 dollars
and then he has I keep saying he like it's actually a dude I mean I'm sure it's just some company
but then I saw Joe nose electronics semiconductor kit so this will have a lot of transistors
mosfets got NPNs and PNPs and zener dials and shocking I mean if you if you get this thing
and the resistors and the caps you're looking at maybe spending 60 bucks and you could do so
many projects with this stuff so I found the prices of some things on digike a bit prohibitive like
I ordered the transistors there I ordered the diodes there I had all the resistor and then I
ordered the the pots the volume tone and then I went to look for knobs to go on top of the pots
and the knobs ended up being they had like one knob was like eight dollars I mean that's
that seems a little excessive so I started looking around and I ended up on Amazon that's how I found
out all that Joe nose stuff anyways I'm over on Amazon and I type in knob and I found
the metal style knob that would be on a fender telecaster and they're only like two bucks
piece so I got four of those well they were I needed three but they came in packages of two
and then I started typing around for a project box to put this stuff all in and these nice aluminum
cases came up and I noticed them from looking at other you know DIY petal pages that a lot of people
are using these I didn't know what they were called or what they were but and then when I brought
them to our 20s hundred meeting a buddy goes oh did you get a Hammond box so apparently these are
commonly called a Hammond box I ordered the CUT234 and it came in and it was a little big it's
I don't know if anybody is familiar with a boss pedal that's kind of a standard size pedal
this is even bigger than that this would be good for if you were going to do a pedal and a pedal
let's say you were going to do a distortion pedal with a switch and then maybe a second reverb and
stick it all in one box another switch for the reverb so then I went and got let's see oh yeah
this one says Hammond on it so aluminum die cast case Hammond 1590B this will be the case I'll
use for this big muff it's two thirds the size of a boss pedal this this seems to be very popular
this is the one I'm seeing on all these DIY petal pages also while I was on Amazon I found the
quarter inch jacks and the switches you need uh oh I forget what it was triple pole double throw
this this is uh some of the contacts on here are gonna engage your guitar to the pedal and some of
the other contacts are going to engage the power to the board so triple pole double throw so
I found those on Amazon too so anyway you can scrounge around look around get your parts together
and get them all in front of you and then you're ready to start your project so that's the point
where I'm at I have everything that I need for this pedal in a box and I thought I'd just talk to
you guys about how I go through the process of assembling you know gathering everything and
it might help you to have some of these resources if you're interested in making your old pedal there
pages on making your own amps there are people that reverse engineered
and you almost every amp I could think of I could find the schematics for be careful with amps if
you start messing around with tubes and stuff you get into plate voltage which is like
400 500 volts I mean it'll you know tequila voltage but uh these little
a DIY pedal thing nine volts this would be great for a beginner maybe well maybe beginner I'd
go intermediate with this because you are starting to have to break down a schematic and you know
think through how you're going to lay out your board and things like that so now all this stuff
for a big muff pie is in a box next to me and whenever I get the further motivation I will start
putting it together and maybe that can be another hpr I'll put the thing together and I can go through
you know what I found out about the schematic or some pitfalls or helpful tips along the way or
maybe I could even do a uh just like a quick little sound demo of a clean guitar and how the
overdrive sounds two other things I should mention before I go about digikey sure mouse or does
this as well but I tend to use digikey more once you're signed in and you start gathering your
components this can take you know a little while to narrow your things you know narrow in each
individual part down and put it in the basket a handy thing they have is you can go to that basket
or shopping cart whenever you want to call it and you can name it so you can name it after whatever
project you're working on and it will save all those components for you for the next time
then let's say you're you have two projects going you can have two shopping carts and have them both
named and saved you know as many as you need it's it's handy to be able to not have to worry about
getting all your components right now spending 20 minutes getting a shopping cart together and
placing your order you can gather everything you need and then you know maybe you want to shop
like I said you're not I found some things cheaper on Amazon so if you find them cheaper over there
leave your digikey basket to the last thing you order and if you're finding things elsewhere that
are cheaper go back to the basket and pull them out and when you're ready you have your saved basket
and you can place your order the other thing is just using digikey as a resource it's amazing I
they have so many components and none of all of the components have a data sheet I've never I
haven't found one yet that doesn't have a data sheet for it so let's say a schematic calls for
a certain component and you have one that's similar or very close you can pull up both components
and look at the data sheets and see if you can swap one for the other in your project or
there's an integrated circuit in your project and you're wondering you know what the actual
circuit does you want to see inside the circuit you pull up the the data sheet and it will have all
the information you need right there so two more handy things about digikey okay so go find
a project and go get some parts and tell us what you're doing because we need more hpr episodes
so if anybody wants to contact me you can leave comments on the hpr web page or you can email me
at nmy bill at gunmonkeynet.net or I am still on status net I guess we're it's GNU social but I'm
still on a status net instance it's the whole thing just stays and fucks over there but I'm
nmy bill at sn.gunmonkeynet.net okay until next time guys we'll see you later
bye
